Scott Morrison says Labor and the Greens present far bigger threat to the economy and jobs than the United Australia party

'You will get up with fleas': Bill Shorten attacks Liberals' deal with Clive Palmer

Bill Shorten has criticised the Liberal party deal to exchange preferences with Clive Palmer’s United Australia party.

Speaking in Hobart on Saturday where he announced that a future Labor government would invest $120m into Tasmanian tourism projects, the opposition leader did not deny that Labor officials had held discussions with Palmer over the course of the campaign, but said they would not risk preference swaps with the potential kingmaker in Queensland.

“First of all, whether or not there were conversations, I would not sign off on any deal with Mr Palmer until he resolves the issues of the tens of millions of dollars he owes taxpayers and workers,” Shorten told reporters on the banks of the Derwent river.

“If there have been conversations to find out what Mr Palmer is up to, well, that is as it is. But no deals from Labor.

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“Mr Morrison has shown his hand – a vote for Scott Morrison is a vote for Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson,” Shorten said.

“There’s an old saying, and I think that Mr Morrison is going to learn the truth, if you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas.”

Shorten also criticised the LNP’s preference deals with One Nation in Queensland, saying that a Morrison-Hanson-Palmer government would be “the most extreme rightwing government in Australia’s history”.

Morrison, who was campaigning in Dubbo in New South Wales on Saturday, where he announced a $57m drought package for farmers, defended the Coalition’s in-principle preference deal with Palmer’s party.

He said “Labor and the Greens present a far bigger threat to the Australian economy, to people’s jobs than the UAP does”.

“That’s just a simple fact,” he said.

The Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, said the UAP was “far closer” to the government’s supporters than Labor or the Greens.

But the deputy prime minister said that while the UAP would be preferenced above Labor and the Greens, their actual spot would be decided on a seat-by-seat basis.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Scott Morrison and Michael McCormack feed some cattle on Eumungerie farm, 32km north of Dubbo, on Saturday. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Palmer is set to formally announce UAP preferences on Monday.

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese, who was with Shorten in Hobart, attacked rightwing and populist parties, following news that a Tasmanian Nationals senator was planning to put One Nation third on his how-to-vote cards.

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“Scott Morrison had a choice between standing up for ripped off workers or sucking up to a tosser who ripped them off and he chose the tosser – he chose Clive Palmer,” Albanese said.

“Australians need to think very carefully, not just about not voting for these fringe hard right parties, but about not voting for someone who is prepared to promote them and bring them in as if they are mainstream.”

Labor holds four of the five lower house seats in Tasmania, with independent MP Andrew Wilkie comfortably controlling the last.

The opposition snatched three of its seats – Bass, Lyons and Braddon – from the Liberals in 2016 and is now fighting to retain them.

It holds the north-west seat of Braddon by a slim 1.7% margin, and knows the unpredictable electorates of Bass and Lyons also turn on a dime.