Greens leader Richard Di Natale in a photo shoot for GQ magazine. "I think it's unlikely that in this modern era that you actually do a preference deal with anyone much. You may have loose arrangements with various parties," he told Sky News. "You've got a doctor [Di Natale] who owns a farm who doesn't come from this mad environmental background. He's helped the government get legislation through the Federal Parliament. So you look at the Greens through a slightly different lens these days because they're not the nutters they used to be." Mr Kroger said an arrangement might be entered for "tactical reasons", not because the Liberals agree with Greens policies. He said no candidate would ever direct preferences to "extreme Greens" such as Lee Rhiannon or Sarah Hanson-Young. Asked what the difference was between a preference deal and a "loose arrangement", he explained that under the latter "you don't know what you're going to get back".

Michael Kroger: "The elites are way ahead of the normal populace and that's going to continue to grow in Australia as well." Credit:Justin McManus It marks a change of tune for Mr Kroger since the 2010 Victorian state election, after which he sang the praises of having preferenced the Greens last. "The party leadership's decision on Greens preferences was undoubtedly the right one," he said at the time. "It stopped the Green momentum, pacified Liberal supporters, showed we stood for something, made clear there was a line we would not cross to form government." The Greens, including national co-convenor Giz Watson, have been adamant that there is no deal with the Liberals. NSW campaign director James Ryan described Mr Albanese's claims as "a Labor Party dirty trick". But privately, members are worried that even an informal arrangement will cost candidates at the ballot box and blur the party's message.

"There's a real concern about this," a senior figure in the Australian Greens told Fairfax Media. "There could still be an arrangement about preferences but the denial will continue." The Liberal Party directing some of its preferences to Green candidates would not be unusual - it was widely practised before the 2010 Victorian state election and the 2013 federal election. Likewise, the Greens have run open tickets in the past, though in most cases they have directed preferences to Labor. That included the 2013 federal election, where in Victoria, some open tickets were run but mostly in safe seats. But now, in a statement on the Greens' website, the party says: "Our default position is to let people allocate their own preferences because we think voters are wise enough to do so." Some Greens are also unsettled by a forthcoming interview in which Senator Di Natale told GQ magazine he would "never say never" to a Liberal-Green coalition government, though he thought it was much more likely such an alliance would be struck with Labor.

The senior Greens figure said the interview, along with a decision to back the government on Senate voting reform, was muddying the waters and detracting from the priority of defeating the Turnbull government. "We need statements that are 100 per cent tight on that ... because at the moment we're bleeding support. This has made Albanese's day," the source said. "The bulk of our constituents want us to be clear. They don't want us hanging out with the Coalition." Loading But another senior Greens source challenged perceptions Senator Di Natale was trying to lead the party in a more conservative direction. "I don't think it's accurate to say he's moving the party to the right, he's trying to broaden the party," the source said. Follow us on Twitter