Former prime minister Tony Abbott says the Liberal Party needs to gain hundreds of thousands of new members and position itself as the “patriot party”, in his first public comments as the Liberal Party’s new federal president.
He said the party’s job was to lead a “people’s revolt” and persuade a sceptical public that the Liberals remained the most credible alternative party amid a “spiritual malaise” in society.
Abbott was appointed unopposed to the role on Friday afternoon at the start of the party’s two-day federal council meeting in Melbourne.
He said he regarded it as his duty to serve the party in a time of “existential crisis”.
“The Conservative Party in Canada has some 400,000 members on a per-capita basis, we would have at least 250,000 members in this country, and that’s what we need to do to mobilise the good people of Australia in a good cause,” Abbott told the party faithful.
“As Liberals we cherish freedom, we respect tradition, but above all else, we love our country.
“That’s what we are, the freedom party … but above all else, we are the patriot party, which is why, at our best, we should be absolutely unbeatable.”
Abbott said that as the last opposition leader to successfully return the Coalition to power, he had the ability to help Angus Taylor repeat the feat.
“We are drifting backwards. Our economy is stagnating, our society is fragmenting, our security is in peril, and underneath it all there is a kind of spiritual malaise,” Abbott said.
In a sign of the party’s toughening rhetoric around national identity, he accused the Labor government of showing ambivalence to the country, which he said was exemplified by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “refusal to stand in front of just one national flag”.
He said Albanese would not acknowledge that the country belonged to all Australians equally, not just some groups.
After Abbott was elected to enthusiastic applause from the room, former foreign minister Alexander Downer was formally elected as one of the party’s federal deputy presidents.
Downer said the party had to be willing to fight the “battle of ideas” with the progressive left by becoming “media tarts”.
“We have to keep selling these messages day in and day out,” he said.
Downer, who pulled out of the race to take over from John Olsen as the Liberal president earlier in the month, reiterated Abbott’s call to build up the party’s membership base.
He said the party needed more activists on the ground selling its arguments and arguing with its opponents.
“We ultimately have to make sure we have a team of first-class candidates ready, and ready in plenty of time for the next election,” he said.
Olsen, a former South Australian premier, acknowledged the party was meeting after its worst electoral result in generations.
Daniella White is a state political reporter for The Age. Contact her at da.white@nine.com.auConnect via X or email.