Hedley Thomas in The Australian today

...those media commentators and union figures who want to see the AWU slush fund scandal swept under the carpet because it goes back two decades are misguided. In the events at the AWU in the 1990s, Australia’s former prime minister was a key player. A man who was being groomed to be Australia’s most powerful unionist, Bruce Wilson, was another key player. The union’s national head at the time, Ian Cambridge, was appalled and called for a royal commission into the matters in 1996. An exhaustive investigation by Heydon’s probe now would be completely justified and in the public interest.

On Wilson's appeal to the Supreme Court on Client Privilege

.....the police want to go forward only when they have all their ducks in a row. They suspect the documents — which Victoria’s Chief Magistrate, Peter Lauritsen, has inspected and described in a ruling as having reasonable grounds to conclude they had been prepared “in furtherance of the commission of a fraud or an offence” -- are going to be a powerful part of their case. We know, thanks to Lauritsen’s access to police affidavits, they are “investigating the commission of four types of offence in relation to Wilson and others — obtaining property by deception; receiving secret commissions; making and using false documents; and conspiracy to cheat and defraud”.

Now here is the rub: police are expected to postpone laying charges until Wilson’s bid to keep the documents secret has been exhausted. And as the legal battle has been escalated to Victoria’s Supreme Court, it will not be resolved until June at the earliest.

What this means for the Labor Party, Gillard (who has always asserted she did not know the slush fund would be used in any wrongdoing), Bill Shorten and other potential witnesses is nothing stands in the way of the new royal commission investigating the AWU slush-fund scandal.

There are no sub judice issues because nobody has been charged over the slush fund. Former High Court judge Dyson Heydon can fulfil Tony Abbott’s pledge to run a judicial inquiry into a scandal journalists, and large media organisations, have been threatened and bullied for reporting. 

Wilson’s strategy has given the commission an opening to use its powers and rules of evidence. Witnesses can be compelled to give evidence under oath.

It's all in the timing!