Abbott said the left’s influence over civic institutions had gone so far it had “semi-captured the judiciary, the military, the church and even centre-right political parties … I had a lot of difficulty from my own colleagues over issues such as climate and energy and so on”.

He went on to suggest some MPs should be asked whether they were really in the right party, and the centre-right needed to create a new “program” it could advocate in opposition to ensure it had done the critical thinking and would not be easily cowed by the public service when in government.

“Centre-right governments all too often are in office but not in power,” Abbott said. One of the key problems, he went on to say, was that “we on the centre-right have been too polite for too long, and we need to be much more robust”.

Abbott agreed the West was under serious threat – not just from Moscow, Tehran and Beijing, but from what he described as military weakness, economic self-harm, collapsing social cohesion and “the various mind viruses which are doing so much damage, whether it’s the woke mind virus, the net zero mind virus, whether it’s the appeasement of our external enemies mind virus, all of which are doing so much damage”.

Both former prime ministers asserted that conservative opinion was still predominant within the populace – or would be once the consequences of the alternative became clearer. Truss pointed to the failure of the Voice referendum in Australia and the success of the Brexit poll in the UK.

Along with the supported left-wing takeover of the bureaucracy, climate change and transgender issues were recurring themes for both former prime ministers. Truss was applauded when she said she stopped a “gender self-ID” bill in the UK that would have allowed people to change their legal gender without a medical diagnosis.

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Abbott told the crowd: “I am confident that the climate cult will not survive the lights going out. I am confident that the trans-mania will not survive mass lawsuits against doctors that have altered young people in ways they will come to regret. I am confident that the cultural self-loathing will dissipate if we face a serious military challenge. I just hope that things don’t have to get too much worse before they get better.”

Truss said the West had appeased its global enemies, and argued the world would be safer if Donald Trump reclaimed the US presidency next month – despite the Republican candidate cosying up to dictators when he was in the White House. She refuted that characterisation during an interview with the Herald and The Age at Thursday’s event.

“He put very tough sanctions on Iran,” she said. “Russia invaded Ukraine on Biden’s watch. I think that was partly because Putin saw what Biden did on the Afghanistan withdrawal. Trump is much less predictable. He is very clear with these authoritarian regimes what will happen if they predict those acts of aggression.”

Truss was not bothered by Trump’s apparent isolationism, ambivalence on the future of Ukraine or scepticism about defending Taiwan. “Look at what he actually does, look at his record in office,” she said, citing a December 2017 Trump administration decision to send missiles to Ukraine.

The book launch was hosted by the Australian chapter of the Conservative Political Action Conference, which also hosted Truss at its flagship annual event last weekend in Brisbane.

Executive director Andrew Cooper farewelled the Sydney crowd with the suggestion: “We could do a lot worse over the next 10 years than putting these two [Abbott and Truss] back in charge.”

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