WELL you have got to give Tony Abbott credit for persistence.
The former prime minister says he has no plans to retire from politics any time soon and has even suggested he will run at the next election.
Asked whether he will follow in the footsteps of former leaders such as Julia Gillard who have moved into charitable roles, the Liberal Member for Warringah said he still has “quite some time left in parliament”.
“Who knows, I’ve still got some years in the Parliament, I’ve signed up for this term of the Parliament and may well sign up to go around again,” he said on radio 2CC Canberra.
“So I’ve still got quite some time left in the Parliament”.
Yesterday, Mr Abbott used his long-held views about Senate reform to criticise Malcolm Turnbull.
He doesn’t approve of the horsetrading the government resorted to in order to get key crossbench senator Nick Xenophon on board with its business tax cuts last week.
It is the latest in a series of criticisms of Mr Turnbull, which has been seen by some as a deliberate campaign to destabilise his successor.
During this morning’s interview Mr Abbott also warned that former Trade Minister Andrew Robb’s sweeping review of the 2016 Liberal party election campaign should be “frank” and not “mealy-mouthed”.
“Let’s hope it’s a candid report rather than kind of a mealy-mouthed report,” he said.
“I think it’s very important that this be a full and frank assessment of what went right and what didn’t go so right in the campaign.”
He said it was important election campaigns had a “very clear” and “pithy” message.
Online Source: The News
