Tony Abbott has no regrets over attacks on Malcolm Turnbull
TONY Abbott has vowed to bury the “rancour” that has torn apart the Liberal Party for the last decade. But the former prime minister said he had a duty “to offer some constructive observations about how the government could improve”.
NSW
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FORMER Prime Minister Tony Abbott has vowed to bury the “rancour” that has torn apart the Liberal Party for the last decade.
And Mr Abbott has said he intends to remain in Parliament because he has “a lot of public life left in me”.
Mr Abbott was speaking at The Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney today where his pre-planned speech on immigration was “ripped up” following the rolling of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week.
Mr Abbott said he intends to stay in Parliament. “I continue to have a lot to contribute to public life and I have a lot of public life left in me,” he said.
“I certainly think there is a lot that can and should be done here,” said Mr Abbott. But he said he was still considering the job.
“I would like to know more in terms of precisely what he has in mind,” he said. “I just want to make sure that if I am to do that that I won’t be treading on the toes of people who are already there.”
And he did not shy away from his role in criticising Malcolm Turnbull from the backbenches after he was ousted from the top job.
“As a backbencher I have a duty, where I can, to offer some constructive observations about how the government could improve,” he said.
He said his criticism of the National Energy Guarantee and the pushing of emissions targets ahead of energy prices was vindicated last week when Mr Turnbull backflipped and ditched the policy.
The dramatic bloodletting that saw Mr Morrison take over as Prime Minister had left the political landscape “far less toxic that it has been in the recent past,” he said.
It meant that he had “hope and confidence that politics today is in better shape than it was a few days ago.
“I have certainly put any rancour I may have had in that box that Kevin Rudd used to call the forgettery.
“Let us never in the future say one thing to someone’s face and something else behind their backs,” he said.
Instead he hoped the new government would have a sharper focus on policy and less emphasis on trying to achieve a consensus.
He hoped it meant an end to political correctness. “It grieves me that we now get directives even in the military that you cannot refer to people as he or she,” he said. “I mean, how do you give an order to ‘it’.”