Former prime minister Tony Abbott has congratulated his successor Malcolm Turnbull for shifting his focus after the election to "bread and butter" conservative issues and away from less resonant rhetoric about innovation.
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Mr Abbott also said that polls – including those that precipitated him losing the leadership of the Liberal Party – should not be listened to because voters' intentions were not being accurately reflected, as was demonstrated ahead of Donald Trump's shock victory this week.
In an apparent swipe at Mr Turnbull's election campaign slogan, Mr Abbott said "there has been a lot less talk about innovation and agility and the new economy" from the government since the Coalition's underwhelming result.
"A lot more talk about national security and border security," he told ABC radio. "A lot more talk about cost of living and the need to reject Labor's 50 per cent renewable energy target ."
"So what you've seen from Malcolm Turnbull post-election is a much more orthodox centre-right leader," he said.
In an extensive interview in which the former prime minister talked at length on the lesson of the Trump victory in the US, he said mainstream politicians ignored disenfranchised voters at their peril.
"If people are unhappy with the conventional standard bearers, they will find new standard-bearers," Mr Abbott said.
"If you don't have a strong, centre-right party, a strong and sensible centre-right party, people who are are looking for what might broadly be called conservative positions will find other voices to represent them."
When asked why his government failed in the polls despite arguably pursuing such an agenda, Mr Abbott said "Donald Trump was constantly failing in the polls".
"Both the UK election of last year, the Brexit vote of this year and the Trump vote this year are a good sign that we should not be ruled by polls. Because what we've seen in all three cases were people who weren't upfront with the pollsters," he said.
"Because they saw the kind of excoriation that the non-politically correct were getting and obviously didn't want to tell pollsters what they thought."
When Mr Turnbull dethroned Mr Abbott in September 2015, one of the headline justifications was that the Coalition government had been behind in 30 straight Newspolls.
Mr Abbott also stepped up his rhetoric against the Human Rights Commission for its handling of complaints under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. He labelled the commission "crook" and "thought police".
"It's a bad, bad law but you've also got, frankly, a pretty crook organisation, the Human Rights Commission, which is persecuting people based on this bad law. What happened to those students in Queensland is just outrageous. What is happening to Bill Leak right now is just outrageous," he said, referring to two high-profile 18C cases which have energised the Coalition's free speech advocates.
This week, responding to sustained pressure from Mr Abbott and other conservative backbenchers, the Prime Minister announced a parliamentary inquiry into free speech, which will examine the Racial Discrimination Act and the complaints handling process at the Human Rights Commission.
