‘I should have put out more details and took on woke bureaucrats’: Abbott’s regrets

In one of his most candid reflections since he lost the prime ministership in 2015, Tony Abbott has warned centre-right leaders around the world not to make the same mistakes he did.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

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Former prime minister Tony Abbott has said “unaccountable” bureaucrats stymied his government from the moment it was elected, and that he wishes he had put out more detailed plans on how he was going to change the country.

In one of his most candid reflections since he lost the prime ministership in 2015, Mr Abbott has warned centre-right leaders around the world not to make the same mistakes he did.

In an opinion piece in the Canadian newspaper, National Post, about the rise of Conservative leader and election front runner Pierre Poilievre, Mr Abbott warns leaders that they must tackle progressive bureaucracies such as US president-elect Donald Trump is doing if they are to survive.

“Across the Anglosphere, recent conservative governments have tended to be in office but not really in power – either because they lacked an agenda of their own, or because what agenda they had was thwarted by a leftist establishment,” he writes.

“Judging by the blizzard of announcements and appointments since his election, Trump is much better prepared this time than last.

“He seems to have used his time-out to ponder how he might do better, and since his election he has been acting quickly.”

Tony Abbott flanked by his family, from left, daughter Frances, wife Margie, daughters Louise and Bridget, at his election victory party in September 7, 2013, in Sydney. Picture: Getty Images

Mr Abbott was elected in a landslide with 90 seats in 2013 after a chaotic Labor government dominated by the leadership battles between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

But he was voted out by his own colleagues only a year and a half later after losing 30 Newspolls in a row, and a long-running internal campaign against him by Liberal rival Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull himself went on to lose more than 30 Newspolls and, at the 2016 election, nearly lost the majority Mr Abbott had won. He was removed by Liberal MPs and replaced with Scott Morrison in 2018.

After his 2014 budget was blocked in large parts by the Senate and received poorly by voters for trying to make major cuts to government services, Mr Abbott says in the National Post that he should have made his frontbenchers put out full policy blueprints before the 2013 win.

Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull in 2015. Picture: AAP

“If the clock could be turned back, I would have insisted that all my frontbenchers provide a detailed blueprint of what needed to change in order to make a difference in their portfolio area, and explain how their proposed changes reflected our ‘smaller government, bigger citizen’ political instincts,” he writes.

“I would have insisted that at least a version of their thinking be made public well before an election. That way, the bureaucracy – or at least that section of it still motivated by traditional Westminster ideals of impartial public service – would have had more guidance in policy formation.”

Mr Abbott also says his ministers were overwhelmed by unelected bureaucrats in Canberra who pushed progressive programs.

He singles out the controversial “Safe Schools” initiative, which was criticised for pushing radical views on gender in school classrooms.

“An example of this was the introduction, by ministers who had been captured by bureaucrats, of the social engineering, gender fluidity-encouraging Safe Schools program, which was masquerading as an anti-bullying initiative, even though it had been devised under my predecessors,” he said.

“This is where incoming ministers need to have thought through all the key issues they are likely to deal with and be sufficiently robust to interrogate and stand up to officials urging caution or assuring them … ‘experts’ know best.”