Informing Abbott of losing majority was not easy: Julie Bishop

Deputy leader Julie Bishop, the “loyal girl” of ex-Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, voted against him in the leadership challenge spill motion on Monday night. Malcolm Turnbull won the motion by 54 votes against 44 votes in favour of Abbott.

Bishop claimed that Abbott was unable to “turn things around” in the past six months since the unsuccessful spill motion in February, 2015. “The prime minister was aware that there was some unhappiness. You will recall that about seven months ago the party took some pretty dramatic action at that time, and there was a spill motion which didn’t succeed, and no one challenged Tony at the time,” she told the Channel Nine’s The Today Show’s host Karl Stefanovic on Tuesday morning, defending herself.

Bishop was the deputy leader to Turnbull in 2009 when Abbott replaced him. Despite her vote in favour of Turnbull, she returned to the same position with 70 votes, beating Cabinet Minister Kevin Andrews, who received 30 votes. In the interview with Channel Nine, she told Stefanovic that she wasn’t enjoying all this and it was really difficult for her to turn down Abbott. Bishop added that changing leadership was what the majority of the party wished and hence she supported the motion.

Bishop met Abbott before the question time and informed that the Cabinet no longer supported him, and therefore the best option would be to either resign or call for spill motion once again. Liberal senator and Turnbull supporter Arthur Sinodinos confirmed in an interview with ABC that the meeting between the two took place.

“She met with the Prime Minister before question time and put it to him that he had lost the majority support of his cabinet colleagues and of the party room and suggested that his options were to resign or hold a party ballot,” he said.

Abbott opted for the other option and scheduled the spill motion to be held on Monday night, where he was replaced by Turnbull. Bishop admitted informing Abbott of the loss of cabinet support and then voting against him was the toughest decision of her entire political career.

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