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A fresh Newspoll published by The Australian is revealing a historic low for the Coalition, with support plunging to 18 percent and marking Opposition leader Sussan Ley as the least popular major party leader in 23 years.
While Ms Ley is acknowledging this deep public frustration, she's maintaining that the newly reunified Coalition is finally moving in a positive direction.
"Polls are a point in time, and they do reflect the fact that people are frustrated, people are angry. They want us to be a strong opposition and to be there for them. And I understand that. And most importantly, we are that in terms of the plans and the policies that we've already announced and that we have coming - particularly with migration policies: to be announced soon. And so much more that demonstrates to the Australian people that we do have the answers that the Albanese government does not."
However, Liberal Senator Jane Hume is not so optimistic.
Speaking to Sky News, Senator Hume is labelling the recent polling as "disastrous" for the Liberal Party and the Coalition.
"This is disastrous for the Liberal Party. It's disastrous for the coalition. Unless something changes, we will be wiped out. I've been looking at the numbers just running a ruler over the pendulum, and I don't think that at this point there will be a single member of the House of Representatives from Victoria. There won't be a single member of the House of Representatives from New South Wales. Something has to give. We had our lowest primary vote ever at the last election, and it's now nearly halved."
She's warning that the party faces total irrelevance without an immediate policy reset.
"Don't for a second think that the next election will be in two years’ time. Anthony Albanese is more wily than that. Why would you not call an early election if you knew that the coalition was in disarray, I would imagine that the next election will be in about 18 month’s time. We need to claw back a lot of favour with the electorate in just in order to survive."
The Newspoll also showed the Nationals primary vote is sitting at 3%, while One Nation is polling at 27%.
However, the Deputy leader of the Nationals Kevin Hogan says these numbers are deceptive.
"That's a really distorted figure. And why I say that is that figure comes across 150 electorates from around the country. And as Nationals, we only see we only stand in about 20 to 30 seats, so we don't run in any city seats. As a lot of cities, we wouldn't poll at all. We'd poll zero in Wentworth. We'd poll zero in Kooyong. We'd poll zero in Perth, because we don't stand candidates there. But where we have incumbent seats, like my seat or my Nationals colleagues, our primary vote obviously would be in the 40s or 30s, in some cases, the 50s, because where the incumbent we have - We're known there, the National's brand is known there. So, the national polling figure is always a gross distortion for us."
A mere three weeks after a bitter internal split, the Coalition is once again presenting a united front.
It’s a sharp pivot from the rhetoric of the National Party leader David Littleproud, who previously drew a line in the sand.
"We cannot be part of a shadow ministry under Sussan Ley."
The split happened after three National Senators broke shadow cabinet rules to vote against the government's
hate-speech laws.
Nationals Deputy Leader Kevin Hogan says he attempted to broker a private peace deal between the Liberal and National parties to prevent the split.
However, appearing on ABC Radio National Breakfast, Mr Hogan says he would still vote the same way if given the chance.
"Well, I certainly would still vote the same in the in the chamber. I mean, we had a real view in our party room that that legislation impinged on free speech in a way that we weren't comfortable. So we would certainly vote the same. That wouldn't have changed."
As with any reunification story, a new start comes with a new set of ground rules.
Under the new framework, Shadow Cabinet solidarity can only be overturned by the joint Coalition party room rather than the National Party alone, a codified arrangement that includes reinstating all ousted frontbenchers by March 1st.
Mr Hogan says the new protocol is a positive outcome from the split.
"The one good thing about this is we've in one of the things we've discussed over the last two weeks is a really defined set of protocols around how processes will work. Those processes didn't happen that week because of the rushed nature of the legislation. There's great clarity around that, and I think that helps the relationship between the parties and the relationship between Sussan and David."
Former Nationals M-P and current One Nation candidate Barnaby Joyce says his new party is gaining ground as voters grow weary of the Coalition's internal drama.
Mr Joyce is currently campaigning in Horsham, Victoria, where he is getting his boots dirty to build grassroots support for One Nation.
Appearing on Seven's Sunrise, he mocked the dress sense of Ms Ley and Mr Littleproud while comparing their political partnership to a dysfunctional marriage.
"I watched the marriage again yesterday, I noted that one of the participants in the marriage didn't even think it was warranted a tie or a coat. They've got to do something, but I'll leave that up to them. It's - it's actually, it's a little bit sad to be quite frank. And for our part, I'm down in Horsham - Horsham hotel here, and we're just going to continue doing our job and making sure that we present ourselves to the Australian people. We understand the polls are an indicator. They're not a fact, and we'll do our best job to make sure the Australian people have a safe set of hands to - to vote for."
