Warringah debate Malcolm Turnbull tweets attack on Tony Abbott

Malcolm Turnbull is the surprise entrant in the Warringah debate, attacking Tony Abbott in a series of tweets from London.

Malcolm Turnbull has become a surprise entrant in the Warringah debate, attacking Tony Abbott’s stance on energy in a series of tweets from London.

Mr Turnbull waded in as Mr Abbott faced off with his independent rival Zali Steggall over coal-fired power. After Mr Abbott called for the Snowy Hydro Corporation to look at purchasing a coal-fired power station, claiming coal-fired power remains the cheapest form of baseload power, Mr Turnbull tweeted: “But it isn’t.”

He went on to attack the “ideology and innumerate idiocy” that was stopping progress.

“Today the cheapest form of new dispatchable or base load energy is renewables plus storage. We are now able to have lower emissions and lower prices but we need to plan it using engineering & economics rather than ideology and innumerate idiocy,” he said.

But it isn’t. Today the cheapest form of new dispatchable or base load energy is renewables plus storage. We are now able to have lower emissions and lower prices but we need to plan it using engineering & economics rather than ideology and innumerate idiocy

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) March 7, 2019

In a second tweet, Mr Turnbull said: “The reason the fossil fuel lobby and their apologists rail against Snowy Hydro 2.0, and have tried to stop it, is because it delivers the massive storage which does make renewables reliable and this enable our progress to lower emissions and lower energy prices.”

The reason the fossil fuel lobby and their apologists rail against Snowy Hydro 2.0, and have tried to stop it, is because it delivers the massive storage which does make renewables reliable and this enable our progress to lower emissions and lower energy prices.

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) March 7, 2019

Mr Turnbull’s intervention came hours after he went onto the BBC to claim the Liberal Party ousted him because they were concerned he was going to win the federal election.

Describing his removal as Prime Minister in 2018 as a “peculiarly Australian form of madness,” Mr Turnbull told the BBC’s Andrew Neil the Liberal Party ousted him because polling showed he was on track to beat Bill Shorten at the federal election. “Basically you could argue that their concern was not I would lose the election but rather that I would win it,” he told an astonished Neil.

“Are you telling me your own party didn’t want you to win the next election, that’s not credible is it?” Neil responded.

“Andrew you’ve only got to look at the facts. I mean the facts are, there were, if you have, if you are level pegging in the polls, if you are two points behind in the public polls,” Mr Turnbull said.

“You had 40 consecutive polls in which you were never ahead of Labor — 40,” Neil replied.

“But we had become, we’d drawn, had essentially drawn equal, even, and in our own polling in the marginal seats which is obviously the only ones that matter you know in terms of determining government, we were ahead,” Mr Turnbull said. “It was a peculiarly Australian form of madness, I’m afraid.”

He added that the Liberal Party’s current polling under Scott Morrison is in a “worse position” than when he was in charge,although, he added, it was still possible for the Liberals to win the election.

“The party on any of the objective indications... is in a worse position than it was in August, I mean you can’t deny that that’s a fact,” he said.

“It still could win the election, the Liberal government, but its position is much less favourable than it was in August.”

Mr Turnbull is currently on a speaking tour of Europe. Earlier this week he told an audience at the Henry Jackson Society in London that Australia relied on its own security advice to ban Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE from the 5G network rollout. He also said he talked with Donald Trump many times about how 5G will change communications and the risk it presents to security.

Banning companies who could not meet Australia’s security requirements was a necessary step, he said.