Canberra voters would be less likely to vote for Liberal Senator Zed Seselja after his prominent role in the failed push by Peter Dutton to become leader of the party last week, a new poll shows.
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In a poll of 808 voters in the new inner-city electorate of Canberra taken on Monday, 64.6 per cent of voters said the new Assistant Minister for Treasury and Finance's resignation from his former position in order to support Peter Dutton made them less likely to vote Liberal in the Senate. While 22.4 per cent said the week's events wouldn't change their vote, just 13 per cent said it made them more likely to vote for the government.
Of those who identified as Liberal voters, 38.7 per cent said Senator Seselja's support for Peter Dutton made them less likely to vote Liberal, whereas 29.6 per cent of Liberal voters said it made them more likely to vote Liberal in the Senate at the next election.
Senator Seselja made public pitches supporting Mr Dutton during last week's leadership spill. He resigned from his post as the assistant minister for science, jobs and innovation on Thursday and joined 43 parliamentary Liberal party members in signing the petition that brought on Friday's vote.
The ReachTEL poll was commissioned by the Greens, who have signalled intentions to both target Senator Seselja in the upper house, and attempt to turn the race in the seat of Canberra into a Labor-Greens contest.
The party has been buoyed by 23.9 per cent of voters indicating they intended to vote for the party in the Senate at the next election, edging just ahead of the 22.9 per cent of voters intending to vote Liberal in the upper house. Almost 40 per cent of those polled said they intended to vote Labor in the upper house.
The Greens polled 16 per cent of votes in the Senate race in 2016 across the territory, when the Liberal party polled 33.2 per cent and Labor 37.9 per cent, but this week's polling only took place in the new inner city electorate. The Liberal party already wasn't expected to poll strongly in the new electorate even before last week's leadership debacle. Despite this, the Greens believe the results reflect a base from which they will work to gain support at the next election.
Senator Seselja voted against overturning laws that limit the ACT's ability to legislate on voluntary assisted dying last month, and abstained from voting on legalising same sex matters last year. Some 72.5 per cent of voters said those stances made them less likely to vote Liberal in the Senate, with 11.9 per cent saying it made them more likely to choose the government and 15.6 per cent saying it didn't affect their vote.
The Greens' lead Senate candidate Penny Kyburz said the result showed Senator Seselja's decisions were costing him votes.
"Most of our community is angry that Zed uses his position in the Senate to pursue his narrow conservative agenda, instead of representing the views of the vast majority of Canberrans," Ms Kyburz said, calling last week's events the last straw for Canberra voters.
"The interesting thing to me in the polling is that people said that Zed's support of Peter Dutton made them less likely to vote for the Liberals in the Senate. But even stronger than that, was Zed voting against the ACT's right to make laws on assisted dying and also him abstaining from the marriage equality vote after saying that he would. It's more a continuation of these things adding up to Zed not representing what the people of the ACT want," Ms Kyburz said.
