Tony Abbott has criticised the Turnbull government’s deal with the Nick Xenophon Team to pass the first stage of its company tax cuts, voicing his opposition to “horse-trading”.

Abbott also said that, despite the desire to occupy the “sensible centre”, articulated by Malcolm Turnbull on Saturday, the Liberal party needed something to fight for.

Malcolm Turnbull has rejected Abbott’s critique, saying on Tuesday his government stands by its record of negotiating measures through the Senate.

On Friday the government passed company tax cuts for companies earning up to $50m a year with support from One Nation and the Nick Xenophon Team, the latter secured with a deal that included $260m worth of one-off payments for pensioners.

The deal included measures such as fast-tracking a solar thermal plant in South Australia, a study of a gas pipeline connecting the state with the Northern Territory and a new national energy policy.

Abbott said, “You should never agree to do something that is wrong to get something that is right” – although he conceded he hadn’t examined the details of the deal with Xenophon.

The former prime minister said he was “very cautious about horse-trading”.

“In the end you’ve really got to go to the Senate and say support this on its merits and do not ask us to do something which is wrong in order to get something which is right,” he told Sky News on Monday evening.



The deal with Xenophon included providing one-off payments of $75 to single people and $125 to couples receiving the aged pension, disability pension or parenting payment to help pay for rising electricity costs, despite the fact the government plans to cut the recurring clean energy supplement.

“We all want to be in the sensible centre, we all want to be part of club sensible, but you’ve got to have things that you are fighting for,” Abbott said.

Asked about Abbott’s comments at a press conference on Tuesday, Turnbull said the government stood by its record in the Senate and it had been making the “right deals”.

“To secure passage of legislation through the Senate we need the support of the crossbench, if Labor and the Greens oppose it,” he said. “So we’ve been successful in that – we’ve demonstrated we can achieve the passage of our agenda through the Senate.”

Turnbull listed numerous measures “which we had been unable to get through in the previous parliament” that had since passed, including reintroducing the Australian Building and Construction Commission, the registered organisations bill and childcare reforms.

“We’ve now succeeded in securing ... tax cuts for businesses up to turnovers of $50m, employing ... more than half of the Australian workforce,” he said. “We’re delivering, we’re governing, we’re proving that, if you’re prepared to negotiate, you can get things done in the 45th parliament.”

On Friday Abbott hit out at senior members of his own government over the failed China extradition treaty, saying ministers should spend less time trying to trash critics and get on with governing.

Abbott has been increasingly vocal in establishing points of difference between himself and Turnbull.

In February he outlined a sweeping conservative manifesto for the next federal election, declaring the Coalition needs 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 intervention was blasted as “self-indulgent” and “destructive” by his former conservative backer Mathias Cormann.