The former prime minister Tony Abbott says Australia should deliver more military assistance to the United States for operations in the Middle East, declaring Australia should be disposed to do more to fight “this evil caliphate”.



Abbott delivered his public advice ahead of Malcolm Turnbull’s first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump in New York next week, using a radio interview on Wednesday to welcome the imminent talks, noting “the more meetings between the Australian prime minister and the US president, generally speaking, the better”.

“We are heavily involved already in the fight against this evil caliphate and if the Americans want additional Australian assistance I think we should certainly be prepared to consider it, we should be disposed to do it,” the former prime minister told 2GB.

Abbott’s intervention follows Turnbull signalling – during a lightning visit to Iraq and Afghanistan for Anzac Day commemorations – that Australia may build on its current role training military personnel if the US requests it.

The former prime minister also used the opportunity of the radio interview to observe that his former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, would make an “ideal candidate” in the event she wanted to enter federal parliament – just not in Kelly O’Dwyer’s Victorian seat of Higgins.

The controversy around O’Dwyer, the revenue minister, who is currently on maternity leave, has rolled on for several days and was kicked off by news that a group of millionaire Victorian party members wanted to draft Credlin to challenge O’Dwyer in Higgins.

The plan to challenge O’Dwyer’s preselection was retribution for the minister’s role in overhauling superannuation policy and implementing changes affecting the wealthy.

Credlin has said she doesn’t intend to challenge O’Dwyer but she has given comfort to criticism about the government’s superannuation changes.

On Wednesday, Abbott said the factional brawl in Victoria around the putative preselection challenge was “tacky” but he shared a glowing character reference for Credlin.

“Anyone who’s watched Peta Credlin on Sky, anyone who’s read Peta Credlin’s columns in the Sunday Telegraph and elsewhere would know that she’s an outstanding individual, absolutely outstanding individual,” Abbott said.

“Now I don’t know if she wants to get to the parliament. I suspect probably she doesn’t. I suspect she’s probably enjoying herself too much where she is, where she’s got a very distinctive and strong voice.

“But I can certainly understand why a lot of people would say she would make an ideal candidate.”

“But just not in Higgins.”

The former prime minister was also asked whether he welcomed news that Family First had merged with Cory Bernardi’s new Australian Conservatives party.

Abbott criticised the development. “The last thing we really need is more fringe parties on the right.”

He said what was required was “a strong and united Liberal party” and he claimed “that’s what I want to do my best to achieve”.

Abbott said he had championed democratic reform of the Liberal party in NSW “because I want the Liberal party to be worth voting for”.



Asked whether that observation meant he thought the party was not worth voting for now, Abbott said: “Of course it’s worth voting for.”

“I want it to be more worth voting for.”

Pressed about whether it was helpful to be intervening regularly in public debate, Abbott said the public expected him to “earn the salary I’m paid”.

He said his objective was to ensure the government was re-elected and to ensure the Liberal party was a democratic organisation. “Every day of my public life, I am on about these two things.”

Abbott said he was in a position to make contributions because he was a member of a political party that did not “practice Stalinism” and he was a “free citizen of a free country”.