Turnbull: Agitating Abbott knows ‘exactly what he’s doing’

TONY Abbott’s scathing critique of the government has not gone down well with the PM, who delivered his strongest serve against his predecessor yet.

THE PRIME Minister has fired up over Tony Abbott’s scathing critique of the Turnbull Government.

Hitting back at the agitating former PM, Malcolm Turnbull told a gathering of reporters in Sydney Mr Abbott’s “outburst” against the government was “sad”.

Appearing on Sky News last night, Mr Abbott said the Coalition risked a “drift towards defeat” if they didn’t lift their game.

Mr Turnbull dismissed his predecessor’s scathing critique as a “distraction” and “outburst”.

“I don’t think Australians are very impressed by that latest outburst and I’m not going to be distracted by it,” he said.

“We all know what it is about. As Mathias Cormann said, it is sad.”

The Prime Minister laughed in response to every question he was asked about the apparent leadership tension, which accounted for every single question asked in the press conference.

But after initially refusing to comment on the clash, Mr Turnbull launched into his strongest attack yet on the former leader, comparing their prime ministerial records.

Malcolm Turnbull’s tour of a Sydney microphones factory was derailed by questions about Tony Abbott on Friday. Picture: Dean Lewins/AAP

“In the last six months or so, my government has delivered more through the Senate, throughout the whole parliament that we did in the last three years,” he said.

“I don't just give speeches about restoring the rule of law to the construction sector, my government has legislation the restoration of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. I don’t just give speeches about getting rid of politicians’ gold passes ... I abolished them.

“I don’t just talk about parliamentary entitlements. I have set up a completely new structure to oversight them and manage them so that people know politicians’ expenses are being dealt with properly. I don’t just talk about cutting taxes. I have cut them. Done, tick gone through parliament.”

Mr Turnbull warmed up his criticism of the former PM in an earlier radio interview Friday morning, saying Mr Abbott knew “exactly what he’s doing” when he attacked his leadership.

Mr Turnbull hit back in an interview with 3AW’s Neil Mitchell this morning.

“Tony Abbott is a very experienced politician,” he said.

“He knows exactly what he’s doing. I’m not going to go into what private conversations I have with him.”

.@MathiasCormann says he was ‘flabbergasted’ by @TonyAbbottMHR comments saying they are ‘deliberately destructive and completely unhelpful’ pic.twitter.com/jv5tVKI02o

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) February 23, 2017

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann this morning labelled Mr Abbott’s comments “destructive”, and said he was “not helping” the party.

“As you know I’ve been a longstanding loyal and reliable supporter for Tony Abbott for his whole leadership from the beginning and I’m just just saddened by what’s evidently his decision to provide more and more destructive commentary,” he told Sky News.

“He’s not helping our cause, he’s not helping our country, he’s not helping himself, much of what he says is either wrong or inconsistent with what he did.”

Mr Cormann said the party room “doesn’t share Tony’s views”, and was strongly united behind Mr Turnbull.

Fellow cabinet minister Christopher Pyne told Nine’s Today show that while like all backbenchers Mr Abbott’s views were welcome, his ideas were “catastrophic”.

“All the views of backbenchers are very welcome in the government and he is a backbencher and he’s free to state his views,” he said.

“But, look, we won’t be going down the track of putting a freeze of immigration, for example, which Tony Abbott wants to do, because it would be catastrophic in places like the Northern Territory, South Australia, Tasmania. Most places outside the capital cities.

“We won’t be slashing spending. Tony Abbott tried that in 2014 in the budget during his leadership but of course a whole lot of zombie legislation sat in the Senate unable to be passed.”

The comments come amid reports Mr Abbott told defected Senator Cory Bernardi he had not ruled out another shot at the top job.