When broken down according to voting preference, the survey found 43 per cent of Liberal and Nationals voters think unions are more corrupt, compared to just one in 10 Labor voters, at 11 per cent, who arrived at the same conclusion. Among Labor voters as a cohort, 66 per cent believe either the corruption problem is no worse within unions than in companies and the public sector, or that it is not even as bad. Eight per cent of those said unions had no corruption problem. Most tellingly, the poll points to considerable public distrust of institutions, with 8 in 10 voters favouring the creation of a national body dedicated to rooting out corruption across all sectors of society - a figure that jumps to 88 per cent among Coalition voters. The findings suggest the Government's focus on creating a singular specialised body to address union corruption alone, does not go far enough in the view of most Australians. ACTU Secretary Dave Oliver said while there were cases of union corruption, the survey results were a wake-up call to the government to get back to real policy work.

"Whether you look at sport, corporate Australia, politics, government or NGOs, there are examples of corrupt behaviour," he said. "We need a net to catch corruption, not a spear, because the problem is wider than unions, business or any single section of the community - it exists everywhere and should be stamped out wherever it hides." "Any policy that has a specific section of society as its target, whether that is unions, politics, sport or corporate Australia – will be insufficient and motivated by a political agenda, not a policy agenda." To date, neither major party has been inclined to establish an national anti-corruption body with wide inquisitorial powers along the lines of the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and equivalent bodies in all other states. On Wednesday, an attempt by the Palmer United Party's Senator Dio Wang to amend the ABCC bill by broadening its powers to target all corruption, was rejected by the government.

The ABCC bill thus faces a uncertain future, but because it has already been rejected once by the Senate when proposed last year, its denial a second time would establish it as a constitutional trigger for an early double-dissolution election, should Mr Turnbull choose to apply it. The government has previously claimed that the mere existence of the ABCC, which it has called "a cop on the beat", would add as much as $6 billion to national output per year from increased productivity and funds saved. However that claim was rated by the election monitoring organisation, PolitiFact as "mostly false". The ACTU has also rejected the assertion from the government that industrial disputes in the construction sector ticked up once the ABCC was abolished by Labor in 2012. It said working days lost to disputes in the sector fell from 61,500 in 2012 to 29,600 in 2013 and 23,400 in 2014. Follow us on Twitter