Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Dutton and Michael Keenan have directly contradicted the former prime minister Tony Abbott’s insistence that neither he nor his office authorised a deal with the Liberal Democratic party senator David Leyonhjelm on gun control in 2015.
Abbott told Guardian Australia on Tuesday night and the ABC on Wednesday night that neither he nor his office were aware of a deal between Dutton and Keenan and Leyonhjelm to put a sunset clause on an import ban on the Adler lever-action shotgun.
“No deals from me. No deals from my office. No deal,” the former prime minister told the ABC.
But when pursued by Labor during question time on Thursday, both Dutton and Keenan indicated there was contact between advisers in their offices and advisers in the Abbott prime ministerial office about the negotiations with Leyonhjelm over the sunset clause.
Dutton, the immigration minister, told the house that his advisers interacted in the usual way with the prime minister’s office – “keeping them appraised of what was going on”.
Keenan, the justice minister, first tried to argue the agreement he’d reached with Leyonhjelm in 2015 was not a deal to “trade guns for votes” – which was Labor’s characterisation of the transaction with the crossbencher – but he then gave an identical account to Dutton’s.
“There’s no question that at the advisers’ level, there would have been discussions,” Keenan said on Thursday.
Malcolm Turnbull also dug in behind Dutton and Keenan in disputing Abbott’s account.
Turnbull said he had made inquiries of “my ministers, and can say to the house as a result of those inquiries I’m satisfied that the minister for justice acted in the full knowledge of the prime minister’s office at that time.”
The three-way slapdown of Abbott by his colleagues comes after days of public sorties by the former prime minister on a range of politically contentious issues.
Abbott got to his feet at the conclusion of question time to strenuously dispute the accounts given during the session, producing an adviser’s note from 23 July 2015 which indicated the import ban had been imposed because of advice from law enforcement agencies that a substantial shipment of the guns was in prospect.
Abbott said the ban on the shotgun was always proposed to be temporary until police ministers made their deliberations about how to classify the weapons.
He continued to argue there was no agreement with Leyonhjelm, and he argued Labor was creating a “smokescreen” to cover up for the fact it was running a “protection racket for the CFMEU”.
Abbott’s former chief of staff Peta Credlin backed her boss later in the evening, telling Guardian Australia: “I stand by earlier comments on Sky News that neither he, nor I, were aware of any alleged deal.”
“I question the claim there was a deal negotiated mid August, when Mr Abbott made it clear in question time today that he agreed to a temporary ban on 23 July,” Credlin said.
The extraordinary bout of open warfare inside the government comes as the New South Wales government also squabbled in public ahead of a police ministers meeting this Friday, which will deliberate over the classification of the Adler.
Earlier this week, the police minister, Troy Grant, told the ABC he wanted the import ban lifted and the weapon classified as category B so it could be used by farmers to shoot feral animals.
Grant’s statement prompted two National MPs in Canberra and one Liberal backbencher to publicly endorse the NSW position.
But after a cabinet meeting in NSW, Grant issued a more opaque statement saying the Baird government supported a strengthening of classification of the Adler A110 shotgun “from its current A category to a tighter one”.
The NSW premier, Mike Baird, contradicted Grant’s position earlier in the week by saying there was no specific decision about classification because the government was opposed to lifting the import ban.
“Our position is we are for the strongest gun laws possible. Full stop, end of story. That means keeping that ban in place,” Baird told reporters at a press conference in Sydney. “If the federal government decided they want the ban to go ... what Troy is saying is if we get to the point to consider reclassification, he would anticipate them being strengthened.”
The West Australian premier, Colin Barnett, has already signalled he supports a continuation of the import ban on the weapon.
If agreement can’t be reached between the jurisdictions, the import ban will stay in place. It is expected the issue would then be kicked into a leaders meeting of the Council of Australian Governments later in the year.
Turnbull has all week avoided saying clearly how the commonwealth would like the weapon classified.
Pressed again to be clear about what the federal government’s position was going into Friday’s meeting, the prime minister told parliament: “We are encouraging the states to come to a consensus to see a reclassification with an appropriately tighter classification on those lever-action weapons, and of course once that consensus is reached and the reclassification is fully implemented, then consistent with the arrangements described on several occasions now, as this ban has gone through now three iterations, the ban would be lifted and so guns, the import arrangements, would be consistent with the reclassification.”
“That’s our commitment.”
Labor jumped on the forceful repudiation of Abbott in question time, launching a motion to suspend standing orders, noting “that today the prime minister has openly contradicted the claims of the former prime minister on the guns for votes scandal” and arguing the government was in “disarray”.
Shorten later told parliament that the thud they all heard was the sound of a former prime minister being “thrown under a bus”.
Abbott’s argument about the sunset clause in 2015 was that it was put in place by the government in part because of what he’s characterised as “pushback in the Coalition” – meaning pressure from the Nationals – not because of demands from Leyonhjelm.
The Nationals want the import ban lifted, and have made that clear over the course of this parliamentary week.
But Leyonhjelm has produced correspondence documenting his discussions with Dutton and Keenan in 2015, which suggests he agreed to give support to non-related migration legislation in return for the government’s agreement to sunset the ban on the Adler.
