Abbott blasts fellow Liberals for meetings with activist group

No Liberal should be meeting with GetUp!, former prime minister Tony Abbott has declared.

Tony Abbott in Question Time in the House of Representatives Chamber at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture Kym Smith

Tony Abbott has blasted colleagues who co-operated with the left-wing activist group GetUp!, saying no Liberal MP should be meeting the group.

“It is a very bad principle to co-operate with your enemy in order to get rid of your friends,” the former PM told The Australian.

Mr Abbott’s warning to other MPs that the organisation was a “political outfit” that always campaigned for Labor and against the Liberals follows Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s defence of moderate MPs revealed to have met GetUp!.

“We should have absolutely nothing to do with them,” said Mr Abbott. He lashed out at Liberal MPs who had meetings with GetUp!, the “sworn political enemy of the Liberal Party”.

The former prime minister said Liberal MPs should not co-operate with GetUp! to “do in your friends” after reports moderate MPs had held meetings with the lobby.

The Australian reported backbench MPs Tim Wilson and Trent Zimmerman had met GetUp! about the same-sex marriage vote, while Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne lobbied the group to support moderates in 2009.

The Liberal Party’s senior organisational leadership has condemned federal Liberal MPs for meeting the activist group.

GetUp! national director Paul Oosting last night said “attacking Liberal MPs for meeting ordinary Australians is disgraceful”.

“Trying to censor members of parliament from meeting their constituents is further evidence that the hard right led by Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton are undemocratic,” Mr Oosting said.

“GetUp! members from around the country have been organising, attending, and tweeting photos of meetings with MPs — on all sides of politics — for literally years.

“GetUp!’s work is driven by the values and priorities of its one million members, not party politics.”

The Australian also revealed that Sydney frontbencher Craig Laundy had met the activists to discuss asylum-seekers.

Mr Wilson said he met GetUp! only twice, once when the organisation sought his advice on the debate over gay marriage.

Mr Wilson, a leading Liberal advocate for same-sex marriage, met the group again when he conducted a Facebook Live interview on the marriage issue.

Mr Turnbull backed MPs from his own moderate support base who had met GetUp!.

“GetUp! goes and calls on MPs all over the place,” he said in Tamworth on Tuesday.

“So if you’re a member of parliament you meet everybody.

‘‘You meet people who agree with you and people who don’t agree with you.”

The GetUp! revelations have raised suspicions within conservative ranks that colleagues may have helped GetUp! at the last election to draw up a hit list of conservative MPs in marginal seats .

Mr Oosting has revealed the group had agreed to go after only “hard right” Liberal MPs and had quarantined moderates and backers of Mr Turnbull from smear campaigns.

Mr Wilson defended his meeting with GetUp!, saying he had never worked with them. Mr Zimmerman has also rejected any collusion saying: “I had a discussion with GetUp! at their request in July this year. I have had no further discussions with them about the same-sex marriage ­campaign.”

Mr Wilson said in response to The Australian’s questions: “They then booked a time with my office some months later. They then asked about marriage, not energy. If you watch the video (assuming they didn’t edit it out), I took digs at GetUp! in their own video.”