Alex Turnbull embroiled in Curtin candidate Louise Stewart fake poll scandal

Allegations made that Lib operators impersonated former PM’s son over Louise Stewart poll.

Malcolm Turnbull’s son, Alex, left, has been drawn into a bizarre fake poll scandal in Curtin being contested by independent candidate Louise Stewart, right.

Malcolm Turnbull’s son, Alex, has been drawn into a bizarre fake poll scandal in the seat of Curtin amid allegations that Liberal Party operatives impersonated him in spreading data that showed a 20 per cent swing to independent candidate Louise Stewart.

The former prime minister’s son has angered conservatives by funding independent candidates against a number of sitting Liberal MPs.

He told The Australian yesterday that he believed someone had used his name in promoting the fake polling in Curtin, which was purportedly conduct­ed by ReachTEL/uComms.

The Singapore-based fund manager said he did not know Ms Stewart and had only spoken to her for the first time on Sunday when it emerged that the polling was fabricated and his name had been falsely linked to it.

The data was emailed to Ms Stewart last week by a group calling itself “Independents Inc”, which does not exist.

It was then published on the front page of The West Australian newspaper on Saturday under the headline “Blue-ribbon bloodbath”.

Mr Turnbull said he arranged for a tracking email to be sent to the group’s email address, which showed that the domain name originated in the Perth CBD.

Ms Stewart said this location was “close to a senior conservative WA Liberal MP’s office in Perth”.

She claimed the Liberal Party was behind the hoax as part of an ­attempt to stop her candidacy in Curtin and to impose an “extreme conservative candidate” on the electorate.

“(WA Liberal powerbroker) Mathias Cormann suggested that I had ‘questions to answer’ over the polling published in The West Australian on Saturday,” she said.

“Now it appears it is Mathias Cormann and his fellow Liberal Party conservatives who have seriou­s questions to answer.

“If it is indeed the case that anothe­r political party has sought to sabotage my campaign in this way, it would be a damning indictment on them.”

Senator Cormann told The Australian that Ms Stewart’s alleg­ations were “completely insane”.

“Any suggestion that I was in any way involved in any of this is false,” he said.

“The first time I ever heard of this fake poll was when I read about it on the front page of The West Australian.

“It was immediately obvious that the reported poll was inconsistent with our feedback on the ground or our own research.”

Senator Cormann called on Ms Stewart to publicly release all the relevant material in her posses­sion, including any emails.

“If she or anybody else has any evidence that an offence may have been committed they should refer all information they hold to the police,” he said.

“The people of Western Australia deserve to know who has sought to deceive them.”

Ms Stewart has refused to release the email that contained the polling data. The scandal has the potential to derail her campaign for Curtin, which is held by the Liberals on a margin of 20.7 per cent.

The senior editor of The West Australian, Anthony De Ceglie, declined to respond to questions.