Abbott, Bishop to fight together to defeat leadership spill

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Friday announced that deputy party leader Julie Bishop will run alongside him in defeating next week's leadership spill motion.

Earlier on Friday, Western Australian MP Luke Simpkins called for a vote on the federal government's leadership, to be held during next Tuesday's party room meeting.

It was a motion seconded by fellow Western Australian backbencher Don Randall.

The motion followed weeks of speculation regarding Abbott's future amid unrest within the government over poor polling results and Liberal's loss in recent Victorian and Queensland state elections.

Abbott's decision to award an Australian knighthood to 93-year- old Prince Philip, without consulting fellow party members, had also drawn criticism.

Although reports in the Australian media had claimed Bishop might challenge Abbott for his role as the country's leader, those suggestions were quashed on Friday when the prime minister revealed she would campaign alongside him to defeat the leadership spill motion.

"As you know, two of my colleagues have called for a leadership spill of the two senior positions in our party," Abbott said in a press conference on Friday. "They've called for a spill of my position as leader and they've called for a spill of Julie Bishop' s position as deputy.

"The first point to make is that they are perfectly entitled to call for this, but the next point to make is that they are asking the party room to vote out the people that the electorate voted in in September 2013.

"I want to make this very simple point. We are not the Labor party and we are not going to repeat the chaos and the instability of the Labor years.

"So I have spoken to deputy leader Julie Bishop and we will stand together in urging the party room to defeat this particular motion and in doing so, in defeating this motion, to vote in favor of the stability and the team that the people voted for at the election.

"We have a strong plan. It's the strong plan that I enunciated at the Press Club this week and we are determined to get on with it and we will."

After three federal MPs insisted Abbott did not have their full backing earlier in the week, the prime minister's statement on Friday led to a flurry of support from Liberal party members.

Assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg said "it doesn't make sense to go down this path," while Tasmanian MP Andrew Nikolic said a spill "repeats the sort of behaviors that the Australian people explicitly repudiated at the 2013 election." Endi