The Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, a former one-time ally of Tony Abbott’s, has joined the defence minister Marise Payne in publicly rebuking Abbott for his latest undermining of Coalition policy.

She joins the growing pushback from Liberal moderates, including the social services minister, Christian Porter, who this week rubbished claims the Coalition government had lurched to the left under Malcolm Turnbull.

The Liberal party’s factional brawling has continued to spill into the open on Friday, sparked by a leaked recording of Christopher Pyne – revealed on the weekend – caught bragging to colleagues about the influence of the moderate faction in the government.

Conservatives have reacted furiously to Pyne’s claims, with calls for him to be dumped as leader of the government in the House.

Abbott told 2GB this week Pyne’s remarks were “a very, very ill-advised speech and I can understand why some of my colleagues might be saying his position as leader of the House is now difficult to maintain”.

But moderates are now increasingly rounding on Abbott, with Fierravanti-Wells and Payne publicly criticising him for attempting to rewrite history from his time as prime minister.

It comes after Abbott delivered two controversial speeches this week in which he criticised government policy.

Three days ago, he delivered a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs in which he dusted off his conservative manifesto for government, and said the only way to take pressure off power prices was to have a moratorium on new windfarms, stop any further subsidised renewable power and freeze the renewable energy target at 15%.

On Thursday, he delivered a second high-profile speech in which he called on his government to explore the option of nuclear submarines.

“Not more robustly challenging the nuclear no-go mindset is probably the biggest regret I have from my time as PM,” Abbott said in his speech on Thursday.

Fierravanti-Wells slammed Abbott on Friday, telling the ABC that he was trying to rewrite history.



“As a prime minister, Tony had the opportunity to do a whole range of things ... if now he says that he was wrong when he was prime minister, well that’s a matter for him,” she said.

“In relation to climate issues, the renewable energy target came in under Tony, [the Paris agreement] was signed under Tony.

“The 26% [renewable energy target] was an iron-clad commitment. Yes, up to 28% there was some flexibility in relation to that, but to actually now say it was an aspiration, when clearly his words, the documentation and everything, clearly demonstrate that it was an iron-clad commitment, you can’t rewrite history.

“I would urge Tony not to try to rewrite history, because all it’s doing is damaging his credibility,” Fierravanti-Wells said on Friday.

Payne told the ABC the Turnbull government was doing “exactly what the Abbott government intended” with submarines.



“What we are in fact doing, which accords very much with the former prime minister’s position, is delivering the plan to acquire our future submarines as was set out, and agreed, by then-prime minister Tony Abbott and his team in February 2015,” she said.

“They established a competitive evaluation process which was designed to assure that as a nation we acquired the most capable conventional submarines in the world,” she said.

“We don’t have a civil nuclear industry, we don’t have the personnel, or the experience or the infrastructure, we don’t have the training facilities, or the regulatory systems, that you would need to design, to construct, to operate and maintain a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

“So the decisions were made in that context. The process was started by the former prime minister and his defence ministers, and it was completed under prime minister Turnbull and myself and announced in April 2016.”