Liberals deny preference deal with the Greens to win more inner Sydney seats
MALCOLM Turnbull is preparing to take the extraordinary step of bringing forward the Federal Budget and rushing to an early election in July.
NSW
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THE Liberal Party has denied it struck a preference deal with the Greens in a desperate bid to win inner city Sydney seats.
With Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull facing dire poll warnings over his government’s chaotic performance, Labor yesterday accused the Liberals of doing an election deal with the devil.
The claims of a dirty deal came as the Prime Minister would not rule out bringing the May budget forward a week to May 3 to pave the way for a double dissolution election on July 2.
Liberal MPs privately vented their anger at the claims made by Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese, which alleged a preference swapping deal with the Greens in seats of Sydney and Grayndler.
“How could we be doing preference deals with the Greens when they are blocking the ABCC (union corruption bill)?”one NSW Liberal asked.
But Liberal federal director Tony Nutt said there “was no such deal” and Labor had simply invented it.
A week earlier Mr Nutt told a senate hearing no decisions had been made on preferences and denied talks had taken place with the Greens.
Labor appears to be trying to capitalise on an increasingly jittery Liberal backbench following a second round of bad polls for the Coalition.
The Newspoll published in The Australian showed the Coalition and Labor now in a neck-and-neck race at 50/50 on a two party preferred basis.
It also showed Mr Turnbull’s satisfaction rating continued to fall — although it is still considerably higher than Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Several Liberal MPs said yesterday they were starting to get jittery about the government’s slide in the opinion polls since they rolled Tony Abbott.
“Yep, there are people starting to get nervous,” one senior MP said.
But another MP, speaking on behalf of several moderate colleagues, said they were not concerned about the polls and were still confident the Coalition would win the election.
Mr Turnbull dismissed the slide in the polls yesterday and said he was getting on with his job.
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