May 26, 2025 • 16 mins
Tony Abbott was on a layover in Dubai when he phoned Natasha Griggs – the president of the Country Liberal Party – and set off a chain reaction inside the Coalition.
Hours later, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price defected to the Liberals and a surprise leadership ticket was taking shape.
For moderates, it was another sign that the former prime minister and his confidante, Peta Credlin, are still pulling the party’s levers from the outside.
Today, national correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis, on Tony Abbott, the shadow network steering the Liberals and why insiders say it’s a cancer that’s killing the party.
If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support.
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Guest: National correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Jason Koutsoukis.
Photo: Supplied
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was May eight, just days after the coalition's devastating
election loss, when Tony Abbott made a phone call.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
So Tony Abbott, of course, one of our former prime ministers,
former leader of the Liberal Party, was on his way
to Hungary, where he was planning to address the Danube Institute.
This is a right wing think tank. But during a
stopover on the way to Hungary in Dubai, Tony Abbott
(00:28):
decided that he needed to call Natasha Griggs. She's the
president of the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory,
and Tony Abbott wanted to talk to her about Jacinta
Nabajimpa Price moving over to the Liberal Party.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Abbot was pressing his case that just Center Price was
someone that the Liberal Party needed in their ranks.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Natasha Griggs told me that Tony Abbott said to her
that in his view, just Enterprise was a very talented politician,
someone who represents the future of the Liberal and that
it was time that she came into the Liberal Party fold.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Hours later, Senator Price switched party rooms.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It was a very controversial move because I think all
the Nationals felt that it was really a betrayal, and
I think Tony Abbott probably anticipated this kind of reaction
and so he wanted to smooth things over with the
COLP administrative wing before just Enterprice's defection was announced.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
For moderates, it was another sign that the former Prime
minister was still pulling the party's leavers from the outside,
something he's been doing for years from Schwartzmania. I'm Daniel
James is seven am today, National correspondent for the Saturday Paper.
Jason kotsukis on Tony Abbott. He shadow networks steering the
(01:54):
Liberals and why inside to say there are cancer killing
the party this Tuesday May twenty seven. So, Jason, it
turns out Tony Abbott was pushing behind the scenes for
(02:14):
just Center Prize to switch parties. Can you tell me
why he involved himself in that decision?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Well, Tony Abbott sees to Center Price as very much
the future of the Liberal Party. She's on the far
right of the party, and I think Tony Abbott wants
to strengthen the conservative wing of the Liberal Party. He
doesn't want to see his party moving back to the center,
as Susan Lee said that she wanted to do after
(02:41):
she won the leadership ballot. And I think for many
inside the party. It was kind of felt like deja vous.
They've been here before. And Tony Abbott, of course, when
he was Prime Minister, didn't last very long, and mainly
that was thanks to him trying to implement a very
far right agenda that caught voters by surprise. It caught
(03:02):
his party room by surprise.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
A little while ago I met with the Prime Minister
and advised him that I would be challenging him for
the leadership of the Liberal.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Party only two years into the role. He was, of
course challenged by Malcolm Turnbull.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
We have lost thirty news polls in a row. It
is clear that the people have made up their mind
about mister Abbot's leadership.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And he lost the leadership. He lost the Prime ministership.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Pole driven panic has produced a revolving door prime ministership
which can't be good for our country, and a fedrole
media culture has developed that rewards treachery.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
For a lot of Liberals. It felt like though, going
back to this kind of territory that they'd sort of
fought over before and felt that this had sort of
been dealt with. But here he is. He's back trying
to push the same agenda that got him into all
sorts of trouble ten years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So what do we know about the reaction in side
the parties more broadly as it unfolded, Well.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The Nationals were furious when the news was made public.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
National Senate leader Bridget Mackenzie joining us from Bendigo.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Good to talk to you again, Bridget.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
You must be disappointed by the news that senator just
sent it now. But jimper Price is leaving your party
to sit with the Liberals.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
Absolutely. I think it's a devastating loss to our party room, particularly.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
They remain angry about it.
Speaker 6 (04:26):
Loyalty matters in the game of politics, and so it
is incredibly disappointing our shared David.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
For a start, they lost a senator, so their party's
status in the Senate is no longer official. They're under
that threshold of five senators down to four. They also
lost a Senator from New South Wales at the actual election,
Paren Davies. She just didn't win enough votes. The Liberals
were a little bit alarmed when it emerged that Price
(04:55):
was not only joining the Liberal Party party room, but
she'd be running as a deputy on a joint ticket
with Angus Taylor for the leadership of the Liberal Party,
and then there were rumors also circulating that Tony Abbott
had engineered all of this from behind the scenes. The
news that he was kind of pulling the strings did
alarm a lot of Liberal Party members, especially the moderate wing,
(05:19):
that have been trying to push back against Tony Abbott
for quite a long time.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So you've been speaking to a number of people inside
the Liberal Party. What have they been saying about this episode?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
I think a lot of moderates feel that Tony Abbott
and his closest confident, who is, of course, his former
chief of staff, Peter Kredlin, who's now a prominent commentator
across the Murdock tabloids as well as the Australian and
Sky News. A lot of moderates feel that both Tony
Abbot and Peter Credlin have been really trying to shape
(05:52):
the Federal Party's direction from the sidelines.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
It was a very hard watch for Liberals around the
country on Saturday night.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Where to now for the party?
Speaker 5 (06:01):
Well, under those circumstances, should the party become labor light.
It's not a question of being more progressive or more conservative.
It's a question of being more strongly Liberal.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
But what struck me in doing this story was how
much ill feeling there is within the Liberal Party towards
Tony Abbott and Peter Kredlin. It wasn't hard to get
people to say what they really think, and one person
said to me that Tony Abbott and his Sky News
after Dark cronies and those few people left in the
(06:36):
Parliamentary Party who still listened to him are so tone
deaf that they are trying to pretend the weaknesses that
made the coalition unelectable actually strengths. Another person said to
me that they had a big role in shaping Peter
Dutton's policy agenda. They said to me it was Abbott
and Kredlin who were forever in Dutton's ear programming Dutton's
(06:59):
stupid policy positions. These people are like cancer, another person
told me, arguing for more carcinogenic policies, they will kill
the Liberal Party for good. And if you're trying to
understand why the Liberal Party today is a smoking ruin,
then look no further than Tony Abbott and Peter Kredlin.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
After the break, What other disastrous decisions have Abbot and
Kredlin had their hand in. Jason, you've been looking into
the enduring influence of Tony Abbot in the Liberal Party.
What else has he been involving himself in.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well, when you put it all together, Tony Abbott is
involving himself in quite a few different causes. I think.
Another thing that Tony Abbott and Peter Kreblin were heavily
involved in last year was this decision by the federal
Liberal Party executive to take over the New South Wales
division of the Liberal Party. And I think there's few
(08:00):
grievances in the New South Wales Division that run deeper
than this one, because they feel that at Tony Abbott's
instigation that Peter Dutton appointed two very prominent right wing Victorians,
Alan Stockdale, the former Victorian Treasurer and Richard Olsten, former
minister in the Howard government. And the pretexts for this
(08:23):
intervention was a bungled nominations process for the New South
Wales local government elections last year. For whatever reason, the
New South Wales Division was not able to organize the
nominations for a lot of candidates, so the Liberal Party
didn't actually run candidates and a lot of key local
government contests and understandably there was a lot of anger
(08:48):
over this bungled nominations process, and it did prompt the
federal intervention. But I think a lot of moderates believe
that the real agenda here was the Conservatives wanting to
take over the New South Wales division and punish a
lot of those moderates who were in influential positions. Another
(09:08):
thing that both Abbott and Kredlin have been heavily involved
in is this very nasty dispute that's taken place in
Victoria between the former leader of the Victorian Liberals, John Persudo,
and Moira Deeming, who's a member of the Victorian Upper House.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
Toty, welcome to the program. I've got a whole laundry
list of stuff I want to get your view on,
but I've got to get your view on Moira Deeming.
I just spoke to her live in the studio.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
More Deeming had attended an anti trans rally in Victoria
back in twenty twenty three, and John Perzudo was very
critical of her for attending that rally, especially because some
neo Nazis had sort of turned up in support of
what this rally was all about, and he had linked
(09:54):
Moira Deeming with this neo Nazi group and Moira Demi
ended up being expelled from the Liberal Party party room.
Peter as the father of three daughters.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
I'm utterly dismayed that a mainstream political party would sack
a member of parliament for defending women's rights. And to
the extent that the Liberal Party has a women's problem,
it must have got much much worse by the expulsion
of this brave and smart woman from its own ranks.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And in response, I think at the urging of Tony
Abbott and Peter Credlin, moy Redeeming sued John Persudo. She
won that lawsuit. She won three hundred thousand dollars in
damages and she's also won legal costs, and I think
John Persuda now has to pay two point three million
in legal costs, and so he's facing bankruptcy and that
(10:51):
will mean that will have to resign his seat in
Parliament if he can't raise the money. And a lot
of moderates feel very angry towards Tony Abbott and Peter
Kredlin for goading lawyer Deemi into taking on this lawsuit,
and so there's a lot of anger about that, I think.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
So it seems like there's been a string of poor
decisions with Tony Abbott's fingerprints on them. Tony Abbott famously
lost his prominenceship a decade ago and then lost his
seat in Parliament. So why does he still have so
much influence within the party.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
This is a great question, Daniel, because how could you
take someone seriously who after winning a massive majority as
Tony Abbott did in the twenty thirteen election. He had
I think ninety seats, he had a relatively tame crossbench,
yet managed to throw away the prime ministership within I
(11:45):
think it was two years and two days that he served,
and I find it difficult to understand why anyone would
take Tony Abbitt seriously as a person of any kind
of political wisdom. And it wasn't just Tony Abbot managed
to do it by himself. He had Peter Kredlin as
his chief of staff and it is really a puzzle
(12:06):
that these two still have any real influence in the
Liberal Party. I think the reason why they've tried to
hold on to a power base is one liberal put
to me, It's all about revenge. It's all about Tony
Abbott trying to rewrite history as to why he was
dumped by his own party. It's worth remembering that it
(12:29):
wasn't some sort of moderate uprising that saw Tony Abbott
lose the leadership. It was Tony Abbott's policy decisions, you know,
things like wanting to give Prince Philip a knighthood, that
disastrous first budget that he brought down in twenty fourteen,
which broke so many of the promises that Tony Abbott
(12:49):
himself had made it the during the election campaign. You know,
in the end, it was conservatives within the Liberal Party
that decided they couldn't keep Tony Abbott on as leader
or Prime Minister any longer, and it was them that
got rid of him. But I think Tony Abbott believes
that the moderates were to blame, and I think his
goal is to try to cast them out of the party.
(13:12):
He wants to recast the Liberal Party in his own
image and justify his past leadership, and I think prove
that the path that voters have already rejected is the
path that the Liberals should still follow.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Susan Lee is the new leader and she is a moderate.
How do you expect the fact that she's in charge
now to change the level of influence Tony Abbott has well.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I think Susan LEAs indicated pretty clearly that she agrees
that the Liberal Party has to move back towards the center.
She said that the Liberal Party has to meet voters
where they are. But I think she's going to have
real trouble trying to limit Tony Abbot's influence because he
does have such a strong grip on a lot of
(13:57):
sections of the party. But he's kind of doing that
with the help of the Rupert Murdoch empire in Australia.
Tony Abbott is on the board of Fox International. He's
very close to Lachlan Murdoch, who is the CEO and
chairman of Fox Liberals that I spoke to last week
said that Lachland takes far more active interest in Australian
(14:19):
politics than his father ever did. And so I think
anyone that threatens to deviate from the sort of Tony
Abbott worldview risks getting slammed on the opinion pages of
the newspages of The Australian or Unsky News. So Tony
Abbitt's got a lot of kind of levers that he
can pull when it comes to exerting his influence within
(14:43):
the Liberal Party, and I think Susan Lee has got
a real fight on her hands trying to push back
against that. I guess the big advantage she has is
she can just point to the scoreboard at the last
election and show that if the Liberal Party is going
to have any hope of pegging back that huge majority
that Labor has at the moment, then they really do
(15:06):
have no choice but to move back to the center.
But I think Susan Lee is going to have to
gear herself up for what will be a long and
bruising battle.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Jason, always a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for
your time.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Daniel, thanks sir for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Also in the news today, Prome Minister Anthony Alberinezi says
Israel's blockade of aid in the Gaza is an outrage,
calling the Israeli government's justification for stopping critical food and
medical supplies quote completely untenable.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
It is outrageous that there be a blockade of food
and supplies to people who are in need in Gaza.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Whence come as calls are growing for Australia to join
the UK, France and Canada and threatening sanctions if Israel's
campaign continues, and weather conditions are expected to complicate recovery
efforts on the mid north coast of New South Wales
as residents recover from the devastating floods that grip through
their region last week. About thirty two thousand residents from
(16:23):
fourteen communities remain isolated even as floodwaters received This has
been seven am. Thanks for listening.
It was May eight, just days after the coalition's devastating
election loss, when Tony Abbott made a phone call.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
So Tony Abbott, of course, one of our former prime ministers,
former leader of the Liberal Party, was on his way
to Hungary, where he was planning to address the Danube Institute.
This is a right wing think tank. But during a
stopover on the way to Hungary in Dubai, Tony Abbott
(00:28):
decided that he needed to call Natasha Griggs. She's the
president of the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory,
and Tony Abbott wanted to talk to her about Jacinta
Nabajimpa Price moving over to the Liberal Party.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Abbot was pressing his case that just Center Price was
someone that the Liberal Party needed in their ranks.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Natasha Griggs told me that Tony Abbott said to her
that in his view, just Enterprise was a very talented politician,
someone who represents the future of the Liberal and that
it was time that she came into the Liberal Party fold.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Hours later, Senator Price switched party rooms.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
It was a very controversial move because I think all
the Nationals felt that it was really a betrayal, and
I think Tony Abbott probably anticipated this kind of reaction
and so he wanted to smooth things over with the
COLP administrative wing before just Enterprice's defection was announced.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
For moderates, it was another sign that the former Prime
minister was still pulling the party's leavers from the outside,
something he's been doing for years from Schwartzmania. I'm Daniel
James is seven am today, National correspondent for the Saturday Paper.
Jason kotsukis on Tony Abbott. He shadow networks steering the
(01:54):
Liberals and why inside to say there are cancer killing
the party this Tuesday May twenty seven. So, Jason, it
turns out Tony Abbott was pushing behind the scenes for
(02:14):
just Center Prize to switch parties. Can you tell me
why he involved himself in that decision?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Well, Tony Abbott sees to Center Price as very much
the future of the Liberal Party. She's on the far
right of the party, and I think Tony Abbott wants
to strengthen the conservative wing of the Liberal Party. He
doesn't want to see his party moving back to the center,
as Susan Lee said that she wanted to do after
(02:41):
she won the leadership ballot. And I think for many
inside the party. It was kind of felt like deja vous.
They've been here before. And Tony Abbott, of course, when
he was Prime Minister, didn't last very long, and mainly
that was thanks to him trying to implement a very
far right agenda that caught voters by surprise. It caught
(03:02):
his party room by surprise.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
A little while ago I met with the Prime Minister
and advised him that I would be challenging him for
the leadership of the Liberal.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Party only two years into the role. He was, of
course challenged by Malcolm Turnbull.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
We have lost thirty news polls in a row. It
is clear that the people have made up their mind
about mister Abbot's leadership.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
And he lost the leadership. He lost the Prime ministership.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
Pole driven panic has produced a revolving door prime ministership
which can't be good for our country, and a fedrole
media culture has developed that rewards treachery.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
For a lot of Liberals. It felt like though, going
back to this kind of territory that they'd sort of
fought over before and felt that this had sort of
been dealt with. But here he is. He's back trying
to push the same agenda that got him into all
sorts of trouble ten years ago.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
So what do we know about the reaction in side
the parties more broadly as it unfolded, Well.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The Nationals were furious when the news was made public.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
National Senate leader Bridget Mackenzie joining us from Bendigo.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Good to talk to you again, Bridget.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
You must be disappointed by the news that senator just
sent it now. But jimper Price is leaving your party
to sit with the Liberals.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (04:20):
Absolutely. I think it's a devastating loss to our party room, particularly.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
They remain angry about it.
Speaker 6 (04:26):
Loyalty matters in the game of politics, and so it
is incredibly disappointing our shared David.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
For a start, they lost a senator, so their party's
status in the Senate is no longer official. They're under
that threshold of five senators down to four. They also
lost a Senator from New South Wales at the actual election,
Paren Davies. She just didn't win enough votes. The Liberals
were a little bit alarmed when it emerged that Price
(04:55):
was not only joining the Liberal Party party room, but
she'd be running as a deputy on a joint ticket
with Angus Taylor for the leadership of the Liberal Party,
and then there were rumors also circulating that Tony Abbott
had engineered all of this from behind the scenes. The
news that he was kind of pulling the strings did
alarm a lot of Liberal Party members, especially the moderate wing,
(05:19):
that have been trying to push back against Tony Abbott
for quite a long time.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
So you've been speaking to a number of people inside
the Liberal Party. What have they been saying about this episode?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
I think a lot of moderates feel that Tony Abbott
and his closest confident, who is, of course, his former
chief of staff, Peter Kredlin, who's now a prominent commentator
across the Murdock tabloids as well as the Australian and
Sky News. A lot of moderates feel that both Tony
Abbot and Peter Credlin have been really trying to shape
(05:52):
the Federal Party's direction from the sidelines.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
It was a very hard watch for Liberals around the
country on Saturday night.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Where to now for the party?
Speaker 5 (06:01):
Well, under those circumstances, should the party become labor light.
It's not a question of being more progressive or more conservative.
It's a question of being more strongly Liberal.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
But what struck me in doing this story was how
much ill feeling there is within the Liberal Party towards
Tony Abbott and Peter Kredlin. It wasn't hard to get
people to say what they really think, and one person
said to me that Tony Abbott and his Sky News
after Dark cronies and those few people left in the
(06:36):
Parliamentary Party who still listened to him are so tone
deaf that they are trying to pretend the weaknesses that
made the coalition unelectable actually strengths. Another person said to
me that they had a big role in shaping Peter
Dutton's policy agenda. They said to me it was Abbott
and Kredlin who were forever in Dutton's ear programming Dutton's
(06:59):
stupid policy positions. These people are like cancer, another person
told me, arguing for more carcinogenic policies, they will kill
the Liberal Party for good. And if you're trying to
understand why the Liberal Party today is a smoking ruin,
then look no further than Tony Abbott and Peter Kredlin.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
After the break, What other disastrous decisions have Abbot and
Kredlin had their hand in. Jason, you've been looking into
the enduring influence of Tony Abbot in the Liberal Party.
What else has he been involving himself in.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Well, when you put it all together, Tony Abbott is
involving himself in quite a few different causes. I think.
Another thing that Tony Abbott and Peter Kreblin were heavily
involved in last year was this decision by the federal
Liberal Party executive to take over the New South Wales
division of the Liberal Party. And I think there's few
(08:00):
grievances in the New South Wales Division that run deeper
than this one, because they feel that at Tony Abbott's
instigation that Peter Dutton appointed two very prominent right wing Victorians,
Alan Stockdale, the former Victorian Treasurer and Richard Olsten, former
minister in the Howard government. And the pretexts for this
(08:23):
intervention was a bungled nominations process for the New South
Wales local government elections last year. For whatever reason, the
New South Wales Division was not able to organize the
nominations for a lot of candidates, so the Liberal Party
didn't actually run candidates and a lot of key local
government contests and understandably there was a lot of anger
(08:48):
over this bungled nominations process, and it did prompt the
federal intervention. But I think a lot of moderates believe
that the real agenda here was the Conservatives wanting to
take over the New South Wales division and punish a
lot of those moderates who were in influential positions. Another
(09:08):
thing that both Abbott and Kredlin have been heavily involved
in is this very nasty dispute that's taken place in
Victoria between the former leader of the Victorian Liberals, John Persudo,
and Moira Deeming, who's a member of the Victorian Upper House.
Speaker 6 (09:25):
Toty, welcome to the program. I've got a whole laundry
list of stuff I want to get your view on,
but I've got to get your view on Moira Deeming.
I just spoke to her live in the studio.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
More Deeming had attended an anti trans rally in Victoria
back in twenty twenty three, and John Perzudo was very
critical of her for attending that rally, especially because some
neo Nazis had sort of turned up in support of
what this rally was all about, and he had linked
(09:54):
Moira Deeming with this neo Nazi group and Moira Demi
ended up being expelled from the Liberal Party party room.
Peter as the father of three daughters.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
I'm utterly dismayed that a mainstream political party would sack
a member of parliament for defending women's rights. And to
the extent that the Liberal Party has a women's problem,
it must have got much much worse by the expulsion
of this brave and smart woman from its own ranks.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And in response, I think at the urging of Tony
Abbott and Peter Credlin, moy Redeeming sued John Persudo. She
won that lawsuit. She won three hundred thousand dollars in
damages and she's also won legal costs, and I think
John Persuda now has to pay two point three million
in legal costs, and so he's facing bankruptcy and that
(10:51):
will mean that will have to resign his seat in
Parliament if he can't raise the money. And a lot
of moderates feel very angry towards Tony Abbott and Peter
Kredlin for goading lawyer Deemi into taking on this lawsuit,
and so there's a lot of anger about that, I think.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
So it seems like there's been a string of poor
decisions with Tony Abbott's fingerprints on them. Tony Abbott famously
lost his prominenceship a decade ago and then lost his
seat in Parliament. So why does he still have so
much influence within the party.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
This is a great question, Daniel, because how could you
take someone seriously who after winning a massive majority as
Tony Abbott did in the twenty thirteen election. He had
I think ninety seats, he had a relatively tame crossbench,
yet managed to throw away the prime ministership within I
(11:45):
think it was two years and two days that he served,
and I find it difficult to understand why anyone would
take Tony Abbitt seriously as a person of any kind
of political wisdom. And it wasn't just Tony Abbot managed
to do it by himself. He had Peter Kredlin as
his chief of staff and it is really a puzzle
(12:06):
that these two still have any real influence in the
Liberal Party. I think the reason why they've tried to
hold on to a power base is one liberal put
to me, It's all about revenge. It's all about Tony
Abbott trying to rewrite history as to why he was
dumped by his own party. It's worth remembering that it
(12:29):
wasn't some sort of moderate uprising that saw Tony Abbott
lose the leadership. It was Tony Abbott's policy decisions, you know,
things like wanting to give Prince Philip a knighthood, that
disastrous first budget that he brought down in twenty fourteen,
which broke so many of the promises that Tony Abbott
(12:49):
himself had made it the during the election campaign. You know,
in the end, it was conservatives within the Liberal Party
that decided they couldn't keep Tony Abbott on as leader
or Prime Minister any longer, and it was them that
got rid of him. But I think Tony Abbott believes
that the moderates were to blame, and I think his
goal is to try to cast them out of the party.
(13:12):
He wants to recast the Liberal Party in his own
image and justify his past leadership, and I think prove
that the path that voters have already rejected is the
path that the Liberals should still follow.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Susan Lee is the new leader and she is a moderate.
How do you expect the fact that she's in charge
now to change the level of influence Tony Abbott has well.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
I think Susan LEAs indicated pretty clearly that she agrees
that the Liberal Party has to move back towards the center.
She said that the Liberal Party has to meet voters
where they are. But I think she's going to have
real trouble trying to limit Tony Abbot's influence because he
does have such a strong grip on a lot of
(13:57):
sections of the party. But he's kind of doing that
with the help of the Rupert Murdoch empire in Australia.
Tony Abbott is on the board of Fox International. He's
very close to Lachlan Murdoch, who is the CEO and
chairman of Fox Liberals that I spoke to last week
said that Lachland takes far more active interest in Australian
(14:19):
politics than his father ever did. And so I think
anyone that threatens to deviate from the sort of Tony
Abbott worldview risks getting slammed on the opinion pages of
the newspages of The Australian or Unsky News. So Tony
Abbitt's got a lot of kind of levers that he
can pull when it comes to exerting his influence within
(14:43):
the Liberal Party, and I think Susan Lee has got
a real fight on her hands trying to push back
against that. I guess the big advantage she has is
she can just point to the scoreboard at the last
election and show that if the Liberal Party is going
to have any hope of pegging back that huge majority
that Labor has at the moment, then they really do
(15:06):
have no choice but to move back to the center.
But I think Susan Lee is going to have to
gear herself up for what will be a long and
bruising battle.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Jason, always a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for
your time.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Daniel, thanks sir for having me.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Also in the news today, Prome Minister Anthony Alberinezi says
Israel's blockade of aid in the Gaza is an outrage,
calling the Israeli government's justification for stopping critical food and
medical supplies quote completely untenable.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
It is outrageous that there be a blockade of food
and supplies to people who are in need in Gaza.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Whence come as calls are growing for Australia to join
the UK, France and Canada and threatening sanctions if Israel's
campaign continues, and weather conditions are expected to complicate recovery
efforts on the mid north coast of New South Wales
as residents recover from the devastating floods that grip through
their region last week. About thirty two thousand residents from
(16:23):
fourteen communities remain isolated even as floodwaters received This has
been seven am. Thanks for listening.
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