"And those who had advocated that had made points about needing to better connect with the values and the beliefs of Liberal and LNP members all around the country," he said. Mr Morrison said he did not support the spill motion but defended the right of Liberal MPs to change the leader of the party. Scott Morrison addressing a Lifeline event in Sydney on Friday. Credit:AAP "We live in a parliamentary democracy, we don’t live in a presidential system. We live in a system where Australians all around the country elect their members of parliament and those members of parliament ... elect their leader." The conservative Liberal MPs who instigated the leadership change felt the party had swung too far to the left under Mr Turnbull. However Mr Turnbull on Thursday night suggested that to succeed as a political movement, the Liberal Party must not pander solely to its conservative base.

"You have to win votes from the centre. The Liberal Party, to succeed, has to be a broad church," he said. "And that means that it has to, you know, represent people with liberal views and people with more conservative views." Mr Turnbull said voters were telling the party it was "not liberal enough", and pointed to three formerly safe Liberal seats - Mayo in South Australia, Indi in Victoria and his old seat of Wentworth in NSW - that were now held by women who were "small-L liberals". "Voters are - through voting for these independents -saying, 'We are concerned that the Liberal Party is not speaking for small-L liberal values, for genuinely liberal values, and therefore we take the matter in our own hands and we put in a liberal independent'," Mr Turnbull said. Meantime Finance Minister Mathias Cormann - whose shift in support was crucial in the coup - on Friday conceded the Coalition had improved its electoral position just before he and his colleagues knifed their leader.

Senator Cormann said he had not seen internal party polling showing the Coalition ahead 52 to 48 in key marginal seats - polling Mr Turnbull revealed in television appearance. Minister for Finance Mathias Cormann Credit:Alex Ellinghausen But the senior minister - who was one of Mr Turnbull's key protectors before throwing his support behind Mr Dutton - admitted things had improved for the government just before the coup gathered steam. "There's no question, in my mind, the government had worked very well as a team and that we had got ourselves back into a more competitive position than we had been," Senator Cormann told Sky News on Friday morning. "But that was before the 10 days of essentially that period [of leadership instability]. We clearly had some policy issues in relation to the National Energy Guarantee to work through. My expectation was that would happen ... but in the end that was not the way things played out."

Senator Cormann blamed Mr Turnbull for calling a "surprise" leadership ballot on Tuesday August 21, essentially sealing his own fate by revealing a high degree of support (35 votes) for Mr Dutton. That decision "crystallised a level of division in the Liberal party room that needed to be resolved", he said. Senator Cormann, alongside Small Business Minister Michaelia Cash and Communications Minister Mitch Fifield, publicly switched his support to Mr Dutton two days later. Senator Cormann said he had never seen the advantageous internal polling to which Mr Turnbull referred on Q&A, despite his position as a senior minister in the government. He also revealed he has not spoken with Mr Turnbull since the former prime minister left Parliament.

"No, we haven't spoken. We've had some WhatsApp exchanges, but we haven't spoken," he said. Loading Mr Turnbull used his first major media appearance since leaving the top job to point the finger directly at ministers who instigated and supported the insurgency against his leadership. He named and shamed Mr Dutton, Senator Cormann, Senator Cash, former prime minister Tony Abbott, Health Minister Greg Hunt and Defence Industry Minister Steve Ciobo, among others. Defence Minister Christopher Pyne - one of Mr Turnbull's most loyal lieutenants during the spill - said he did not watch the Q&A program but spoke to his "mate" Mr Turnbull afterwards.

"I think he did a great job," he told the Nine Network. "We texted each other and he's entitled to have his views about things." Mr Pyne said those MPs who supported the coup needed to take responsibility for their actions. "They made a decision about not supporting Malcolm and they have to be responsible for that," he said. But he also insisted: "It is all over. We have all moved on." Victorian senator Jane Hume told Sky News the Liberal party room had not been briefed on internal polling suggesting the Coalition was travelling well in marginal seats under Mr Turnbull. She had no knowledge of it and did not know of any colleagues who did. Senator Hume did not deny suggestions that if the polling was correct, the party made a mistake in changing leaders.

"Whether it was or whether it wasn’t [a mistake]... there’s no point appealing to the past," she said. "Our job now is to look to the future and make sure we maintain that very strong economy, that we continue with the reform of the Turnbull government whether it be in childcare, media [or] education." Senator Hume was one of 43 Liberal MPs who signed a petition in August urging Mr Turnbull to call a leadership spill. Despite having called for a leadership spill, Senator Hume said the government had been "tracking quite well" under Mr Turnbull. "I don’t think the Newspolls [putting Labor clearly in front] were entirely reflective of what was going on on the ground," she said, adding that the Turnbull administration's record of strong economic growth, job creation and less welfare dependency "were beginning to play out in the polls".