Election 2016: Nick Xenophon attacks major parties over preference deal to squeeze party out

Updated

Independent senator Nick Xenophon has accused the major parties in South Australia of colluding to deny his candidates victories in local seats.

Key points: Independent senator Nick Xenophon says the major parties have been "behaving a bit like a cartel"

Pre-poll voting around Australia began today

High voter turnout expected due to "election fatigue"

Polls suggest the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) is in with a chance in electorates including Mayo, Sturt and Grey and is poised to take three Senate seats.

But the Lower House battles could come down to preferences, and Senator Xenophon fears Labor and the Liberals have done a deal to stop his candidates.

"I just want the major parties to come clean on what deal they've done in South Australia and around the country because right now they're behaving like a cosy duopoly," he said.

"In fact they're behaving a bit like a cartel.

"There seems to be a very cosy deal that's been done in order to squeeze out competition."

Both the Liberal and Labor parties have chosen to issue split tickets, leaving it up to voters to decide who to preference.

Labor's decision to run a split ticket will make it harder for the Xenophon Team to claim Liberal Lower House seats.

Matt Loader is the ALP candidate in Sturt, currently held by Liberal cabinet minister Christopher Pyne.

Mr Loader denied there was an "unholy alliance" with the Liberals to hamper the flow of preferences to the Nick Xenophon team.

He argued the non-Liberal parties needed to "co-operate" on preferences if they wanted to unseat Mr Pyne.

"The majority of people here in Adelaide's east are tired of Christopher Pyne, they want him out, but the only way that can happen is by all the parties co-operating," Mr Loader said.

"I implore Nick Xenophon ... to respect the wishes of the voters of Sturt and share preferences, as we would do for them."

Liberal MP Jamie Briggs, who currently holds the seat of Mayo, said voters needed to understand a vote for an independent would be a vote for Bill Shorten as prime minister.

"A vote for anyone else will lead to the chaos we saw with a hung a parliament just a few years ago," Mr Briggs said.

"We don't even know what the independent candidates would do in the event of a hung parliament. We know that history says that they'll back Labor."

Labor votes will see through deals

Senator Xenophon pleaded with Labor voters to ignore "backroom deals" that could direct preferences to the Liberals.

"If the Labor Party does a deal with a view to saving their arch enemies [Liberals] Christopher Pyne and Jamie Briggs in South Australia then I think a lot of Labor Party voters will see through that," he said.

NXT is running open tickets, meaning the party does not suggest where voters direct their preferences beyond their first preference.

Labor said it was open to a deal with NXT, but only if it got something in return.

"The only way it can work is if we all cooperate," Mr Loader said.

"We're willing to cooperate. We stand ready to cooperate."

But if Labor was keen to elicit Xenophon preferences, other MPs had an odd way of describing his candidates.

"This is a very ragtag bunch of crackpots who may be elected on the back of Nick Xenophon's popularity," Deputy Leader of the Federal Opposition Tanya Plibersek said.

The Liberal Party revealed its trepidation about NXT last week when former prime minister John Howard visited Mayo and likened Senator Xenophon to former One Nation MP Pauline Hanson for his stance on free trade.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited the electorate the previous week.

Meanwhile, pre-poll voting begins in South Australia today, with more than 30 per cent of people expected to take up the opportunity ahead of the election on July 2.

Political analyst Clem Macintyre said "election fatigue" was likely to encourage a high turn-out of people looking to cast their votes early and predictions were up from a 15 per cent turn-out at previous elections.

"Often it is because they have commitments on Saturday but I think there's plenty of evidence to suggest that others are simply doing it because they are just wanting to cast a vote and take their mind off the election," he said.

Topics: federal-elections, government-and-politics, states-and-territories, liberals, alp, political-parties, minor-parties, adelaide-5000, sa

First posted