"How can you assure Australians that a vote for the Liberal party is not a vote for a second Abbott government?" the questioner asked Pyne. Christopher Pyne addresses the question of disunity in the Coalition as Newspoll announces its latest results. Credit:ABC Q&A "I can absolutely assure you that if you vote for Malcolm Turnbull at the next election - and I hope you will because the alternative is Bill Shorten - that you will get Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister for the next three years," Pyne said. "That is absolutely and utterly certain," he said.

The Minister for Innovation then proceeded to quote the former PM. "The party room made a very clear decision in September last year and I know that the commentators are 'hyperventilating', a word that Tony Abbott used a lot about changes in polls. Christopher Pyne said despite the disunity among the party room the Coalition would win the next election. Credit:ABC Q&A "But actually, if you look at the poll about who people want, Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten, Malcolm always leads Bill Shorten basically two to one. At least two to one," he said. The latest Newspoll showed Turnbull leading Shorten 48 to 27 for preferred PM, well below two to one odds.

"So sure, polls come and go. And today's Newspoll is a reflection of the messy week that Greg Sheridan so helpfully talked about at the beginning of the show," Pyne said. Host Tony Jones interjected: "I thought you said it was a triumph," referring to Pyne's earlier comments during the program. Jones brandished an excerpt from political commentator Nikki Savva's recently published book, The Road to Ruin, in which Abbott purportedly said that in a second Abbott government he would be better than in the first. The question of a return to an Abbott-led Coalition comes as former frontbencher Kevin Andrews sparked a fresh outbreak of Liberal Party disunity after suggesting he was prepared to challenge Turnbull for the prime ministership. He later claimed he was taken out of context.

Concerns over disunity have been fuelled by mounting tensions between the PM and Treasurer Scott Morrison following several public incongruencies that set the two men at odds, and conservative senator Cory Bernardi registering his own Donald Trump-style political party. "How can you stop this internal division hurting your electoral chances?… Could these people damage your prospects at the election?" Jones asked Pyne. "Disunity is always unhelpful. Of course it is, I mean it's obviously a statement of the bleeding obvious," Pyne said. "The reality is no one in the Coalition party room wants Bill Shorten to be prime minister of Australia," he said. Asked whether Abbott wanted the leadership back, fellow panellist Greg Sheridan, long time friend of the former prime minister said: "My guess would be that Tony Abbott will be very disciplined during the campaign and will work hard to get Malcolm Turnbull re-elected."