Former prime minister Tony Abbott will return to active political life when he is named as the Liberal Party’s new federal president.

Mr Abbott will be the only nominee for the conservative party’s top administrative role, which will be confirmed at a federal council meeting in Melbourne next week, a senior Liberal official told AAP late on Friday.

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“He’ll be elected unopposed,” the official said.

Mr Abbott served as prime minister from 2013 to 2015, when he was replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, following a leadership spill, brought on by the party room after a disastrous response to the Abbott government’s cost-cutting measures and some highly unpopular decisions, including reintroducing knights and dames, then knighting the Queen’s husband, Prince Phillip.

Former foreign minister Alexander Downer has been nominated for vice president of the party — one of five nominees for four second-in-command positions, the official said.

Alexander Downer has dropped out of the contest for Liberal Party president. (ABC News: Che Chorley)

Mr Downer will contest for the vice president role after withdrawing from a race with Mr Abbott for the top job in the party’s organisational wing, local media reported.

The new role will mark a return to the political stage for Mr Abbott after he lost his Sydney seat of Warringah at the 2019 federal election to independent Zali Steggall.

Mr Abbott has recently published a book, titled Australia: a history, and has this week been appearing at the Sydney Writers Festival.

Back to the future

After a poor showing at the 2025 federal election under Peter Dutton, the Liberal Party commissioned a review by two party elders, Nick Minchin and Pru Goward.

The review, tabled in parliament by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after the Liberal Party decided not to release it publicly, noted that the Liberals only won a majority of votes in the over-55 age group, while “all other demographics were lost” and found that women and young people had deserted the party.

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Ms Goward and Mr Minchin recommended broadening the party’s support base to reflect modern Australia and developing a renewal strategy to engage with young people and multicultural communities.

But in an opinion piece published on substack on Friday, Mr Abbott detailed his critique of where the Liberals had gone wrong over the past decade, saying that conservative voters were “despairing of ever again having a champion to vote for”.

“It’s been the Liberal Party’s political timidity that’s driven the rise of One Nation,” he wrote.

“Unsurprisingly, it was the Coalition’s inability to decide whether it was for or against the politics of climate and identity; being against, then for, and then against Net Zero; and being concerned, then indifferent, before being concerned again, about record migration, that’s fuelled the rise of political alternatives.”

AAP/ABC