Julie Bishop is working behind the scenes to help moderate Liberal MPs and women win their seats, but is keeping a low profile in Scott Morrison’s election campaign.
Bishop, widely regarded as one of the party’s best fundraisers, has been a prominent campaigner in elections over the past two decades and is usually in high demand from marginal seat holders given her star power.
While she has not been visible on the hustings during the campaign, Bishop is helping to finance the campaigns of fellow moderates in Western Australia, Victoria and South Australia.
On Tuesday night Bishop headlined a fundraiser in the seat of Sturt in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs, which will help the campaign of moderate James Stevens. Stevens, a former chief of staff to the premier, Steven Marshall, is hoping to replace Christopher Pyne in the seat.
Bishop says she has done three fundraisers in Curtin that will go towards helping her successor, Celia Hammond, fend off a challenge from the independent Louise Stewart, and another fundraiser in Kelly O’Dwyer’s old seat of Higgins.
The Liberal party preselected “modern Liberal” Katie Allen to take over from O’Dwyer in Melbourne’s inner south-east, which is seen as vulnerable to a challenge from the Greens.
Bishop says she has also donated $140,000 from money raised by the Curtin division to the Hasluck and Stirling campaigns, and to Senator Linda Reynolds to distribute to female candidates in WA.
The former long-serving deputy leader and foreign minister has also contributed $50,000 to the Enid Lyons Foundation for female candidates running for the Liberals in marginal seats. The donation matched that of O’Dwyer’s when she established the foundation to help boost female representation in the party.
Bishop called time on her career as an MP earlier this year after an unsuccessful bid for the leadership last August, and has been noticeably absent from the campaign effort to keep the Liberals in power.
The Liberal MP John Alexander, a close ally of Bishop’s, said that he hoped to see the popular former member on the campaign trail in his seat.
“I would hope [to see her] but I don’t know,” Alexander said. “If she is coming this way I would very much hope so because she is very, very popular.”
After attending the campaign launch for her successor, Hammond, Bishop sent out a letter of endorsement for the conservative-backed candidate. But otherwise, Coalition sources say Bishop has been “missing in action” from the campaign in WA where up to five seats are being targeted by the Labor party as “winnable”.
She did not attend a fundraiser held in Perth last week attended by Morrison and hosted by the WA mining magnate Andrew Forrest.
Bishop declined to comment on her campaign efforts when contacted by Guardian Australia but said she was returning to Perth this weekend as the campaign enters its final week.
The party claims it is in a better financial position at this election than it was in 2016 when Turnbull chipped in $1.75m of his own money to help the Coalition cling to power.
