No one has doubted Kathy Jackson's capacity for histrionics.

But Jackson's ability to grab headlines should not distract from the serious evidence mounting against her that she potentially stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her Health Services Union branch and has lied to the royal commission.

Fresh evidence at the inquiry into trade union corruption on Thursday included admissions by Jackson, the one-time corruption whistleblower, that she spent thousands more on herself than was previously known, it appears largely on overseas trips.

It is worth rewinding to go back to what this is all about. In 2003 Jackson's union took $250,000 from the Peter MacCallum cancer hospital to settle a back-pay dispute. The workers did not get a cent of the $3.16 million owed to them and the HSU walked away with $250,000 for some dubiously constructed costs.

Once the money went to the union, it soon started to be shifted into an unaudited "off-line" bank account controlled by Jackson from which she spent freely. Jackson has claimed she had approval from her committee of management, but no documentary evidence exists.

The counsel assisting, Jeremy Stoljar, revealed on Thursday the commission now had new records from this "off-line" bank account in the period from 2004 to 2006. They painted an even more damning picture for Jackson.

The inquiry heard of spending for a 2004 trip to the United States that was drawn from an $80,000 transfer into that "off-line" account. There were other overseas trips around that time, including one to Hong Kong, from which she also made withdrawals before leaving.

There were other serious allegations aired around separate spending of union money - after her HSU branch had gone through a merger -  spending that Stoljar said Jackson no longer had the legal authority to do. There were also numerous undeclared political donations documented and allegations that she had not told the truth under oath previously about legal costs associated with the Peter MacCallum settlement.

All this new detail is expected, one day soon, to formally come to the attention of police. That is much more important than Jackson's headline-grabbing application that the HSU's lawyer could not cross-examine her as they had sex 22 years ago.