The prime minister says the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, is ‘owned’ by the unions, and Shorten says Malcolm Turnbull is trying to ‘disown’ conservatives

Bill Shorten has accused Malcolm Turnbull of trying to “disown” the conservative wing of the Liberal party and Turnbull has accused Shorten of being “owned” by the unions, as the tight 2016 election campaign turns to a personal fight over leadership credibility in its final days.

Shorten targeted Turnbull’s refusal to address accusations by his justice minister, Michael Keenan, that Labor’s candidate in the marginal West Australian seat of Cowan, Anne Aly, had “supported” a bid by a radical preacher to try to get his sentence reduced, and that this had shown “poor judgment” and proved Labor was not entirely on side with the government’s approach to terrorism.

Aly, an academic who ran a government-funded deradicalisation program and attended US president Barack Obama’s White House conference on countering violent extremism, had actually written to the court about what deradicalisation “support” her program could provide the man, and another accused, and she told the West Australian newspaper Keenan’s claim was a “despicable smear”.

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Turnbull said he was entirely unaware of the claims but Shorten said it was “not good enough for Mr Turnbull to say he doesn’t know what is going on. This guy cannot wander around Australia disowning the Liberal party. He is the leader. He needs to call off the attack dogs from Anne Aly.”

Shorten also claimed Turnbull would “surrender to the right wing of his party” on the issue of marriage equality and pointed out that while Turnbull had claimed on the ABC’s Q&A program he had had “firm discussions” with colleagues, including conservative senator Cory Bernardi, about homophobia, he had not explained why the senator has insisted no such conversation had occurred.

“All this goes to the prime minister’s credibility … The prime minister has serious questions about his credibility,” Shorten said. “That is not leadership. That is weak.”

Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, also talked up the role of the Liberal conservatives on Thursday, saying that by accepting Tony Abbott’s policy to hold a plebiscite on marriage equality, the prime minister had “basically done what the conservatives want”.

“That’s why Malcolm Turnbull’s doing this. He’s not doing this because he believes it – he’s on the record as saying this should be a parliamentary vote. He’s doing this because he has to. Because Tony Abbott and others have demanded it. And Barnaby Joyce. I mean, these are the people who are determining Liberal party policy.”

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But Turnbull launched a counterattack on Shorten’s leadership authority, accusing him being “owned” by the union movement, and repeating the claim that a Labor government would be part of a “chaotic” and “unstable” alliance with the Greens.

Turnbull used the protracted dispute between Victorian volunteer and unionised firefighters to attack Shorten’s links with the union movement, saying backing by the Victorian government for the United Firefighters Union showed how Shorten would run the country because he would also be “owned” by the union movement.

He said protecting the role of CFA volunteers in Victoria would be the “first item of business” if he was re-elected on 2 July.

Turnbull also ramped up Coalition claims that a Labor government would see people smugglers resume efforts to bring asylum seekers to Australia, despite the fact that Labor has adopted the Coalition policy of boat turnbacks, seizing instead on Labor’s long-standing opposition to temporary protection visas for asylum seekers already in Australia to back the assertion.

And the parties are continuing to skirmish over the future of Medicare. Labor is now accusing the Coalition of privatising the national vaccination register, but the Coalition has pointed out that this is an extension of a tender first established by the Labor government in 2008.

The Coalition is using new ads “guaranteeing” Medicare spending to counter Labor’s scare campaign, which began with the allegation that the government was intending to “privatise” Medicare because of a now-abandoned investigation of outsourcing back-office payments systems.

Shorten says the Coalition “guarantee” is contradicted by other government policies, including the freeze of Medicare rebates for GPs.

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Meanwhile Labor senator Kim Carr seized on a report in Guardian Australia about Liberal brochures claiming that 31,000 jobs would be “lost” in Victoria, based on analysis by the Institute of Public Affairs that the thinktank itself says is of “low to medium reliability” and “highly conjectural”.

Carr said the brochure was an example of “fear mongering, lies and deceit”.

“The dodgy Liberal ads are based on a document from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) however the numbers are so flimsy even the right-wing IPA repudiates them,” Carr said.