A Dyson cleaner is a slick, state-of-the-art invention, looking like an escapee from the set of Alien with its transparent body revealing its moving, dust-busting parts. Not cheap, Dyson have built their reputation on sucking up the grit and dirt more completely and efficiently than just about any other vacuum on the market.

Now there’s another Dyson, vacuuming dirt of a far uglier sort. That’s the Honourable Dyson Heydon QC, former justice of the High Court of Australia and now Her Majesty’s Royal Commissioner heading the Trade Union Royal Commission.

Thus far, 30 individuals -the majority union or ex-union officials – have been referred to regulators and law enforcement agencies to face possible charges on more than 50 potential breaches of the law. The stench is ripe.

Yet it is Mr Heydon who now finds himself in a spot of bother, having agreed over a year ago to address a legal fraternity dinner to honour the former chief justice of the High Court, Sir Garfield Barwick; a dinner organised by Liberal lawyers who advertised a modest cover charge, sufficient to allow the Government’s opponents to brand it a Liberal fundraiser. In other words, cried the Tony Abbott lynch mob, the fix is in, and Mr Heydon is, according to Labor frontbencher Stephen ‘red underpants’ Conroy, a Liberal ‘stooge’.

The ACTU, Fairfax, the ABC and the wider chattering classes have been baying for Mr Heydon’s head. In Parliament, Labor under Bill Shorten has thrown the kitchen sink at the Prime Minister and Mr Heydon. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald really dug deep to imply that there must be a secret link between the two, by virtue of the fact that 35 years ago then Professor Heydon was on the distinguished panel that awarded the PM his Rhodes Scholarship. More irreleveant rubbish.

Amid all this confected hysteria, Mr Heydon is under extreme pressure to resign. We firmly belive he should not.

The truth is that no-one has seriously questioned Mr Heydon’s conduct and integrity as a royal commissioner. Mr Shorten may still be seething at being admonished by Mr Heydon when giving evidence about his AWU past last month (which was actually constructive advice about his presentation as a witness), but he and Labor can’t have it both ways. They were perfectly happy to accept Mr Heydon’s conclusion that former PM Julia Gillard had no case to answer in relation to the dodgy tricks of her former boyfriend Bruce Wilson and his moneybag-burying henchman, Ralph Blewitt.

When Ms Gillard was ‘cleared’ by Mr Heydon, Labor lauded his independence of Mr Abbott; now they and the unions are baying for his blood because he was careless with his paperwork – precisely the same grounds on which Ms Gillard was ‘exonerated’. Hypocrisy writ large.

If Mr Shorten was being honest he would admit that he, Labor, the unions and their media (dare we say?) stooges not only want Mr Heydon sacked, they want the royal commission itself killed off too, knowing how damaging its revelations are proving.

Starting last year, the commission, Mr Heydon and his counsel assisting have been methodically and legalistically picking nasty scabs all over the body of the union movement. Theirs is no witch hunt, but they are lifting the rug on the festering underside of Australian trade unionism. Mr Shorten appeared last month to clear his name after damaging stories in, ironically, Fairfax newspapers. But his career-threatening admissions, including an undisclosed $40,000 AWU campaign donation to Labor, and his union extracting significant employer contributions while negotiating away conditions of the low-paid workers they were representing, were entirely Mr Shorten’s doing, not Mr Heydon’s.

Just as some HSU officials allegedly siphoning members’ funds into their election campaigns was not Mr Heydon’s doing. Nor the CFMEU’s allegedly extorting payments from contractors on building sites, nor the very cosy links between some unions and industry superannuation funds. These are just some of the rorts, rip-offs and rancid conduct that have so far come to light through a royal commission encouraging those previously intimidated by union bastardry to speak out. Mr Heydon is being hung out to dry by Mr Shorten’s acolytes for exposing the unsavoury activities of shysters and thugs whose misdeeds give any honest unionists a bad name.

Mr Abbott copped a huge belting for his (correct) loyalty to Bronwyn Bishop. For Dyson Heydon QC, he’s absolutely right to defend this outstanding jurist’s impartiality and integrity. Mr Heydon is being traduced and vilified by Labor, and Left journalists, merely because Mr Shorten and the bruvvers know how good a job at exposing union chicanery and corruption he has done, is doing, and must be allowed to continue to do.

Regardless of whether this Dyson decides to pack it in or not, there is a massive clean-up of our putrid union movement required. The Royal Commission still has a critical job to do.