Former NSW Liberal MP Fiona Scott says she believes former prime minister and prominent Liberal backbencher Tony Abbott should leave politics.
In comments on Sky News on Wednesday evening, Ms Scott said there was a “war” raging within the party and accused the former prime minister of backstabbing.
“I think some of these guys need to clock off, and I include Tony Abbott in that,” the former Lindsay MP said.
“I think it’s time he goes.
“What I see of a man that I’ve fought so much for in the past, is every day that this goes on, and this drags on, he's just undermining his own legacy and I think that's a tragedy.”
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Ms Scott said ongoing recriminations over the Abbott-Turnbull leadership spill in 2015 and ongoing party infighting needed to stop.
“This war has to end,” she said.
“If we keep going through who voted for where and how – it means nothing – it’s not going to help our country, it’s not going to help our economy.”
Ms Scott said Mr Abbott’s comments during the campaign, in which he said the candidate had “sex appeal”, had impacted the way she was thought of in the party.
She said the party whip told her she wouldn’t be considered for an economics committee she was interested in.
“That's for the big boys,” she said he told her.
Ms Scott’s mother was also upset about Mr Abbott’s “sex appeal” comment.
“Mum invested her life into her children,” Ms Scott said.
“She worked so we could have every opportunity and here's her little girl and someone's said something that has sexually objectified her, and that upset my mum.
“It's something to this day that my mum is still quite angry about.”
Sky News commentator and former Abbott chief of staff, Peta Credlin, said Ms Scott never made an effort to get on the committee.
“Put your hand up in the party room Fiona and run for it,” she said.
Ms Scott also blamed the Liberal Party for not supporting her in 2016, leading to her loss in the outer metropolitan marginal seat to Labor candidate Emma Husar.
But Ms Credlin said her blame would be better directed at the current prime minister.
“She won with Tony Abbott in 2013, and she lost with Malcolm Turnbull in the recent 2016 election,” she said.
