He won't snipe yet Tony Abbott is striving to prove that his ousting was pointless

Extract from The Guardian

His message is clear and a more potent attack for its apparent reasonableness: the electorate has been duped – Malcolm Turnbull won’t change anything

Tony Abbott: in the warm embrace of a 2GB ‘interview’ he starts nailing down his legacy. Photograph: Marianna Massey/Getty Images

Lenore Taylor Political editor

@lenoretaylor

Tuesday 29 September 2015 11.37 AEST

Inside the 2GB micro-climate, the injustice of Tony Abbott’s ousting is a given.

The former prime minister thanks Ray Hadley and his listeners for their “support and encouragement”. Obviously. They are in furious agreement that nothing has changed with the change in the prime ministership. Hadley seems to concur with Abbott that he would have won a presidential-style victory at the next election. By implication – that whole leadership-change thing was pointless.

Abbott does not directly attack or snipe, in fact he refuses to do so. He urges people to continue to support the Coalition.

But his message is clear and a more potent attack for its apparent reasonableness. The Liberal party and the electorate have been duped. Malcolm Turnbull has not, should not and will not change anything. Nor would he have reason to, because Abbott’s two years in government were a triumph. In fact Turnbull only moved when he did because the Canning byelection was about to vindicate Abbott’s election-winning abilities.

Outside the studio, of course, recent events look very different.

The Coalition immediately jumped to an election-winning position in the polls. Turnbull’s approval ratings as prime minister skyrocketed. A clear majority of voters supported the change. Backbenchers contemplated the assassination only because they believed that without it their own demise was inevitable.

But the new prime minister is in a tricky period of transition. Having promised proper consultation and having sat in the cabinet that agreed all the current policies, he cannot lightly ditch them. He has to unpick them carefully. But he is also managing an enormous expectation that things will change.

Turnbull’s internal critics have the same plan as Labor – to use this transitional time to convince the electorate that it’s all a con, that nothing is really any different. And so Abbott, in the warm embrace of a 2GB “interview”, starts nailing down his legacy. “The interesting thing is that no policy has changed since the change of PM,” he remarks, interspersed by Hadley’s enthusiastic approval.

“Protection policy, the same. Climate change, the same. Border protection policy, the same. National security policy, the same, and if you listen to the PM and the treasurer they’re even using exactly the same phrases that Joe Hockey and I were using just a fortnight ago.

“We did stop the boats, we did get the big new roads starting, including the Badgerys Creek airport [in Sydney], we did make a very, very good start to budget repair, we had the three free trade agreements that had eluded previous governments, we effectively ended business welfare, we started the trade union royal commission, which is doing great work and will continue to do great work, we ended the green veto on big projects,” he continued, untroubled by diversionary fact-seeking responses, such as: “But there was never any green veto on big projects and your ‘lawfare’ amendments aren’t going to pass the Senate.”

The point, of course, is to make it harder for Turnbull to unpick things. And that, in turn, would lead to the conclusion that the coup was illegitimate.