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Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called on the Coalition to redirect its focus to defeating Labor, as Opposition Leader Sussan Ley suffered a huge slump in her approval rating in a recent poll following a month of instability, leaks, resignations and sackings engulfing the Liberal Party.
Asked on Nine’s Today show about the troubles plaguing his former party, Abbott said a lesson he had learned as opposition leader was “to be a clear and strong contrast to the government of the day”.
His comments follow Resolve Political Monitor’s polling published by this masthead on Sunday which showed Ley’s popularity dropping by 14 percentage points in the past month, as Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and West Australian MP Andrew Hastie exited the front bench after clashing with Ley on the direction of the party.
Abbott said he was “disappointed” by Hastie’s resignation from shadow cabinet, saying “I think he’s talented” but said the party needed to take a longer view.
“It’s too easy to focus on what’s urgent today and miss what’s important for the long term. And I just think that we spend a lot of time angsting over trivia. And you know whether one individual is up or down on any particular day. In the end, mostly none of us are going to worry about it in six months time, let alone 60 years time,” he said.
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Abbott was opposition leader for almost four years, from December 2009 to September 2013, before the Coalition returned to government. He was prime minister for less than two years, before being deposed by Malcolm Turnbull, and told Radio National this morning that “he wished he’d had a bigger bite of the onion”, reflecting on his short stint in the job.
Asked about Ley’s performance, Abbott said: “Naturally, Sussan has my support and encouragement, but a good opposition is a strong and clear contrast to the government of the day. Politics is a contest, and as I said when I became opposition leader back in 2009, there’s no point making weak compromises with a bad government. You’ve got to be a strong and clear contrast.”
Abbott said he was disappointed that Hastie had left the frontbench, saying he “has vast potential and promise” and that “he’s got a lot to contribute”.
Abbott was interviewed by several media outlets on Monday morning to promote his new book, Australia: A History, which charts the country from the colonial era onwards and reflects on the contribution of several prime ministers from Curtin and Hawke to, more briefly, his predecessor and successor, Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull.
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Asked about Gillard’s misogyny speech, when the then-prime minister accused Abbott of misogyny in a minute-long speech in the House of Representatives in 2012, Abbott conceded it was a “rhetorical triumph” for Gillard, but noted that it did save her from being deposed by Kevin Rudd less than nine months later.
“At the time, I was sitting in the parliament, and it was just the sort of argy-bargy you’d expect,” Abbott told ABC Radio National.
“I certainly thought she was a worthy antagonist, a very capable person, Julia, I actually thought she slightly let herself down in some ways that day, because she was defending the indefensible. If you might recall, some very bad behaviour from her hand-picked speaker [Peter Slipper].
“In a way, it certainly was a political coup [for her]. She made it not about the misbehaviour of the speaker, but she made it about the alleged misogyny of our system. And as I said, it was a political triumph. But in the end, it didn’t save her prime ministership.”
In the speech, delivered on October 9, 2012, Gillard accused Abbott of misogyny following several sexist statements targeting her from members of the public, the media and fellow politicians.
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