Christine Forster criticises her brother, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott

IN A very personal dig, the sister of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said her brother lacked the ‘strength of conviction’ of Britain’s PM

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has been publicly dressed down by his own sister. Picture: AAP.

THE sister of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has had a very public dig at her brother, questioning his leadership qualities.

Christine Forster said on Friday that Australia had not managed to produce a Liberal leader that had matched the strength of conviction of Britain’s Conservative former PM David Cameron.

Her parents should take some of the responsibility, she quipped.

Ms Forster, who is herself a member of the Liberal party and a councillor on City of Sydney council, made the cutting remarks at a marriage equality forum organised by campaign group Australians4Equality.

Also at the event, a British MP said Coalition politicians should embrace the reform as same-sex marriage was “a very conservative thing to do.”

Ms Forster, who is engaged to her partner Virginia Edwards, said she understood why some people were passionate about maintaining the status quo on marriage but, despite that, the definition of the union should change.

“I was married to a man for 20 years so I understand the strength of this institution and what a powerful message it sends about how special your relationship is,” she said.

“It’s saying to the world, me and this other person are choosing to be family to each other, it’s the bedrock of our society.”

Christine Forster is a Liberal councillor at the City of Sydney council. Picture: Stephen Cooper.

Ms Forster said her own party’s leadership failings — including that of current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull — was one of the reasons why Australia had yet to give gay marriage the green light.

“Australia hasn’t thrown up a conservative leader with the strength of conviction that [former British prime minister] David Cameron had to lead from the front and push this reform through despite the fact there was strong opposition in his own party.

“No conservative leader [in Australia] has been prepared to take that chance.

“My parents can take some responsibility for it,” she added — a clear reference to her brother.

Challenged on her critique of Mr Abbott, Ms Forster replied: “It’s the reality. He’s always been upfront about his position, he takes a traditional view of marriage and my brother has never been in favour of this reform.”

Mr Abbott’s backing of a plebiscite was “politically expedient” she said as he didn’t want to see gay marriage become law in the immediate future.

Nonetheless, she said she had a positive relationship with her brother.

Ms Forster also remarked it was “bulls**t” to assume rural voters were against gay marriage and some of the most ardent supporters of the measure lived away from the big cities.

Liberal member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson, disagreed with Ms Forster’s candid assessment of the party’s most senior members.

“We have a political leader from the centre right who had been prepared to champion this cause, he was just elected on platform of having a plebiscite,” he said.

Legislation enabling a public vote on marriage equality was nixed late last year and some Coalition MPs have said without a plebiscite the reform should not go ahead.

However, Mr Wilson said the issue was not suddenly going to disappear.

“People are realising that this isn’t going to go away. It’s going to keep coming up, and the question that will start to ruminate in their minds is how long are we going to be distracted by this issue?”

Supporters of marriage equality are pushing for a free vote in Parliament on the issue.

British MP, pictured at the Twitter offices in Sydney, said marriage equality could be a vote winner for conservative parties.

The forum, held at Twitter’s Sydney offices, also heard from Nick Herbert, a British Conservative MP who led the UK’s Freedom to Marry campaign.

He said concerns legalising gay marriage could be a vote loser were overblown.

“If it’s true that same-sex marriage could cost you an election [then] that wasn’t our experience in the UK,” he said.

“David Cameron introduced the same sex marriage bill and then we went on to win an overall majority at the next election.”

“The very obvious conclusion is it cannot be the case same sex marriage is an election loser; in fact I would say the very reverse. It demonstrated that [the Conservative party] was open and in touch with everyday society.”

He said arguments against redefining marriage held no weight as the institution had already been fundamentally changed by allowing divorce.

“Gay people want to sign up to a public commitment that we will be together and look after each other and declare that in public and in that sense supporting same sex marriage is a very conservative thing to do,” Mr Herbert said.

“It was a reform that brought at high amount of happiness to a lot of people and harmed no one else and I think the law has no business prohibiting something if it does no harm.”