Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
The Coalition is set to retain Bennelong in Saturday’s byelection, according to a ReachTel poll that has found the government leading Labor 53% to 47% in two-party preferred terms.
The battle for the seat has intensified in the home stretch, with Malcolm Turnbull warning a win by Labor’s Kristina Keneally would bring Bill Shorten one step closer to the prime ministership and Keneally complaining about a negative campaign run by the Liberal party linking her to jailed politicians Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald.
The ReachTel poll, released on Thursday, found Liberal candidate John Alexander had a primary vote of 40.4% compared with 35.7% for Keneally. Just 2.4% of the 864 voters polled said they were still undecided.
On a two-party preferred basis the Coalition leads Labor 53-47, although the poll has a margin of error of 3.5%.
That result would represent a swing of about 7% to Labor since the 2016 election, but would still see it fall short and the Turnbull government restored to a clear majority of 76 seats in the lower house.
A Newspoll published earlier this week found the candidates tied on 50% of the two-party preferred vote.
The ReachTel poll also suggested Sam Dastyari’s connections to China might be a drag on Labor’s vote. Some 28.4% said there were less likely to vote for Labor as a result, compared with 23.5% who said they were more likely to vote for Labor and 48% who said it would not affect their decision.
Dastyari resigned on Monday following claims he had told a Chinese donor to leave his phone behind to avoid surveillance and encouraged Labor’s deputy leader, Tanya Plibersek, not to meet a Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigner.
Last week the Turnbull government announced a crackdown on foreign interference in domestic politics, including a ban on foreign donations. Some 66.4% of Bennelong voters said they supported the new laws, with only 10.9% opposed. Nevertheless 23% of respondents thought the Chinese government had been unfairly targeted in the debate about foreign interference in Australia, compared with 51.2% who thought it had not.
On Wednesday Tony Abbott told Sky News the government was “not taking anything for granted” because Keneally was a “dynamic individual” and the Labor party had a “formidable campaign machine”.
“It would be tragic for Bennelong and tragic for our country if a dinky-di Australian who has tried to do the right thing at all times were to be replaced by the ultimate machine politician,” he said.
Abbott said that former New South Wales premier had presided over a “carcass” of a government. “I’m not saying that Kristina Keneally was the worst of them, by any means, but that’s what she presided over,” he said.
Asked about suggestions the Turnbull government had engaged in anti-China dog-whistling over foreign interference and Dastyari, Abbott noted Shorten’s opposition to the China free trade agreement.
“The Labor party is more than capable of dog-whistling when it suits them and they’re more than capable of being very anti-China ... only in this case they were not just being anti-China they were being anti-Australia.”
