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Tony Abbott has outlined a sweeping series of policies he says the Coalition should adopt to restore its political fortunes and rebuild trust with conservative voters.
Illustration: The pollies refusing to evolve
Are the likes of Tony Abbott, Pauline Hanson and George Christensen holding all Australian's back with their conservative right-wing ideology? Artist Matt Davidson. .
In a major speech that can be read as an alternative political manifesto, the former prime minister outlined three energy policy measures - freezing the renewable energy target at 15 per cent, a moratorium on new wind farms, and for the federal government to potentially go it alone and build a new coal-fired power station - to put downward pressure on power prices.
Mr Abbott also called for immigration to be temporarily slashed to put downward pressure on house prices and upward pressure on wages, and advocated banning all new spending except on defence and infrastructure.
And he had a blunt message for people hoping he may quit politics: "I'm in no hurry to leave public life because we need strong Liberal conservative voices now, more than ever".
His comments at an Institute of Public Affairs event in Brisbane this morning are the clearest statement yet of an alternative policy program.
"In its early years, the Howard government deliberately reduced immigration to well under 100,000 a year," he said. "A big slowdown in immigration would allow housing and infrastructure to catch up with population. It would give harder-to-assimilate recent migrants more time to integrate with the wider Australian community before many more came in," he said.
Mr Abbott warned the Coalition can only win the next election if it draws up new political battlelines that will give the conservative side of politics something to fight for and, in a down-beat assessment of the nation, Mr Abbott said Australia "plainly, is not working as it should" and that "we are letting ourselves down".
