Anthony Albanese gags anti-Greens Labor MP Josh Burns

Anthony Albanese has muzzled the only Labor MP who has refused to preference the Greens, as the ALP spends millions of dollars sandbagging at-risk electorates.

Labor MP Josh Burns with Anthony Albanese on Monday. Picture: Mark Stewart / NewsWire

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Anthony Albanese has muzzled the only Labor MP who has refused to preference the Greens, as the Prime Minister faces an angry backlash from Jewish leaders over vote-swapping deals with the anti-Israel party and the ALP spends millions of dollars sandbagging at-risk electorates.

Amid rising concerns in Labor ranks about losing the Melbourne seats of Macnamara, Wills, Aston, McEwen and potentially Chisholm to the Liberals and Greens, Mr Albanese on Monday shut down questions to Josh Burns about his decision to leave his preferences open.

On a campaign stop in St Kilda, in the heart of Mr Burns’s seat of Macnamara, Mr Albanese raised his hand and said “thanks a lot” when The Australian asked the Labor backbencher about his open ticket. Macnamara, being targeted by the Greens and Liberals, is home to a sizeable Jewish-Australian community and the Adass Israel Synagogue, which was firebombed in an anti-Semitic attack last year.

After ducking and weaving during the campaign on Labor preference deals with the Greens, the release of how-to-vote cards last week confirmed that senior Labor ministers including Mark Dreyfus had preferenced the radical left-wing party for the May 3 election.

Mr Albanese’s intervention came as the nation’s peak Jewish body told Mr Dreyfus it would “find it difficult to believe” Labor would have refused requests from him to scrap a vote-swapping deal struck with the Greens in his safe Victorian seat of Isaacs.

In a letter obtained by The Australian, Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion expressed “deep disappointment” at Labor’s decision to trade Mr Dreyfus’s preferences with the Greens.

“From your own public comments in the past, we know that you are aware of how extreme the Greens’ politics have become under their current leadership … Your colleague Josh Burns, who is a backbencher, was able to persuade the party as a matter of principle to have an open ticket for his seat of Macnamara,” Mr Aghion wrote.

“If you, as a senior cabinet minister, had pressed strongly for an open ticket in your own seat, we find it difficult to believe that the party would have refused your request.”

Mr Aghion said while the body doesn’t underrate the “excellent” work done by Mr Dreyfus – Labor’s most senior Jewish MP – to fight anti-Semitism, he would like to “build an Australia where such measures are no longer necessary”.

“Refusing to preference the Greens would have been a small but significant step in that direction,” he said.

Mr Burns, who is Jewish, declined to comment when asked about the Prime Minister’s intervention to block questions about Mr Dreyfus’s preference deal with the Greens. A Labor source played down the incident, describing it as nothing more than Mr Albanese ensuring everyone was “keeping on message” and it was “no big deal”.

As pre-polling centres open on Tuesday, The Australian can reveal Labor is splashing millions of dollars across 46 seats across the country through geo-targeted digital advertising blanketing key suburbs in high-risk ALP electorates in all states and territories.

Coalition analysis using Google ad data, which includes YouTube advertising spending but not other digital platforms, indicates trends showing how much Labor is spending in each electorate.

Using geo-targeting, political parties can blanket advertising across specific postcodes within electorates. With the exception of Chisholm, many of the top 10 seats captured by Labor’s Google ad spend have a high percentage of voters on the electoral roll aged 18 to 34. YouTube and Google advertising, which are also used by the Liberals, Climate 200, the Greens and Clive Palmer, are considered among the most effective ads in modern campaigns.

Mr Burns’s seat of Macnamara, which has been visited several times by Peter Dutton, is under threat, and Peter Khalil’s inner-city seat of Wills is expected to come down to the wire in a tight contest with the Greens. The top Labor-held Victorian seats carpet-bombed with digital advertising include Wills, Chisholm, McEwen, Bruce, Dunkley, Holt, Gorton and Corangamite.

Labor’s digital advertising spend comes as senior Coalition sources maintained confidence that national polling showing the Coalition falling behind was not uniform across the country.

A Coalition source said its polling was “telling us something very different to public polls” and declared that Labor’s ad spend showed it was concerned about a rump of seats.

“They are sandbagging in seats they claim they’re not worried about,” the Coalition source said.

Despite falling behind in the polls, the Opposition Leader has stuck to his offensive strategy campaigning in Labor, Greens and teal seats. Since visiting Sturt on the morning of April 7, Mr Dutton has made 26 visits to Labor seats, four to Greens-held seats in Brisbane and one to the teal-held seat of Curtin. He has been to four Coalition-held seats since the election was called including his own electorate of Dickson, the safe Nationals seat of Maranoa, the WA electorate of Forrest, which is being targeted by a Climate 200-backed teal candidate, and the marginal battleground seat of Sturt in Adelaide.

Mr Dutton campaigned on Monday in the ALP-held seats of Dunkley and Gorton. Standing alongside the Liberals’ Gorton and Hawke candidates, Mr Dutton announced a $300m package to upgrade the Calder Freeway.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: DAMON JOHNSTON