Coalition fails to gain ground as One Nation falters

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor insists he needs more time to turn around his party’s fortunes after twin polls showed the Coalition has failed to capitalise on a stall in One Nation’s momentum, while Labor regained its lead over the minor party.

Pauline Hanson’s popularity has plunged after the One Nation leader’s sprawling National Press Club speech in which she declared multiculturalism a “failed policy”, according to The Australian Financial Review’s Redbridge survey. The comments caused problems for both Hanson and Taylor, who last week struggled to articulate their visions for Australia.

Hanson’s net favorability dropped 10 points in the past month, according to the Redbridge poll, while Labor retook the primary vote lead, gaining two points to 30 per cent. One Nation dropped two points to 29 per cent, but the Coalition did not benefit from the minor party’s slide, falling to 18 per cent. Taylor’s personal rating slid five points to minus 9.

The Australian’s Newspoll showed similar gains for Labor, from 30 to 33 per cent, while One Nation dipped from 31 to 29 per cent. Again, the Coalition failed to gain any ground, falling to 17 per cent.

Pressure has been mounting on Taylor after this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor earlier this month showed the Coalition had crashed to a record low primary vote, while his inability to say he supported a multicultural Australia last week left his colleagues questioning his communication skills.

On Monday morning, Taylor repeated seven times that it would take time to rebuild the public’s trust in the Coalition.

“The voting public is angry. They’re angry with everything and everyone at the moment, and understandably so,” he told radio station 2GB, after last week claiming he had stemmed the collapse in his party’s vote.

“You can breach trust in an instant, in an absolute instant, but it takes time to rebuild it. You can’t turn around the tanker in a few months. We have to just keep working and plugging away at axing Labor’s toxic taxes, at scrapping net zero, at ending mass migration, at putting Australians first.”

After Coalition frontbencher and leadership aspirant Andrew Hastie last week told his colleagues he would rather be “taken out in a box than bend the knee to One Nation”, Taylor retreated from the idea of confronting the minor party’s supporters, representing almost a third of voters according to the polls.

“I’ve never attacked One Nation voters, and I never would. I never will,” he told 2GB. “In fact, this whole interview, I’ve been attacking Labor, who are the problem for this country.”

Liberal deputy leader Jane Hume said there was no appetite in the party room for leadership change. Hume said Taylor would “absolutely” be the leader at the next election when asked on ABC Radio National.

“It’s about 17 weeks now [since Taylor took the leadership], and in that period of time, we’ve been pretty upfront that we’ve got a long road to go,” Hume said.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan said while the electorate was “restless”, he was staying positive.

“The first thing you’ve got to do is get the herd moving, and the herd is moving. It’s just not going through the right gate for us at the moment,” he told Seven’s breakfast show Sunrise.

As One Nation’s momentum in the polls stalled for the first time since it started rising last year, Hanson continued to receive backlash for calling on Australia to be a monocultural society. Paul Hogan slammed the minor party leader after she named him as part of an ideal Australia, doubling down on comments she made at the press club last week.

“Bring back Paul Hogan and Norman Gunston … these are the essential features of Australian monoculture, and there’s nothing remotely exclusionary about them,” Hanson told the Senate last week.

The actor told The Australian Financial Review that Hanson was living in the past.

“She’s a pelican, yeah. Outrageous, so racist. It sounds very much like this stupid boofhead over here, Trump,” Hogan said from Los Angeles.

“How can it be a monoculture? We’re all migrants, except the Aboriginals, who as far as we know, have been [in Australia] for 60,000 years.”

Environment Minister Murray Watt said on Monday Australians got a “bit of a reality check” after Hanson’s speech in which she also attacked workers as lazy.

“They got to see that, as much as people are under pressure at the moment, things could get a whole lot worse under One Nation,” Watt told ABC TV.

“It’s a little bit like a shopper at a supermarket who reaches out for a product because they like what the label looks like, but then they have a look at the ingredients of the product and realise it actually doesn’t look that appetising.”

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