Pillow Talk founder Heath Goddard donates to conservative group seeking to revive Tony Abbott in politics

The 73-year-old proprietor of a leading bedding and homewares retailer wants Australia to wake up to the perils of net zero and make former prime minister Tony Abbott leader of the nation again.

Heath Goddard, who co-founded Pillow Talk in 1977, last year gave $10,000 to the Australian Institute for Progress, a third-party conservative group that wants Mr Abbott to make a comeback as Liberal Party leader.

The donation, listed by the Electoral Commission of Queensland, was for the state election. Mr Goddard hopes the prime minister who abolished Labor’s carbon tax after winning a landslide election victory in 2013 can make a political comeback.

“He has quite a good, broad perspective on a whole range of issues, most of which I would agree with,” he told The Nightly.

Graham Young, the executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, compared Mr Abbott to another former Liberal PM, Robert Menzies, who returned the centre right of Australian politics to power in 1949, six years after Labor had won a landslide victory against the old United Australia Party.

“We might be in a Menzies moment. Menzies came back. He formed a new party which took all the members of the UAP and then within two elections, he was in power,” Mr Young told The Nightly.

“He was a former prime minister, as Tony is. He’s a public intellectual, as Tony is. He’s a fighter as Tony is. If history were to repeat, Tony would be an obvious person to pull the whole thing together.”

Mr Abbott, who turns 68 on Tuesday, told The Nightly a return to public life was unlikely.

“The notion of any comeback is deeply implausible and totally impractical,” he said. “I’m very happy being supportive of my former colleagues who are becoming a strong alternative to a bad government.”

Despite that, Mr Goddard is hoping a Liberal MP gives up their seat for Mr Abbott, emulating a system in Canada where an electorate is found for former prime ministers looking to lead their party again, preferring that option to a potential new-generation conservative leader like Andrew Hastie.

“Under the current system, you can’t bring Tony Abbott back because he’s not in the Parliament. But if you’re going to have a look at the Canadian one and their system, you could bring a person like Tony Abbott in,” Mr Goddard said.

Mr Goddard, who has been a member of Queensland’s Liberal and Liberal National parties for more than 35 years, described incumbent Liberal Leader Sussan Ley as “hopeless” for backing net zero by 2050.

“I’m committed to saying the whole lot of net zero, to my mind, is nonsense because we could actually do with a bit more carbon dioxide to improve the atmosphere to improve rain, in dry arid areas like the Sahara Desert, it wouldn’t be a bad thing,” he said.

“Let’s have people who are able to refute the mantra. We’ve got to assassinate it. That makes me a conservative or a this or a that, that’s what I am.”

The businessman regarded Scott Morrison from his own side of politics as one of Australia’s worst PMs over COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccination mandates, putting him on par with the Labor incumbent Anthony Albanese.

“We often say, ‘Who are the worst prime ministers?’ I think Albanese will beat him, but at the moment Morrison’s winning,” he said.

Mr Goddard is also a co-founder of the Liberal Reform Association, a group of conservative activists in Queensland who are campaigning for LNP branch members to decide preselections instead of the party’s head office.

The Australian Institute for Progress is separate to the Liberal Party but one of its board members Graeme Haycroft is also a co-founder of the Liberal Reform Association.

Its other directors include former Federal Liberal MP Jane Prentice, who held the seat of Ryan from 2010 to 2019, and former Liberal candidate and businessman Bob Tucker.

The institute will this month host an event for Mr Abbott in Brisbane on November 25 to promote his new book, Australia: A History.

Abbott was prime minister from September, 2013, until September, 2015, and had earlier served as Opposition leader from December 2009 after rolling Malcolm Turnbull over his support for Labor’s emissions trading policy.

Mr Turnbull got his revenge in government, with a leadership spill a decade ago, arguing Mr Abbott had lost 30 Newspolls in a row.

He held the Sydney northern beaches seat of Warringah from 1994 until losing to climate-focused independent Zali Steggall in 2019.