After a tumultuous few months, prime minister urges colleagues to ‘stay together’ to remain in power

Scott Morrison has declared he intends to keep the Coalition in power despite the controversies and missteps of the past few months, as the prime minister gave colleagues a homily about unity, noting incumbents stay in power when they “stay together”.

Morrison used the third anniversary of his rise to the prime ministership on Tuesday to observe the Coalition was in government “and that’s where we intend to remain”. The prime minister took the top job in August 2018 after the right faction of the Liberal party deposed Malcolm Turnbull, but failed to assemble sufficient numbers to install their preferred candidate Peter Dutton.