Courageous, brave, thoughtful ... Malcolm Turnbull insisted the night was not long enough for him to list all the positive attributes of prime minister Tony Abbott.
But, he told ABC’s 7.30 report, the only one that mattered at all was the fact that Abbott had the support of a majority of the party room when last month’s leadership spill motion failed.
“Well, he’s got many strengths. It will take too long, we haven’t got time tonight but he’s a very intelligent, courageous, brave man, a very thoughtful guy. He’s got a wonderful self-deprecating sense of humour. Tony has many good attributes but relevantly the only one that matters is whether you have the support of the party room,” Turnbull said.
Abbott continued the love-in on Wednesday morning, praising Turnbull.
“He is a great contributor,” Abbott told ABC Radio.
“He’s done a really good job with the National Broadband Network which is rolling out much more reliably and much more affordably than it was under the former government. I think we have passed five times the number of homes in a year that Labor was able to do in five years. So things are getting much better with the NBN, thanks to Malcolm. Australia Post obviously has some issues. Malcolm has been dealing with them.”
“I have a very strong team,” Abbott added. “I’m honoured to be their captain.”
Abbott said the leadership question was now well and truly resolved.
“It’s quite a different mood in our party room today than just three weeks ago. Obviously, three weeks ago we had been for through a rough patch. We had all had the trauma of watching the Queensland election result. But I think we have put all of that behind us and we are now focused on governing.”
As the improving Coalition fortunes in Monday’s Fairfax Ipsos poll calmed leadership speculation, Turnbull claimed there were “two universes” on the issue, the one inhabited by the media which was sometimes “utterly wild … you know, a sort of a mixture of feverish imagination laced with late nights and probably a glass or two of wine too many” and the “real world” where Tony Abbott had the support of his party room, as expressed in the leadership spill vote.
But he also rejected the view, pushed by conservative Liberals, that he was out of step with the party on social issues like gay marriage – pointing out that both he and Abbott agreed the party room should decide whether MPs and senators should get a free vote on the subject. That meant, he argued, that the only difference was the way he and Abbott would vote – as individual MPs in that free ballot – with Turnbull voting for gay marriage and Abbott against.
And he was much more downbeat than the prime minister about the impact of the government’s new metadata laws. Abbott said failure to pass the laws would be like an act of “unilateral disarmament” but Turnbull said the issue had been “grossly ... overhyped” and many users would find ways to get around the retention of their internet and phone data.
And challenged as to whether he had the “ticker” to challenge the prime minister, Turnbull insisted “my ticker is in very good shape.”
A new poll on Tuesday did not confirm the Fairfax-Ipsos poll rebound, but did find a near-majority of voters approve of the prime minister’s handling of the “threat of terrorism”.
The Essential poll, which averages its results over two weeks’ polling, found support for the Coalition unchanged at 47% of the two-party preferred vote compared with 53% for Labor. This is the same result as the Newspoll on 23 February. Monday’s Fairfax Ipsos poll had Labor’s lead narrowing to just 51% to 49%, a result which eased the Coalition’s leadership tensions.
During the week leading up to the Fairfax poll result the prime minister had delivered a national security statement in response to the Lindt cafe siege and the government had waged a concerted attack on Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs over accusations she had shown “bias” in the timing of the commission’s children in detention report.
