Malcolm Turnbull says he would leave parliament if he lost the prime ministership and has pointed to the former New Zealand prime minister John Key as an example of a modern leader who left politics with dignity.
He said he understood why Tony Abbott had found it so difficult adjusting to life as a backbencher, because he went through a bleak period himself when he lost the Liberal party leadership to Abbott in 2009, but he eventually put his head down and “got on with it”.
He made the comments in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph to mark a year since his narrow election victory, and after a brutal week of infighting in the Coalition.
The public brawling was sparked last weekend by a leaked recording of Christopher Pyne bragging to Coalition colleagues about the rising influence of the moderate faction in the government.
Conservatives reacted furiously to Pyne’s claims, prompting calls for him to be dumped as leader of the government in the House.
Abbott delivered two controversial speeches during the week in which he criticised government policy and dusted off his conservative manifesto for government, saying the Coalition under Turnbull had lurched to the left.
On Saturday he continued his campaign, delivering a third speech in which he attacked the Liberal party’s hierarchy, calling on conservative supporters to “take our party back”.
The Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, a former one-time ally of Abbott’s, the defence minister, Marise Payne, the veterans’ affairs minister, Dan Tehan, and the social services minister, Christian Porter, all criticised Abbott’s behaviour during the week.
The Liberal senator Mathias Cormann joined their ranks on Sunday, saying Abbott was now pushing for a conservative agenda that he failed to implement when he was prime minister.
“The things that he’s advocating now are not consistent with what he did when he was prime minister so, if the proposition is the government now is supposedly more leftwing than he would like, that would have applied equally to his government at the time,” he told Sky News on Sunday. “I don’t think these are useful observations [from Abbott].”
Turnbull’s interview on Sunday, in which he said he had sympathy for Abbott’s feelings about being a backbencher, came a day after he published an opinion piece in the Courier-Mail that listed his government’s achievements.
“They’re not theories, or thought bubbles, or glib one-liners,” his column said. “This is a time for builders, not wreckers. For leaders who get things done and don’t just talk. For negotiators and deal-makers who trade in results, not in platitudes.”
On Sunday, he said he was a “happy prime minister” and had no plans to retire soon but if he lost his position he would quit parliament.
“When I cease to be prime minister, I will cease to be a member of parliament. I am not giving anyone else advice but I just think that’s what I would do,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, who attended a rally on penalty rates in Brisbane on Sunday, said the row between Turnbull and Abbott was harming Australia.
“I think it is about time that the Liberal party started to put its house in order,” he said. “They need a government which is focused on the needs of everyday people, not just some argument between two silly older blokes [about] who gets to sit in the prime minister’s chair.”
Turnbull flies to Germany this week to attend the G20 leaders’ meeting.
