Malcolm Turnbull heckled by Liberals as anger lingers over Tony Abbott's ouster

Extract from The Guardian

New prime minister, in speech to NSW party council, depicts Liberals as free from Labor’s ‘factions and back-room deals’ but receives a bitter reception

‘Well you may dispute that,’ Malcolm Turnbull has told delegates to the NSW Liberal party state council in Sydney on Saturday after being heckled for saying that the party was not run by factions. Photograph: David Moir/AAP

Guardian staff and agencies

Saturday 10 October 2015 12.57 AEDT 

Malcolm Turnbull has been heckled by his own membership after telling their New South Wales state council that the Liberal party was not driven by “factions” and “back-room deals”.

In a speech on Saturday, Turnbull – who became prime minister after rallying a rebellion that ousted Tony Abbott in a leadership spill – had sought to contrast the Liberal party with Labor.
After earlier eliciting applause when he thanked Tony Abbott for his service, Turnbull was scoffed at when he declared: “We are not run by factions.”
Laughter and outbursts of derision rose from the floor. “Well, you may dispute that, but I have to tell you, from my experience we are not run by factions.”
That brought more chorusing of disbelief from the audience, and there was even more as Turnbull went on: “Nor are we run by big business or by deals in back rooms.”
Turnbull had being seeking to differentiate the Liberal party from Labor, which he said was estranged from its grassroots and entirely made up of “political apparatchiks” including former union officials and political staffers.
But the remarks backfired as the reaction from the conference floor appeared to show that discontent lingers over the manner of Abbott’s departure after Turnbull publicly declared a challenge, triggering a leadership spill and the sitting prime minister’s demise.
Before that vote was taken, Abbott said fellow Liberals had impressed upon him that “we are not the Labor party”, in reference to the party room manoeuvres that saw the prime ministership pass back and forth between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

‘We are not the Labor party’: Tony Abbott responds to Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership challenge. Link to video

In his conference speech Turnbull had earlier praised Abbott as having taken the Liberals “out of the wilderness of opposition and took us back into government and achieved great things, great reforms, great commitments … and I say to you as his successor, all of us owe him an enormous debt”.