Last Friday, His Spinelessness said he couldn't work with the ACTU's new secretary, Sally McManus, after she told the ABC on Wednesday it was OK to stand up to unfair laws.

Turnbull said: "I don't think we've got a lot in common in terms of values ... If she thinks she and the unions are above the law, there's not much work we can do with her, I'm afraid."

But when will he take on corporations?

I'm not just talking now about corporations that blatantly ignore health and safety regulations, maiming and killing workers in the process.

Grocon, for instance, was fined $250,000 after a wall on its building site in Melbourne collapsed and killed three people in a single breach of a workplace safety. Grocon, at least, expressed deep regret over the incident.

But aside from these horrifying incidents, which are well publicised, we have your run-of-the-mill multinational, which does the magic trick of avoiding tax and has an even bigger effect on Australia than Grocon's health and safety violations.

What does that cost us each year? Nearly $5 billion. Oxfam Australia analysis analysis estimates tax-dodging by Australian-based multinationals through the 15-worst corporate tax havens cost Australia between $4 billion and $4.8 billion in 2014 – about 90 per cent of our lost corporate tax, Oxfam says.

Wouldn't it be awesome to get some of that money, instead of chasing pensioners for tiny Centrelink debts they probably don't owe in the first place?

At the end of 2015, the Australian Taxation Office published a report showing more than a third of all large public and foreign companies in Australia paid no tax in the year ending June 2014. Labor's assistant shadow treasurer, Andrew Leigh, says the ATO's been cut to shreds, so it's hard for it to chase missing money.

"This is a government that has cut thousands of Tax Office staff, making it harder to crack down on multinational tax avoidance," Leigh says.

These corporations have no regret because they are not breaking the law. Instead, they are breaking a covenant all companies should have with the country within which they operate; a covenant which says "we will act in a moral and responsible manner to the citizens of this country, where we make our profits".

The operations of unions are at least in public sight and, for this, we have a parade of Liberal governments to thank. Through their efforts with various union royal commissions, we see much smoke and a handful of spot fires.

But the machinations of companies are not nearly so available to the ordinary Australian. Where is the corporate equivalent of the Australian Building and Construction Commission? Where is the federal ICAC?

a professor of corporate governance at the University of Technology, Sydney, Thomas Clarke, says there is just not as much attention to corporate governance as there is to union governance.

"The codes of corporate governance and behaviour are concealed and all of this takes place behind closed doors and that's why there are relatively safe in what they do," he says – as any reporter who has ever tried to track back the failures and deceptions will tell you. The excuse is that it is always "commercial-in-confidence", which is code for "we won't ever tell you anything that could incriminate us".

That's how companies avoid the spotlight. While unions strike in public and demonstrate against unfair corporate practices, corporate interests collude with lawyers and accountants to avoid their responsibilities.

"A few unionists going on to the streets to protest an issue of significant importance is a matter of public attention, whereas corporations which are hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in tax through offshore tax havens do it all on the quiet," Clarke says.

"If corporations were prevented from moving profits internationally to low-tax regimes, we wouldn't have the public deficit we currently experience, which leads to Liberal governments saying we need cuts to public services."

Yes, yes, yes. We all benefit from tax paid, including the government and corporations. Funding the community leads to higher moral, good infrastructure leads to satisfaction. Good health. Good education.

Yet how often do we see politicians shaking hands with the chief executives of companies that minimise tax and therefore minimise their community responsibility? And these same politicians spurn unionists who are on the side of workers: ordinary Australian taxpayers.

Why can politicians discount and ignore unions and pander to corporations?

Here's where you come in. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the level of union membership in the private sector is now almost at one in 10 jobs, a rapid decline over time. Union membership is falling, particularly among the young. (Mind you, when McManus ran the Australian Services Union's NSW branch, she marshalled a 20 per cent increase in membership over the course of her stewardship.)

Maybe that's why Turnbull said he wouldn't work with her and why Labor leader Bill Shorten behaved like a frightened poodle.

I would be more energised and inspired by leaders who stood up to corporate Australia, which forever moans about corporate taxes.

Let's wait for the day either Turnbull or Shorten say to non-taxpaying corporate Australia: "I don't think we've got a lot in common in terms of values ... there's not much work we can do with them I'm afraid."

Join a union. At least they stand up.

Jenna Price is a columnist for The Canberra Times and Daily Life, and a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Twitter: @JennaPrice

Facebook: JennaPriceJournalist