‘When you’re an ex, the only way you can come back is if you’re drafted,’ former prime minister says

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Tony Abbott has held out the prospect of returning to the Liberal party leadership in the event Malcolm Turnbull resigned and he was “drafted”, but the former prime minister has rated that eventuality as “almost” impossible.



Abbott’s comments came during an interview on 2GB on Monday, when the host Ray Hadley declared Turnbull should “fall on his sword” as prime minister rather than be challenged, given the government’s continuing poor performance in opinion polls.

While Abbott tried to dead-bat poll questions, Hadley persisted, wondering when the backbench “natives” would start to become restless, given Turnbull had removed Abbott from the top job after 30 consecutive losses in the Newspoll, and the government had just recorded its 21st loss.

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Abbott said the government’s task was to get this week’s energy policy right, and that meant no subsidies for “unreliable power”, the building of new coal fired power stations, and removing the current bans on gas exploration and nuclear energy.

“The focus shouldn’t be on the polls, it should be on the best possible government,” Abbott said.

Hadley asked whether or not there were circumstances in which Abbott could return to the party leadership; for instance, if Turnbull resigned as Liberal party leader, thereby preventing a messy challenge to his leadership.

Abbott said it was “almost” impossible to imagine a return. “When you’re an ex, the only way you can come back is if you’re drafted,” the former prime minister told his host.

“I think that’s a pretty rare and unusual business in politics. You’re talking about hypotheticals. The only way an ex could ever come back would be by way of a draft and that’s almost impossible to imagine.”

With the government moving towards finalising its new energy policy, Abbott used the interview to warn Turnbull and the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, not to “rush” the policy through the party room, which will meet tomorrow.

Cabinet is expected to sign off on the new investment framework when it meets on Monday night, and then it will go to the party room for consideration.

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Abbott – who has led the public charge for months against the clean energy target recommended by the chief scientist, Alan Finkel – said he hoped MPs would be given sufficient time to “digest” the detail.

He said the policy should not be “rushed through” and it was important to get the detail right.

With Abbott persisting with his high-profile oppositionism, including a speech in London last week questioning climate science, two government ministers – Simon Birmingham and Alan Tudge – suggested his public interventions weren’t helpful to the government.

“Any perception that the government is not focused on the things the public care about is an unhelpful perception,” Birmingham told Sky News on Monday morning.

Tudge on Sunday night said: “Sometimes when Tony Abbott speaks out he gives a sense of disunity within the government.”

“Often times it may just be him and his particular views but nevertheless the media will portray it as being a much more significant split within the party than perhaps what it represents at the particular time,” Tudge said.

“We have got a very big agenda in front of us; as a minister, as part of the Turnbull government we are focused on that agenda.”

The clean energy target has been opposed from the outset by Abbott and a small group of conservatives within the Coalition party room, including the Nationals MP George Christensen, who has said several times he won’t vote for it.

The government’s new energy policy is expected to include comprehensively overhauling the national electricity market rules to ensure more dispatachable energy is made available to the market to make the system more reliable.

While the government has walked away from the clean energy target modelled by the chief scientist, the policy is understood to include measures to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Ahead of the cabinet and party room deliberations, the shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, characterised the looming debate as “a profound test for Malcolm Turnbull’s remaining shred of credibility to see whether he continues to support his own chief scientist, and that broad coalition of support that exists for a clean energy target, or whether he again capitulates to Tony Abbott and Tony Abbott’s radical ideology on climate change and energy”.

Butler said Labor held out “some hope that Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg will see some sense, will support the broad coalition of support that exists for the clean energy target and come up with something sensible tomorrow.”

Asked whether Labor would return to its original policy of supporting emissions trading in the electricity sector in the event the government produced a policy Labor couldn’t support, Butler said: “We’ll have to consider our position, we’ll talk to business groups, the energy sector and other stakeholders about what the way forward should be.”