Extensive media reports this week say the CFMEU is banking on Bill Shorten to win the next election, amid fears the LNP would try to shut the union down if re-elected.

“The government said it will do everything in its power to destroy our union,” national secretary Michael O'Connor has told Fairfax Media. 

“There's not much subtlety there. Either they go or we go. And we intend to stay.”

Insiders say that Bill Shorten and the CFMEU will continue using the China free trade agreement as a central pillar of their anti-LNP moves.

It is expected that the Federal Government will therefore continue accusing the trade deal’s opponents of having “xenophobic, racist” motives, as Trade Minister Andrew Robb did last week.

Despite the potentially damaging rhetoric from the other side, Labor and the union maintain that the China deal gives up too much of the nation’s right to control its workforce makeup and conditions.

Their central concern is that the deal extends 457 visas to semi-skilled workers, while also allowing Chinese investors to bring in their own workforces on infrastructure projects over $150 million. In addition, it removes the obligation for labour market testing.

To try to get Shorten in the top job and potentially protect its own existence, the CFMEU is spending big in the lead up to the national poll.

The union’s political campaigning spend is up from $1.5 million in 2012 to $6.3 million last year, largely in the form of its royal commission defence.

The CFMEU has reportedly put in $1 million for an anti-China free trade campaign in recent months, and millions more are expected to be spent pushing that line.

In what some are taking as a sign that the LNP is feeling the political pinch, several government MPs last week began describing the deal as the “China-Australia export agreement”, despite trade obviously running both ways.