Malcolm Turnbull has declined an invitation to attend a forum in Sydney this Saturday focused on overhauling preselection processes in New South Wales, but may send a video message.
The president of Tony Abbott’s federal electoral conference, Walter Villatora, is convening the event to discuss a “one member, one vote” resolution giving grassroots members a say in NSW preselections, and had invited both Turnbull and the NSW premier, Mike Baird, to attend.
Turnbull has a prior engagement.
The democratisation issue – which has been bubbling away behind the scenes for months – blew up in the regular party room meeting of Liberal MPs on Tuesday when Abbott took on the prime minister, before being slapped down by the defence industry minister, Christopher Pyne, for raising state organisational issues in Canberra.
News of the discussion quickly leaked, prompting Abbott to rebuke his colleagues in an interview with Guardian Australia late on Tuesday. “The fact that people readily leak pejorative stuff to damage colleagues is pretty dishonourable I think,” the former prime minister said.
Abbott also continued to push Turnbull to support a resolution from the Warringah conference which would impose plebiscites across the division, ahead of the division’s annual general meeting on 22 October.
Abbott said allowing the membership to preselect candidates was “an absolutely vital reform, and it’s absolutely vital it gets support from the top, from Mike Baird and from Malcolm Turnbull”.
During a radio interview on Wednesday morning Abbott persisted in applying pressure to Turnbull.
“I very much hope that when the actual annual general meeting comes that both the prime minister and the premier will make it crystal clear that there is only one way to go, that is to have full one-member, one-vote preselections for all parliamentary positions,” the former prime minister told the ABC.
“That is the obvious principle. I can’t understand, particularly with prime ministerial support and support from the premier, how the factional insiders will be able to persist.”
Abbott’s former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, also weighed in on Sky News, saying the leaks didn’t bode well, and she said Pyne was wrong to argue state divisional issues had no place in a party room discussion in Canberra.
“[Abbott] was slapped down for raising democratisation of his home party with the prime minister from that same state. Well, where else are you supposed to raise it if you can’t raise it in the Liberal party room?” Credlin said.
“If the Liberal party can’t have an honest conversation about this sort of stuff in the party room and it starts leaking, well this looks like the same party room that started leaking on Tony Abbott – that does not bode well for the government and it certainly does not bode well for Malcolm Turnbull.”
Guardian Australia has been given different accounts of the prime minister’s comments to the party room on the substance of the plebiscite issue.
Some people say Turnbull expressed in-principle support for plebiscites during Tuesday’s discussion, but he said party reform was complex, and he argued the biggest problem facing the Liberal party at present was attracting new members.
Other sources insist the prime minister fully answered Abbott’s challenge to be on board, and was absolutely unequivocal during the discussion in support of “one member one vote”.
They say the prime minister told MPs the Liberal party used to be able to boast a diverse party membership, but that was no longer the case, so changes designed to ensure the diversity of membership were desirable.
Turnbull and Baird are understood to be coordinating their positions on democratic reform, and Baird has previously indicated he will hold a plebiscite in his own seat at the next state election.
The prime minister, thus far, has made no public comment on the issue this week.
On Credlin’s point about leaks, leaks from the regular party room meeting are routine during parliamentary sitting weeks.
Journalists are also given a broad, background account of the proceedings from a party spokesperson, although the discussion about reform in the NSW division wasn’t referenced explicitly in this week’s background briefing. Leaks from cabinet discussions are less routine.
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