Scott Morrison has called on his riven Liberal colleagues to return to their party’s founding principles, and move past the rancour and division of the Abbott-Turnbull years.

In his first official speech as Australia’s new prime minister, Morrison travelled to Albury, on the New South Wales-Victoria border, the birthplace of the modern Liberal party, as a symbolic gesture.

Morrison’s objective was to summon the spirit of the party’s founder, Robert Menzies, in an effort to convey the importance of unifying his political movement, which has been consumed by factional conflict and public recriminations in the wake of the recent three-way leadership battle.

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He took to the stage with a microphone and notepad, roving as he delivered his address. “I’ve come to talk to you today about what’s in here,” Morrison said, pointing to his heart.

Morrison has previously argued that voters have stopped listening to politicians and increasingly see partisan conflict as completely irrelevant to their interests.

On Thursday, the prime minister trialled a more anecdotal approach to political communication. He talked about the importance of rituals, and of the power of prayer, of the spirit of community.

“I’m a keen fan of rituals,” Morrison said. “I try and create rituals in my family, Jen and I, we have a number of rituals with our kids.

“They’re important. Because they help you connect and remind you about the things that matter most, they connect you to your past and they help you connect your past to your future. Just as Indigenous peoples have been doing for centuries, thousands of years.”

He said travelling to Albury to deliver his first speech in the top job was a ritual retracing the journey of Menzies when he formed the Liberal party in 1944. “This is an important ritual, for us to come here today, where Robert Menzies came, all those years ago.”

In a message to his warring colleagues, Morrison said it was important to summon the history as a healing ritual “to show the things that we believe in today are the things that he believed in then and things we will always believe in as a Liberal party”.

He said when Menzies formed the modern Liberal party, he formed a movement from groups that could only articulate what they were opposed to. “Robert Menzies brought them here to unite them about what they believed in, because you can’t just be about what you’re opposed to.”

In a message for colleagues who argue negative campaigns are the best way to win elections, Morrison said the Liberals needed to project a positive message. “You’ve got to be about what you’re for – as a country, as a political party, as an individual, as a family.

“It's about what you’re for. Not just what you're against.”

Morrison has spent his opening weeks in the prime minister attempting to paper over the Coalition’s obvious internal divisions and project a unifying tone. He said the challenge for the country was to “love all Australians”, whether they were Australians by birth over many generations, or if people “came last week”.

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As well attempting to convey a sense of his personal values to voters still coming to terms with why another incumbent prime minister has been dispatched by their colleagues before facing an election, Thursday’s speech also explicitly referenced Morrison’s Christian beliefs.

He said with the country in the grip of drought, it was important to pray for rain. “I’d encourage others who believe in the power of prayer to pray for that rain and to pray for our farmers.”

Morrison warned more than a year ago the political class needed to look for ways to communicate with voters increasingly disillusioned with “Canberra’s noise”.

Referencing Menzies’ 1942 “forgotten people” speech, Morrison said last June “the twist for today’s forgotten people ... is they have also chosen to forget us, the political class, making them much harder to reach”.

“They are giving up on politics holding any value for them because, too often, it is simply not relevant for them,” Morrison said. “After 10 years of political brawling, Australians are fed up with the politics-as-usual approach.

“This means that, outside the bubble of Canberra, it is increasingly not about the conflict of partisanship. These are old political fights and battle lines that hold little if no interest to every day Australians.”