Labor has confirmed it will run open tickets in South Australia when early voting opens on Tuesday but the decision has not placated Nick Xenophon, who has accused both major parties of behaving like a cartel.
Asked on Radio National on Monday if Labor would preference the Liberals ahead of the Nick Xenophon Team in South Australia, the opposition communications spokesman, Jason Clare, said: “No, my understanding is not. I understand that there’ll be open tickets there.”
The Greens and the Nick Xenophon Team had accused Labor of negotiating with the Liberals to exclude the insurgent minor party in South Australia, by both directing preferences away from the Xenophon team.
On Monday Xenophon criticised the major parties for not directing preferences to his party, despite his party also running open tickets in Senate and lower-house contests.
“I guess I should be flattered the major parties are getting together to freeze out my candidates and my party, a party of the political centre, but it’s the sort of flattery I could do without,” he said.
“I just want the major parties to come clean about what deal they’ve done. They’re behaving like a cosy duopoly, like a cartel.
“If the Labor party does a deal with a view to saving their arch enemies Christopher Pyne and Jamie Briggs in South Australia, then I think a lot of Labor party voters would see through that.”
Xenophon appealed to Labor and Liberal voters to preference his party ahead of their opponents if they ran open tickets.
“It doesn’t make sense for a Liberal voter to go to Labor over us, as we’re a party of the political centre, nor would it make sense for a Labor voter to go to the Liberal party,” he said.
A Labor spokeswoman accused Xenophon of hypocrisy because his party was also running open tickets. “This is just sour grapes because we’re not preferencing him,” she said.
The opposition families spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said: “Labor will be preferencing progressive parties before the Liberals in every seat around the country.
“We will be putting Pauline Hanson last as we always have in the past, that’s Labor’s position. But first and foremost we are going for first-preference votes: we want to win this election in our own right.”
The decision to run open tickets in South Australia comes after a deal for Labor to preference the Liberals ahead of the Nationals in key seats in return for Liberals preferences to fight off the Greens in inner city seats including Batman, Wills, Grayndler and Sydney.
The Greens will preference the Labor party ahead of the Liberal and National parties in 139 of the 150 electorates across the country, including in all marginal seats.
Asked about the prospect of a deal to block Xenophon, the Victorian Liberal party president, Michael Kroger, said: “I doubt that will happen. We may decide not to support the Nick Xenophon Team but I can’t see Liberal and Labor getting together on something specific like that because, in the end, we’re in competition with Labor.
“What we’re trying to do is get people to understand our natural enemy is the ALP, not the Greens or Nick Xenophon. They’re not vying for government but they may disrupt the government and that would be a disastrous outcome for Australia.”
Kroger warned if the Nick Xenophon Team held the balance of power in the House of Representatives it would be “very risky for Australia, very destabilising for the country”.
“What we can’t have is a situation where in the House of Representatives you have this barnyard of independents like we’ve had in the Senate,” he said.
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, were both asked about preference deals on Monday, although neither shed light on how they would treat the Nick Xenophon team in South Australia.
Turnbull stressed the need for stable government and Shorten said Labor was competing for first-preference votes.
