Tony Abbott has launched an attack on the Liberal party’s hierarchy in a speech that calls on conservative supporters to “take our party back”.
Speaking at a New South Wales Liberal party member forum on Saturday, Abbott said the party hierarchy showed no respect for its members. “For too long the party hierarchy has expected the rank and file to turn up, to pay up and to shut up,” said the former prime minister. “Let’s take our party back and then we can win the next election.” Abbott denied this was another veiled critique of the leadership of the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, whose backers this week accused the former prime minister of undermining and destabilising the party.
On Tuesday, Abbott had publicly spruiked his own conservative election manifesto, and on Thursday he had called on the government to re-explore the idea of nuclear submarines.
However, Turnbull had his say on Saturday too, in a Courier-Mail column that said “this is a time for builders, not wreckers”. “This is a time ... for leaders who get things done and don’t just talk. For negotiators and dealmakers who trade in results, not in platitudes.”
In a news conference after the forum, Abbott said he was still a “servant of the party”. “The great thing about the Liberal party is we have always respected our leaders,” he said. “We have a prime minister [which means] maximum respect.
“But respect is a two-way street and it’s time the party hierarchy showed the respect to the membership that the membership has always given to them.” Factional infighting has dogged the Liberal party this week after audio surfaced of the defence industry minister, Christopher Pyne, boasting about the influence of the party’s moderate wing, which includes Turnbull.
However, Abbott emphasised that his call-to-arms was about structural reform, and told the assembled members it was crucial to the electoral success of the state and federal party. Related: Tony Abbott trumpets conservative manifesto: ‘We need to make Australia work again’ “We say we are the party that believes in free speech ... [but] when someone discusses ideas in the wrong way, we expel them, for god’s sake. This is just about the most illiberal thing a political party can do.”
Speaking in Tasmania, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, described the latest comments as “the fight that never seems to end”. “Tomorrow Manny Pacquiao is taking on Jeff Horn, so for a couple of hours that will be the biggest fight in the nation. But once that’s over, it’ll be back to Abbott v Turnbull.
“This government’s too distracted fighting itself to worry about the needs of everyday Australians,” he said.
