The backbench was cock-a-hoop at the news that Malcolm Turnbull has a bit of political mongrel in him after all.

Take that Tony Abbott - your shambolic Trade Union Royal Commission was calamitously expensive and ludicrously noisy but tagged Opposition Leader Bill Shorten with precisely nothing.

In full attack-dog mode on Wednesday, Turnbull angrily rejected Labor's suggestions that the Australian Federal Police had participated in a politically inspired witch hunt.

To Coalitionists, it was all red meat, the gourmet anti-Labor, anti-union kind.