Tony Abbott has confirmed he will not back the former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop in her preselection stoush in her seat of Mackellar.
In comments to ABC’s 7.30 on Thursday, Abbott confirmed he had given a reference to one of Bishop’s challengers, Walter Villatora, but not the former Speaker.
Villatora is a former campaign director for the New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, and president of the Warringah federal conference, in Abbott’s seat.
The former prime minister said: “I’m not going to make any adverse comments on my colleague [Bronwyn Bishop], my colleague of very long standing”.
He added: “Obviously I do know some of the candidates in the Mackellar pre-selection. One I’ve worked with very, very closely and I respect very much, and that’s why I’ve given him a reference.
“But in the end it’s up to the preselectors of Mackellar to make what they think is the best choice.”
Bishop resigned as Speaker in July amid a high-profile expenses scandal over her claiming for a $5,000 chartered helicopter flight to attend a party fundraiser. In March she confirmed an account of events in Niki Savva’s book Road to Ruin that she had wanted to apologise to the public immediately but was told to hold off by prime minister’s office.
According to reports, Bishop voted for Malcolm Turnbull in the September leadership ballot in which he defeated Abbott.
The Mackellar preselection battle will be decided by 96 Liberal preselectors on Saturday. NSW Liberal preselections are decided by groups of delegates and are not open to all party members, which opens the door to jockeying between factions.
Abbott lent his support to changing party rules. “In the end let the Labor party be the party of factions, the Liberal party should be the party of merit and the problem with factions is decisions are made on the basis of numbers, not the merits, and that’s wrong,” he said.
Baird has hedged his bets in the preselection, endorsing all three leading candidates: Bishop, Villatora and the former Warringah councillor Jason Falinski.
In addition to endorsements from Baird and Abbott, Villatora’s campaign has an ace up its sleeve: an endorsement from the entrepreneur Dick Smith, who has threatened to run as an independent if Bishop is preselected.
Falinski’s campaign material includes endorsements from the former premier Nick Greiner and the former Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone.
