Angus Taylor concedes hard work ahead of Coalition to lift standing with voters

Angus Taylor has conceded the Coalition has hard work ahead of it to win back voters after new polls showed support for his party continues to decline.

The Opposition Leader likened the dire state of his party’s position, which is now lower in Newspoll than it was when he replaced Sussan Ley in February, to a heavy tanker and claimed it was no longer in free fall.

One Nation’s primary vote fell slightly in the polls, to 29 per cent in both The Australian’s Newspoll and the Redbridge poll published in the AFR on Monday.

Voters shifted to Labor, which rose to 33 per cent in Newspoll and 30 per cent in Redbridge, instead of returning to the Coalition.

The bigger movement was in One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s personal satisfaction rating, which dropped 10 points in the Redbridge survey.

Mr Taylor said the election was still a long way off.

“We do know that we’ve got some real work to do to rebuild trust with the Australian people. And that takes time. It takes discipline. It takes hard work. And we need to keep doing that,” he told 2GB, where he was asked what the record-low 17 per cent primary result said about his leadership.

“Well, we were in free fall, obviously,” Mr Taylor said.

“You still are,” radio host James Willis interrupted.

The Liberal leader said he had “never attacked One Nation voters, and I never would”, and it was Labor that was his primary focus.

Shadow minister Maria Kovacic said the Coalition’s job was “to stop One Nation in the same way it is our job to get rid of this Albanese Labor Government”.

“What Angus Taylor has said there is that he won’t attack One Nation voters and I think that’s a very important distinction because they are Australian voters and it is our job to tell them why we can do a better job and why they should have the trust and confidence to select us as the next party of government,” she said.

Ted O’Brien, who was Ms Ley’s deputy and remains in the shadow cabinet, said his lesson from 20 years in business was not to change the fundamentals based on “daily fluctuations in the stock exchange”.

“Any politician would be a fool to not look at the polls, but they’d also be bigger fools to read too much into it,” he said.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan said while he was a “glass half-full sort of guy”, the electorate was clearly restless.

“It’s very volatile .. I was a jackaroo, a very poor jackeroo, for a brief period in a previous career, and the first thing you’ve got to do is get the herd moving, and the herd is moving,” he said.

“It’s just not going through the right gate for us at the moment. I get that. We’ve got a bit of work to do there, but we’ve got a very strong plan here to lower taxes.”

Senior Labor ministers acknowledged the polls but kept their focus on the modest tax cuts that kick in from Wednesday, which they argue demonstrates the Government is delivering for people.

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek described the poll numbers as a “modest improvement” while Environment Minister Murray Watt said there would inevitably be movement in the polls in both directions over the next two years.

“I think what’s happened is it’s a little bit like a shopper at the supermarket who reaches out for a product because they like what’s on the label, but then they have a look at what’s in that product and see that it’s actually not very appetising,” he said of the slight shift away from One Nation.

“That’s the problem for One Nation, is that they make a lot of promises about standing up for battlers, but people are now seeing through them and see that actually as tough as life is right now for many Australians, it would be a lot worse under a coalition between One Nation and the Liberal Party.”