Tony Abbott has defied calls to quit parliament, declaring he has “an absolute right, and sometimes, a duty” to speak out on national and local issues.
The former prime minister used an interview with his friend and media booster, Alan Jones, on Sky News, on Tuesday night, to say he would continue to make public contributions as he saw fit, and Abbott slapped down Malcolm Turnbull for suggesting he was intent, with his incursions, on driving down the Coalition’s performance in the Newspoll.
Abbott said the idea there was “some sinister Machiavellian plot” to influence Newspoll results was completely wrong.
The former Liberal prime minister told Jones he was not interested in stoking another bout of “political cannibalism” by taking on Turnbull for the party leadership, a trend he argued had been corrosive in Australian politics, but he said he would continue to “say my piece.”
Abbott said he had not entered public life to be “a Trappist monk”.
The former prime minister said the Coalition needed to guard against a drift of votes to the right, and he said the government did not want to lose votes “to parties on the right who are more about grievance than solutions”.
He said the government had to acknowledge that the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, could win the next election, and the Coalition needed to give “people something to hope for and our base something to fight for”.
Abbott said one galvanising issue would be removing all subsidies for wind turbines.
The latest incursion follows a public plea by the the veteran Liberal MP Warren Entsch for Abbott to shut up or quit parliament – and it follows a significant effort by Turnbull on Tuesday to appeal to disaffected conservative voters by turning public attention to the themes of economic nationalism and foreign workers.
Turnbull announced on Tuesday the government will replace skilled 457 visas with two new visa streams, which would work to give priority to “Australian jobs”.
The populist move was welcomed by the One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, and the Liberal defector Cory Bernardi.
The Government will deny their tough talk on immigration & plan to ban 457 visas is because of One Nation but we all know the truth! #auspol
— Pauline Hanson (@PaulineHansonOz) April 18, 2017
Pleased to see changes to work visa system but wouldn't be happening without @AuConservatives reminding gov what it should be doing. #Auspol
— Cory Bernardi (@corybernardi) April 18, 2017
Turnbull in late February publicly blamed Abbott for the Coalition’s poor showing in Newspoll, saying the former prime minister knew exactly what he was doing with his “outburst” last week, while the poll was in the field.
The prime minister was referring to a highly provocative speech Abbott delivered at a book launch earlier in the month, where he unveiled a sweeping conservative manifesto for the next federal election, declaring the Coalition needed to cut immigration, slash the renewable energy target, abolish the Human Rights Commission and gut the capacity of the Senate to be a roadblock to the government’s agenda.
The Abbott speech contained a number of pointed potshots at Turnbull, and the former prime minister warned the government would not win the next election unless it won back the conservative base.
Turnbull told reporters in late February an opinion poll was a snapshot of public opinion at a particular point in time, and “what we saw was an outburst [from Abbott] on Thursday, and it had its desired impact on the Newspoll – it was exactly as predicted and calculated”.
Asked whether Abbott was responsible for the poor poll, which suggested Labor had opened a 10-point lead over the government, Turnbull said “[Abbott] knew exactly what he was doing and he did it”.
The former prime minister told Jones on Tuesday night he had accepted the invitation to speak at the book launch the previous November, so the outing had no relationship to the fact the opinion survey was in the field.
He stood by his conservative manifesto during the interview with Jones, and he didn’t demur when the voluble broadcaster described conservative critics of Abbott’s, such as the finance minister Mathias Cormann, as “bed-wetters”.
