The leader of the Canberra Liberals has hit out at a deal struck by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to secure crossbench support to revive the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
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Senator David Leyonhjelm revealed on Wednesday Mr Turnbull guaranteed Coalition politicians a "free vote" on a bill to remove restrictions on the ACT and Northern Territory making laws on voluntary euthanasia in exchange for his support to bring back the construction watchdog in 2016.
The Liberal Democrats senator said the deal was one of the "liberty offsets" he required to back the ABCC legislation, because it contained "quite coercive elements".
But Canberra Liberals leader Alistair Coe said it was wrong to tie the issues together.
“Euthanasia is a conscience issue and shouldn’t be used as a bargaining chip," Mr Coe said.
Mr Coe said the Canberra Liberals were not lobbying for the voting rights to be restored to the territories.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott also questioned the arrangement, describing it as a due process issue.
"I'm a little worried about secret deals and I'm a little worried that undertakings might have been made that weren't brought to the party room," Mr Abbott told 2GB radio presenter Ben Fordham.
"Should our negotiators be able to make secret deals with senate crossbenchers when frankly on something vital for the future of our country and this government they're not prepared to take their own backbench into their confidence?"
Conservatives Senator Cory Bernardi accused Mr Turnbull of being prepared to "trade away a life issue" to "curry favour" for a vote on the ABCC.
"I think that should appal Liberals to be honest, this is overturning the Constitution, it's dealing with a massively divisive matter probably pretty close to an election," Senator Bernardi told Sky News.
However Liberal MP Tim Wilson said members of his party have always been able to vote with their conscience on matters of life and death.
“That doesn’t need to be discussed in the party room, it’s standard long practice that on matters of conscience Liberal MPS get a free vote in the parliament consistent with their conscience," Mr Wilson told Canberra radio station 2CC.
The Senate will debate the issue in August, and ACT senators, the Liberal's Zed Seselja and Labor's David Smith are yet to say how they'll vote.
Senator Seselja's office has failed to respond to repeated requests for comment, while Senator Smith said he wanted to wait for the outcome of an ACT parliamentary inquiry into end-of-life choices before deciding.
The territories have been unable to make laws on euthanasia since 1997, after Liberal backbencher Kevin Andrews moved to overturn the Northern Territory's landmark legalisation of voluntary assisted dying in 1995.
Labor and the Greens began lobbying to repeal Andrews Bill for several years, with ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr saying the ACT government "deserves the right to have a conversation with our community" on the issue.
However ACT Labor politicians are not pleased about how the deal came about either.
ACT industrial relations minister Rachel Stephen-Smith - who is a supporter of voluntary assisted dying and an opponent of Andrews Bill - said the building commission sat at the pinnacle of the federal government's "ongoing war against working people and those that represent them".
"The parliament should be able to restore the right of territories to legislate on assisted dying without trading of the rights of workers and unions," Ms Stephen-Smith said.
The ABCC and the Federal Building Code represent a gross violation of the basic civil rights of construction workers."
Labor backbencher Suzanne Orr tweeted: "If only we could legislate on this important issue without deals being done in the Senate that will penalise workers and their unions".
