Communications minister resigns from cabinet to launch bid, while Julie Bishop also tells PM he should stand aside

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Malcolm Turnbull has promised to respect the Australian people’s intelligence with a new style of leadership as he declared he would challenge Tony Abbott for the Liberal leadership in a ballot the prime minister has called for Monday evening.

Turnbull visited the prime minister shortly after question time on Monday and asked him to call a Coalition party room meeting for a leadership ballot to be held. Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop had already told Abbott – in a pre-question time meeting – that she believed he should stand aside. At that point Abbott is understood to have been strongly resisting the idea of a challenge.

Turnbull resigned from cabinet and sought support from colleagues by pitching himself as the right person to lead Australia at a time of major economic changes.

Turnbull accused the prime minister of being unable to provide the necessary economic leadership, and urged colleagues to support a new “style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence” instead of sloganeering.

Abbott said he would fight the leadership challenge because Australia needed “strong and stable government” and the prime ministership was “not a prize or a plaything to be demanded”.

He said a Liberal party room meeting on Monday evening would decide on the leadership and deputy leadership.

“I will be a candidate and I expect to win,” Abbott said.

“I firmly believe that our party is better than this, that our government is better than this and, by God, that our country is so much better than this.”

More ministers and MPs are poised to support Turnbull’s leadership bid over the evening to increase pressure on Abbott. Turnbull’s supporters insist he would never have launched a challenge if he had not been confident of the numbers.

Some suggested social services minister Scott Morrison would be treasurer in a Turnbull government. Turnbull indicated in his declaration speech that he would need time to make good his promises and would not go to an early election. He defended the decision to launch the challenge in the week before the by-election in the West Australian seat of Canning by saying there was often no ideal time for such “tough calls”.

Turnbull has told colleagues he would retain the current climate policy - his support for an emissions trading scheme cost him the Liberal leadership in 2009 - and has said he would continue with a “plebiscite” on same sex marriage, although has indicated he would like to hold it sooner.

“A little while ago I met with the prime minister and advised him that I would be challenging him for the leadership of the Liberal party,” Turnbull told reporters at Parliament House on Tuesday.

“This is not a decision that anyone could take lightly.”

Turnbull said he made the decision after consulting with party colleagues and Liberal supporters, and that it was clear the government had not been successful in providing the economic leadership that the nation needed.

“It is not the fault of individual ministers,” he said. “Ultimately, the prime minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs. He has not been capable of providing the economic confidence that business needs.”

Turnbull cited the world’s big economic changes and the need for a leader to steer the nation through “enormous challenges and enormous opportunities”.

“We need a different style of leadership,” Turnbull said.

“We need a style of leadership that explains those challenges and opportunities, explains the challenges and how to seize the opportunities – a style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues and then sets out the course of action we believe we should take and makes a case for it.

“We need advocacy, not slogans. We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people.”

Turnbull said if Abbott remained as prime minister “it is clear enough what will happen”, warning that the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, would become prime minister after the next election, due in 2016.

“You only have to see the catastrophically reckless approach of Mr Shorten to the China-Australia free trade agreement, surely one of the most important foundations of our prosperity, to know he is utterly unfit to be prime minister of this country and so he will be if we do not make a change.”

Turnbull also promised to “restore traditional cabinet government” of the type overseen by the former long-serving Liberal prime minister John Howard. “Few would say that the cabinet government of Mr Abbott bears any similarity to the style of Mr Howard,” he said.

Turnbull said he regretted making the decision before the byelection in the West Australian seat of Canning on Saturday.

“There are few occasions that are entirely ideal for tough calls and tough decisions like this,” he said.

The alternative was to wait and allow the government’s problems to “roll on and on and on” without clear air.

The treasurer, Joe Hockey, is expected to make a statement backing the prime minister shortly after Abbott emerges to speak to the media.

The Queensland Liberal backbencher Wyatt Roy said he would support Turnbull because the government needed to communicate differently.



But the former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett accused Turnbull of being “a very selfish ego-driven individual” and said MPs who were spooked by opinion polls should never have entered politics.

“I’m grieving, I’m crying,” Kennett told the ABC. “I am profoundly disappointed. This is the act of an egotist, a selfish individual who has consistently proved himself not to be a team player but one who pursues self-interest.”

Turnbull is a former leader of the Liberal party who was ousted by Abbott in 2009 following a damaging spill within the Coalition about climate change policy.

Abbott subsequently led to the Coalition to an election victory in 2013, but the government has remained behind the Labor opposition in the polls since 2014 when it handed down an unpopular first budget.

Abbott survived a motion for the leadership positions to be declared open in February 2015. That push was initiated by two West Australian backbench MPs, but was defeated by 61 votes to 39. At the time, Abbott pleaded for more time to turn the government’s fortunes around and declared that “good government starts today.”

In parliamentary question time earlier on Monday, Abbott he sought to highlight the leadership divisions that plagued the former Labor government.

Referring to the downfall of Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, Abbott said voters could not trust Shorten because he had “backstabbed two prime ministers and then lied about it on radio”.