Tony Abbott has declared that “sneaky and underhand” leaking needs to stop after polling was published indicating he could have lost his seat of Warringah in the last federal election.
Abbott told the Nine Network on Thursday he had never been complacent about holding his seat and, in the end, he got a “good result”.
“But I do want to make this point that this sneaky and underhand business of leaking needs to stop,” the former prime minister said. “It really does need to stop. It is absolutely corrosive of trust.”
The Australian Financial Review reported on Thursday that Malcolm Turnbull was called upon to intervene to shore up Abbott’s position in the seat after polling showed he was deeply unpopular and losing primary votes to independents.
The report says the polling, conducted 10 days from election day, warned Abbott could lose to Labor on preferences in a landslide, or by 57% to 43% on a two-party preferred basis.
The leak of the polling follows an incendiary declaration by Abbott early this week that he had “an absolute right and, sometimes, a duty” to continue to speak out on national and local issues.
The former prime minister rejected calls that he should quit politics.
In an interview with Alan Jones on Tuesday night, Abbott slapped down 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.
Abbott said on Thursday the poll of his seat during that last federal campaign was “very, very closely held”.
The former prime minister, in essence, attributed the leak to two potential sources. “I had it, Tony Nutt had it, the prime minister had it,” Abbott said.
Nutt is the former Liberal party federal director.
“I’m just very disappointed that someone has chosen to put it out there for self-serving reasons,” he said. “We had a very strong local campaign, a very strong local campaign against a very, very strong field of challengers and, in the end, we got a great result and I’m grateful to everyone from the prime minister down for their efforts.”
Guardian Australia understands the Warringah poll was not carried out by the Liberal party’s usual pollster, Crosby Textor, but by another firm at Abbott’s behest.
The recent Robb post-mortem of the Liberal party’s election campaign criticised the lack of resources available for party research, suggesting the research and data analytics functions were severely under-resourced.
