Businessman Maurice Newman has insisted he remains the head of the prime minister’s business advisory council, despite being informed by Malcolm Turnbull last year that the council was being disbanded.



Last September Guardian Australia revealed that Newman’s term as chairman of the prime minister’s business advisory council had expired and that a spokesman for Turnbull had confirmed he would not be reappointed.

But when Lateline host Tony Jones introduced an interview with Newman on Thursday night by saying he had not been reappointed to the council, Newman corrected him.

“The prime minister, Mr Turnbull, has given me the assurance that I’m still the chairman of the Business Advisory Council. He said that it would meet early in this new year, which it hasn’t yet done. He would then decide as to whether he would continue with it,” Newman insisted.

On Friday a spokesman for Turnbull again confirmed that “in November 2015, prime minister Turnbull wrote to all BAC members thanking for them for their service and informing them a formal advisory group will no longer meet”.

Newman, a strong supporter of former prime minister Tony Abbott, told Lateline Turnbull’s “left leaning positions” could potentially lead to the formation of a breakaway conservative party.

“I think his position on most issues ... are not what you would consider to be conservative positions. When you look at – he’s certainly left-leaning when it comes to government, government spending. There’s no evidence that he wants to cut back on spending. He’s constantly looking at ways to increase taxes,” he said.

Asked whether he was saying Turnbull’s leadership could lead to the emergence of a new conservative party Newman replied “Well, I think it’s most likely that if the people who support the Liberal party and the Liberal party values find that essentially it’s a Labor-like party, then they’ll clearly be attracted to whatever alternatives might be presented to them.”

He nominated “giving more money” to renewable energy and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation as Labor-like policies being undertaken by the Coalition.

Newman has used a weekly column in the Australian to expound his views on climate change, including that the world was ill-prepared for a period of global cooling and that the United Nations was using debunked climate science to impose a new world order under its own control.

He also called for a government-funded review of the Bureau of Meteorology to “dispel suspicions of a warming bias” in its temperature record-keeping, something freedom of information documents last year revealed was under consideration by the former prime minister’s department.

Newman is a former chairman of the Australian Stock Exchange, Deutsche Bank (Asia Pacific) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as a former chancellor of Macquarie University. When appointing him, Abbott said he wanted to “restore a working relationship between government and Australian business”.