He’s been told ... Bill Shorten leaves the Royal Commission after giving evidence into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. Picture: Adam Taylor Source: News Corp Australia

But after 62 minutes of whiffle waffle from Opposition Leader Bill Shorten — who repeatedly proved unwilling or unable to give a one word answer — Commissioner Dyson Heydon yesterday morning had enough.

“You, if I can be so frank about it, have been criticised in the newspapers in the last few weeks and I think it is generally believed that you have come here in the hope that you will be able to rebut that criticism, or a lot of it,” he began.

Smackdown ... Normally reserved Commissioner Dyson Heydon had had enough of Shorten. Picture: Paul Harris. Monday 4 August 2014. Source: Supplied

In a remarkable monologue that ran for nearly four minutes, he went on to question his “credibility as a witness” due to his refusal to answer questions and for giving “non responsive answers”.

Commissioner Heydon’s smackdown was an extraordinarily demonstrative display from the usually reserved former High Court judge presiding over the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption.

But while it may have brought about a brief period of succinctness, it didn’t stop all the blather.

It wasn’t long before Mr Shorten wanted to drill down on mushrooms.

At issue were the working conditions of the female workforce snipping mushrooms for Chiquita, a group of workers who Shorten boasted were from the “best paid mushroom farm in Australia” thanks to his help with their enterprise agreement.

Under fire ... Bill Shorten had his credibility as a wittness questioned. Picture: Adam Taylor Source: News Corp Australia

“I don’t know if you want me to briefly describe a mushroom shed? It just goes to the relevance …” he offered.

At this point, the shoulders of council assisting the commission Jeremy Stoljar, SC, could be seen to slump.

When, a few minutes later, the beleaguered Opposition Leader tried to steer the conversation towards asbestos, Mr Stoljar was unable to hide his frustration.

“Please, Mr Shorten, let’s not get into a debate about asbestos?” he exclaimed.

There was no evidence of a hotly anticipated “smoking gun” in yesterday’s forensic questioning of financial records from 2002 to 2008 about Shorten’s time as first Victorian and then national president of the Australian Worker’s Union.

But it was a bad day for Bill Shorten, who did little to fix weeks of damage capped off by Wednesday’s damning admission labour hire company Unibuilt had paid $40k to fund a campaign director to launch his federal parliamentary career in winning the seat of Maribyrnong in the 2007 election. That arrangement was only disclosed to the Australian Electoral Commission on Monday.

And his day was made worse by a call from former ALP president Bill Hogg for him to resign.

Calls to resign ... An open letter from Bob Hogg to Bill Shorten posted on Bob's Facebook page. Picture: Facebook Source: Facebook

He was most happy offering a fulsome reminiscence of the heady days of negotiating workplace agreements as AWU chief, among them Melbourne’s EastLink — “a big project, biggest we’ve ever seen in civil construction.”

But he was unable to shed any light on $300,000 worth of “bogus” payments from construction giant Thiess/John Holland to the AWU from 2005 to 2008 — even to answer whether such payments should have been documented within the EBA he had helped negotiate.

“Can you answer that?” A frustrated Mr Stoljar asked.

“Well ...” responded a not-quite-chastened Mr Shorten.

“Can you just give me a yes or no?”

“No. Not automatically.” Or indeed for much of yesterday, not at all.