The HSU corpse is stinking out not only its own but the house of any union, and the hung parliament's as well. No, it isn't Julia's fault.
Most of the media bazookas are trained on her for refusing to condemn Craig Thomson, the unfortunately non-photogenic backbench Labor MP who was an HSU office-holder until he entered federal parliament in 2007, and was only later accused of misusing HSU credit cards for tawdry personal purposes.
His warm seat is also toasting the shapely behind of the Gillard Government, which is one parliamentary vote ahead of political oblivion, which Abbott claims is the PM's motive for distancing itself from the allegations and the Fair Work Australia investigation of those and other alleged irregularities, under the Fair Work Act.
But of course, Thomson's status as 'innocent until proven guilty' is also a critical element of the rule of law in this country whatever the Coalition might say, and Gillard is a lawyer, and she's right.
Abbott's, Murdoch's and Fairfax's other rocket launchers are also fixed on the HSU's national president, NSW-based Michael Williamson, but also on the 'whistleblower', Victorian-based Kathy Jackson.
Jackson's call for a clean-out of the executive of the HSU, after the non-event of the report on three-years-long review of the HSU by Fair Work Australia, which none but the DPP has seen, will not have any purifying effect. What might happen after former anti-corruption chief Ian Temby's report is complete in a few days, and the FWA recommendations are revealed, cannot possibly be the root and branch renewal that Jackson says she seeks.
Nobody's proved a thing, and nobody has been charged, and so it will remain. The HSU will struggle on, to the edification of none.
President Williamson might well be urged by his executive (or most of them) to resign as both national president and head of the HSU East branch, but he can't be forced to. He has only been accused of embezzling union funds and stood down on pay since last September. Whatever Temby might find, he can't be dismissed.
A member of the HSU national executive can be removed only if they are found guilty of misappropriation of union funds, gross misbehaviour or gross neglect following an investigation by the union's ombudsman. That hasn't happened and won't unless