Election 2025: Coalition election plan to blitz teals and fight Climate 200

Peter Dutton and senior Liberal figures are preparing campaign blitzes of teal-held seats and Coalition electorates targeted by independents.

The Coalition will launch a blitz teal-held seats as it steps up its ‘Teals Revealed’ campaign.

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Peter Dutton and senior Liberal figures are preparing campaign blitzes of teal-held seats and ­Coalition electorates targeted by independents, as new Climate 200 polling claims that Zoe Daniel has her nose in front of Tim Wilson in Goldstein.

The blitz will align with campaign launches for Liberals who are fighting cashed-up teal MPs and candidates backed by resources and infrastructure supported by Simon Holmes a Court’s ­Climate 200. Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, who has made 40 visits to teal electorates since the 2022 election, will hit target seats including Goldstein, Kooyong, Curtin, Mackellar, Warringah and Wentworth over the next fortnight as part of a broader ­national tour.

Ms Ley will join Liberal contenders for streetwalks and to spruik local project announcements, and will join Wentworth candidate Ro Knox and Warringah candidate Jaimee Rogers for their official campaign launches.

As the Liberal Party steps up its “Teals Revealed” campaign amid confidence it can win back up to six teal and independent seats, Climate 200-commissioned uComms polling of 1225 voters in Goldstein between March 18 and 25 indicates that Ms Daniel holds a 54 to 46 per cent two-party-preferred vote lead in the Melbourne seat.

The polling revealed an improvement on a February 12-25 uComms poll of 979 Goldstein voters, which had the contest closer at 52 to 48 per cent. At the 2022 election, Ms Daniel beat Mr Wilson on a margin of 52.87 to 47.13 per cent.

The Climate 200 polling, which shows One Nation tripling its primary vote in Goldstein since the 2022 election, had Mr Wilson ahead of Ms Daniel on primary vote. The margin narrowed after uComms added undecided voters into the mix.

Despite the Climate 200 poll, Liberal sources said they believed Mr Wilson could oust Ms Daniel and were also hopeful of beating Kate Chaney in the Perth seat of Curtin and Monique Ryan in Kooyong. Mr Wilson, who held Goldstein between 2016 and 2022, has raised a sizeable war chest and amassed an army of volunteers in the electorate, which is home to about 11,000 Jewish-Australians.

The Coalition, which is fending off challenges from Climate 200-backed independents in Wannon and Cowper, is confident of winning Calare, Monash and Moore, which the Liberals and Nationals won in 2022 but are now considered independent after the crossbench defections of Andrew Gee, Russell Broadbent and Ian Goodenough. The trio are running at the May 3 election as independents and Climate 200 is also backing independents in the three seats.

Material from the Liberal Party's anti-teal campaign highlighting the teals’ voting records and their policy priorities.

Ms Ley, who will visit Goldstein next week, said: “Australians have been left poorer and less safe under the Albanese government and that has largely been enabled by the Climate 200 teals, who vote with Labor and the Greens more than 70 per cent of the time.

“At the start of this term, the Climate 200 teals said they would change Canberra, but at the end of the term it’s clear that Can­berra has changed them. Instead of holding Anthony Albanese to account, many of the Climate 200 teals have spent their time, effort and resources opposing the opposition. A vote for a Climate 200 teal is a vote to keep Anthony ­Albanese as Prime Minister. The only way to change the government and change the country is to vote for your local Liberal.”

The Climate 200-backed independent running in Ms Ley’s seat of Farrer is expected to finish third behind the Labor candidate.

Senior Liberal MPs have ­attacked Climate 200 polls as “misleading push polling”, which they say is designed to favour hand-picked candidates and promote independents as frontrunners. Climate 200 has defended the uComms polls because the “message testing” is conducted after three neutral questions asking about voters’ ages, genders and voting intentions, which aligns with Australian Polling Council guidelines. The “pre-message vote intention” is shared publicly while the follow-up intention questions are used by Climate 200 to assess how voters respond to messaging and to ­inform strategic decisions.

Coalition campaign spokesman James Paterson said: “It’s going to be a very close election, it could come down to a handful of seats and the Prime Minister is already having to contemplate a possible minority government with the Greens and the teals.”