Prime minister Tony Abbott has brushed aside concerns of a leadership spill after a week of open dissent within his government.
Abbott would not be drawn on whether he had the numbers to win a potential challenge, instead insisting that no spill would be called.
“I don’t expect anything like that to happen,” Abbott told Sky News on Thursday night. “I don’t expect anything like that to happen because I know that this is a cabinet which is working together for the good of our country.”
It has been a politically damaging week for Abbott, with a number of backbenchers publicly expressing their loss of confidence in the prime minister.
On Wednesday, former assistant minister Arthur Sinodinos announced this his support for Abbott was not unconditional, and earlier in the week Denis Jensen and Warren Entsch called for a leadership vote in the next party room meeting.
Abbott rejected that proposal, saying it would be a “distraction”.
Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull told a forum on the New South Wales central coast on Thursday night that Abbott has the full confidence of his frontbench.
Abbott has pledged to be more consultative with members of the backbench.
“The important thing is to give people a fair hearing and one of the things that perhaps we didn’t do enough last year was take better advantage of the wisdom and insight of our backbench policy committees,” Abbott said.
“One of the things that I’ve said will be very different this year and we’re starting on Monday is that at least once every two months, all the chairs of the backbench policy committees will sit down with the cabinet for a frank and fearless exchange because there are ideas and insights amongst our party room colleagues that the cabinet needs to hear.”
The prime minister is urging unity in the ranks.
“What I say to all my colleagues – we have been a good team; we will be an even better team and let’s talk about any issues that people have,” Abbott said.
He reaffirmed the government’s policy agenda for 2015.
“Obviously this does need to be a better government this year than last year,” he said.”But I know that the people don’t want me to dwell on the past, they want me to excite them about the future and what we’ve got in store for people early this year is a big new families package focused on childcare and a tax cut for small business.”
