Speaker's chair free for Liberal 'rebel'

Numbers game ... Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Source: Herald Sun

It is understood the unnamed MP has not agreed and that further contact will be made before Prime Minister Julia Gillard gets involved.

Ms Gillard supports calls for an independent Speaker - as opposed to a Speaker who is an independent - in a bid to reform Parliament.

Both sides of politics are facing the problem that even with the support of three independents they would just have a bare majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives of 76 and would still have to find a Speaker.

News of the disaffected Liberal MP came as Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's credibility came under fire last night with Treasury saying there was an error of up to $10.6 billion in his election promises.

Tony Windsor, one of the three independents who asked for the costings, last night described it as "a black hole".

But Mr Abbott stood by his costings and insisted he would improve the Budget bottom-line by more than $11 billion.

The Treasury documents released at 10pm by the independents found the Coalition would improve the Budget bottom line by $863 million over the next four years - well below the $11.5 billion improvement predicted by the Liberals.

The Liberals would deliver a Budget bottom line that was eight times better than Labor, but only a fraction of what they had promised.

Yesterday Ms Gillard revealed Labor would ditch its much-lampooned citizens' assembly on climate change as part of a deal with the Greens for the survival of a Gillard minority government.

The assembly would be superseded by a multi-party committee with outside experts - and the ranking of a cabinet committee - to investigate ways to put a price on carbon pollution.

Greens leader Bob Brown said yesterday that Ms Gillard had come up with the committee idea at the same time as his party.

The pact means the single Green in the House of Representatives Adam Bandt and the Greens senators would not block supply and would not support a no-confidence motion in a Labor government. Mr Abbott said the deal amounted to the formation of another coalition to rival the Liberal-Nationals partnership.

And in a clear message to the three non-metropolitan independent MPs deciding who to back, he said: "Only one of these coalitions will be good for regional Australia."