Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten delivered their final pitches to voters on the last day of a marathon eight-week election campaign as a poll pointed to a late swing back to the Coalition.
The Essential poll has the Coalition narrowly leading Labor 50.5% to 49.5%. It represents an improvement from last week in the Coalition’s primary vote from 39% to 42.5% while Labor’s primary vote dropped from 37% to 34.5%.
A Fairfax Ipsos poll has the two party preferred vote at 50-50, but on primary votes it shows 14% intend to vote for minors or independents with another 13% intending to vote for the Greens.
Support for minor parties, such as the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT), remains the wildcard in the election along with Jacqui Lambie in Tasmania, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in Queensland and David Leyonhjelm in New South Wales.
Essential’s Peter Lewis said the poll taken in the last four days showed Xenophon’s primary vote was 21% in South Australia but 1.5% nationally.
The Liberal party has continued to throw everything at the safe National party seat of Cowper, where Rob Oakeshott, the independent is challenging former minister Luke Hartsuyker.
In the past few days, the prime minister has written to every single household in Cowper on north coast New South Wales to warn them against voting for Oakeshott, one of the three independents who supported Julia Gillard’s minority government in 2010.
“In 2010 the voters of the Lyne electorate chose an independent who installed one of the worst governments in Australia’s history,” Turnbull wrote to Cowper voters.
“We are still dealing with the fallout today as we pay off their debt and rebuild our economy after years of instability and wasted opportunity.”
Nick Xenophon may hold the balance of power in either the senate or the house of representatives and on Friday he confirmed “senior Liberals” had already begun phoning him ahead of the result.
“It’s a question of sitting down and negotiating and Malcolm Turnbull and his team know that we will argue the case from the political centre” Xenophon told the ABC.
“Interestingly when senior Liberal politicians ring me privately to tell me that after the hostilities are over we will sit down with you because we know we can at least talk to you in a reasoned fashion, I think that is quite telling.”
Both leaders delivered their final pitches in Sydney, with Malcolm Turnbull honing his key message of stability and Bill Shorten suggesting voters could have “Malcolm or Medicare” but not both.
The Liberal party took out full page advertisements in major newspapers.
“Your electorate could decide this election,” the advertisement states. “Polls show that just 14 seats could deliver Bill Shorten as PM under a hung parliament. That’s three years of chaos Australia can’t afford.”
The Coalition also enjoyed endorsements on the editorials of most papers.
Speaking on Friday morning at a campaign event in Sydney, Turnbull said a vote for Labor, Greens or independents was a “handbrake” on Australia’s “destiny”.
“The alternative – a vote for independents, vote for Greens, a vote for Labor – is a vote for instability, uncertainty, chaos, higher deficits, higher debts, higher taxes,” Turnbull said.
“Every single one of those puts a handbrake on growth, a handbrake on job creation, a handbrake holding back the destiny, the economic security, the prosperity of 24 million Australians.”
But the prime minister remained under pressure over Medicare, stumbling over a last-minute guarantee that patients would pay no more for doctors visits before revising his comments, agreeing that he could not control what doctors could charge.
Shorten was forced to answer questions over the dispute between volunteer firefighters in the Country Fire Authority and the United Firefighters Union, which is threatening Labor seats in Victoria, according to retiring Labor MP and former speaker Anna Burke.
The Victorian Labor premier, Daniel Andrews, has backed in the UFU, allowing the Coalition to come in strongly behind the volunteers. Turnbull has attended rallies and other events during the election campaign.
“It has been along dispute and it is greatly disappointing,” Shorten said.
Shorten also continued to face questions over whether he would continue on as leader if he lost the election – a situation he refused to countenance.
“I say there are millions of Australians who are putting and pinning their trust on Labor and I say to these people – we do not give up and we are confident and we believe there is a good chance we can win the election,” Shorten said.
He said any increase in the informal vote would be the fault of the Coalition, which changed the Senate voting system with the support of the Greens.
“Whatever happens in this election, if we see longer queues because of the time it takes to fill out the Senate ballot paper, if we see One Nation elected, if we see a greater informal [vote], blame Malcolm Turnbull and the Greens, this was their idea,” Shorten said.
The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, said his party had seen “record numbers” of people joining and that “there has never been a more exciting time to be a Green”.
“It’s the Greens that are saying let’s create jobs in the renewable economy, let’s save the reef by taking strong action on climate change, let’s stop locking up those young kids and families in those hell holes offshore and let’s transition Australia to a fairer, more compassionate, more prosperous place,” he told supporters in Melbourne.
Xenophon has so far opposed the so-called zombie tax cuts from the 2014 budget, which include the four-week wait for the dole, the increase in the pension age and cuts to family benefits but the Coalition continues to include them in the budget.
Xenophon said his NXT team had a chance in the South Australian seats of Mayo, Grey and Barker, based on his own polling and he could get as many as four seats in the Senate.
Of the Coalition’s scare campaign against minors and independents, he said he hoped voters in South Australia and across the country would vote for accountability.
“I want to drag both parties to the political centre, I want to make sure they are held accountable, I want to make sure some common sense views from the political centre are actually heard,” Xenophon told the ABC.
Asked why he thought the votes were drifting in those seats which are rural or semi rural, Xenophon said: “because people feel they have been ignored in safe seats, that they feel they are not getting the road funding, the health funding.”
