Tony Abbott says he would have used the election campaign to secure a mandate for budget cuts that the Senate blocked, in an apparent swipe at his successor's campaign strategy.
In an election day interview, broadcaster Alan Jones asked Mr Abbott whether he believed he could have won the contest for the Coalition had he not been overthrown by Malcolm Turnbull in last year's leadership spill.
Mr Abbott, who has previously lamented the Coalition's limited focus on national security in the lead-up to the election, said he would have led a "different campaign" based around the savings he unsuccessfully tried to introduce in 2014 and 2015. 
"My thinking back in   September last year was that we should seek a mandate for serious savings," he said. "That we should have another look at the measures that were blocked in the Senate and very overtly and explicitly and right up front go to the people and say, 'If we are going to have long-term budget responsibility we need to embrace these difficult but necessary decisions.' "
Fairfax Media has reported that the Coalition this year relied on about $13 billion of so-called "zombie" measures from the first and second Abbott budgets to prop up the budget, including $600 million from planned cuts to family tax benefits, $258 million from maternity leave scheme changes and $139 million from increasing co-payments and changing the safety net for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
An excerpt of Mr Jones' interview aired on Sunrise on Saturday..
It has been widely agreed Labor would have won the election against an Abbott-led Coalition government.
After he was ousted, Mr Abbott publicly defended his record in the top job, and argued he would have won the election if he stayed leader, noting Mr Turnbull had not changed his policies. But he has kept a relatively low-profile during the eight-week election campaign and appeared at the Liberal Party's official campaign launch last weekend to support his former rival.
Asked what it felt like to go from prime minister to an "anonymous figure", Mr Abbott said: "It's not about me.
"Egomaniacs normally get found out very quickly in this business and that's as it should be."
Mr Abbott likened the experience of being dumped as leader to being dropped from first to second grade in a football team. "You've just got to accept the selector's verdict, play as well as you can and see what the future holds.
"Every political career ends. And most political careers end in disappointment, one way or another. John Howard is now lauded as the greatest living Liberal. But that's not how people felt on the night of the election in 2007 when he lost his seat."
Mr Abbott reiterated that he had not asked and was not expecting Mr Turnbull to return him to the frontbench if the Coalition won the election: "There (are) plenty of things I can do."
While he had "signed up" for another term by re-contesting his seat, he joked that he did not intend to stay in politics as long as veteran Liberal MP Philip Ruddock, who retired this year after 42 years in Parliament. Mr Abbott joked that after 22 years as an MP "you're a term-by-term proposition".