Tony Abbott has said he would have sought “a mandate for serious savings”, including many of the 2014 budget measures blocked in the Senate, had he not been deposed as prime minister in September.
The former Liberal leader told broadcaster Alan Jones an Abbott-led campaign would have “very explicitly and overtly, and right up front, gone to the people and [said], ‘If we are going to have long-term budget responsibility we need to embrace these difficult but necessary decisions’.”
Would you hope to be invited to join the front bench of the new Government? - Alan Jones interviews @TonyAbbottMHR. https://t.co/gabTK0J26c
— 7 News Sydney (@7NewsSydney) July 2, 2016
Abbott – “still the elected prime minister of Australia”, Jones maintained – said in the Channel Seven interview it was “entirely a matter for the prime minister” whether he ever joined a Turnbull front bench.
“I haven’t asked for it … I’m not expecting it,” he said. “There’s plenty of things that I can do [from the backbench].”
He was circumspect about how it had felt to watch the election campaign as a backbencher, after running the country for two years from September 2013. “Every political career ends,” he said.
“Most political careers end in disappointment, one way or another. John Howard is now lauded as the greatest living Liberal. But that’s not how people felt on the night of the election in 2007 when he lost his seat.”
He compared losing his prime ministership with being dropped from a first-grade football side.
“You’ve just got to accept the selectors’ verdict, play as well as you can and see what the future holds,” he said.
Abbott said in March the Turnbull government was “fundamentally ... seeking election on the record of the Abbott government”.
The 2016 federal budget relied on about $13bn in “zombie savings”, Abbott-era savings measures that had stalled in the Senate, but were still incorporated into the budget’s bottom line.
