Coalition launches war over Climate 200 ‘push polling’

Coalition frontbenchers Dan Tehan and Julian Leeser have ­attacked Climate 200 over ‘push polling’ they say favours its hand-picked candidates.

Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan is going up against Climate 200-backed independent Alex Dyson in Wannon. Picture: Martin Ollman / NewsWire

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Coalition frontbenchers Dan Tehan and Julian Leeser have ­attacked Climate 200 over “push polling” they say favours its hand-picked candidates, and claimed that teal pollsters are targeting voters outside their electorates to skew results.

With Mr Tehan under pressure against Climate 200-backed independent candidate Alex Dyson in his regional Victorian electorate of Wannon, The Australian can also reveal Liberal Party polling in the seat showed Anthony Albanese’s favourability plummeting.

The polling of 601 voters in Wannon, based on phone interviews conducted in the last week of February, put the Prime Minister’s favourability rating at negative 35 per cent.

The fight for Wannon will be between Mr Tehan and Mr Dyson, who is having a third crack at unseating the opposition immigration spokesman.

Mr Tehan, Mr Leeser and dozens of other Liberal MPs are fending off cashed-up campaigns backed by Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200, which is supporting 35 candidates in the May election.

Similar to other scripted polls seen by The Australian in Kate Chaney’s Perth seat of Curtin and the Liberal-held Sydney seat of Bradfield, Wannon voters were asked about their voting intentions, with questions typically ­accompanied by preambles endorsing Climate 200-backed candidates or incumbent MPs.

In Wannon, held by Mr Tehan on a 3.9 per cent margin after a 6.63 percentage-point swing against him in 2022, voters were asked a range of questions framing Mr Dyson in a positive light.

“As an independent, Alex Dyson answers to the people of his community, not a party,” a polling question says.

“Alex Dyson will get a better deal for the people of Wannon. Knowing what you do now, which of the following would receive your first-preference vote in the House of Representatives if an election was held today?”

Julian Leeser MP. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Mr Leeser, who is facing a teal challenge in his northern Sydney seat of Berowra, on Sunday said one of his constituents had told him they had received the “push poll” about Wannon. Another Melbourne-based voter, who was last registered in Wannon in 2007, also told The Australian he received a robo-call asking similar questions about Mr Dyson.

The claim that the Climate 200 polls are capturing voters outside target electorates comes after Goldstein independent MP Zoe Daniel condemned “dirty tactics” that were an “affront to democracy” after a push poll in her seat painted her as a “teal MP who receives significant funding from Simon Holmes a Court, a billionaire investor. Some people are concerned that it makes her and other teals less independent”.

Under threat from Mr Dyson, a former ABC radio presenter and comedian, Mr Tehan said “the Climate 200-backed teals talk about integrity yet here they are undertaking polling for the seat of Wannon in Sydney and Melbourne”.

“This completely lacks integrity because they’re purporting to carry out polling yet they are doing so targeting voters in Sydney and Melbourne … how do Sydney and inner-city Melbourne in any way represent a rural seat like Wannon?” he said.

“The nature of the questions also casts huge doubt on how this is not seeking to get a favourable response to questions which makes them look like they’re doing better than what they are.”

While there is no evidence of Mr Dyson’s campaign being ­involved in the push polling, Mr Leeser said it “seemed extraordinary” that Berowra voters were receiving questions about Wannon. “It shows us that the people that want to unseat Dan Tehan don’t have their act together, and it shows that when people say the teals are not a political party, they’re actually operating as a political party, because they’re calling people in other parts of Australia,” the opposition assistant foreign affairs spokesman said.

A Climate 200 spokesman said the organisation put the Wannon poll into the field, not the candidate. “These desperate attacks are endlessly recycled Liberal Party media manipulation tactics – we’ve seen them many times before, and they are wrong,” he said.

After The Australian last month reported on Climate 200-commissioned uComms polling showing Wentworth MP Allegra Spender was on track to comfortably retain her eastern Sydney seat, the Liberals attacked the result as “push polling”.

uComms, which was previously co-owned by the CFMEU, ACTU and ReachTEL founder James Stewart, was acquired by Yabbr Listens Pty Ltd on June 28 last year. Yabbr chief executive Logan Leatch defended the Wentworth polling as being “conducted in accordance with the Australian Polling Council (APC), of which uCommunications Pty Ltd was a founding member”.