Here is Maria Kovacic on Sky News this morning where she was asked about the polls:

I think they’re reflective of what Australians are feeling at the moment, and that was a clear message that we also got on election day, and we’re cognisant of that. That was, you know, a very brutal election result and it requires us to do a lot of work to rebuild trust with the Australian public. And that’s what we’re doing at the moment. We are working hard and working every day to do that, and it’s a long game. It’s not something that’s going to happen very quickly.

Q: So, are you expecting it to fall even further?

Kovacic:

I think what we’re doing is doing our job every day to demonstrate that we are working towards developing a suite of policies that the Australian public looks at. Yeah, that is important to us and they’re the things that will make a difference to us, to our children and to our future. And we want you to govern. That is our primary focus.

Now keep in mind that this is Sky and so the next question is part of an on-going political project to serve who it sees is its masters and its audience are mostly people who think the Coalition are not conservative enough. But the next question also reveals the danger in taking what Sky does, even before dark, seriously – because this sort of stuff seeps into other coverage and then becomes part of the norm across political reporting from the gallery. It’s not right, it’s not reflective of the average Australian and it only disconnects us further from our audiences, who are already pretty open to the politics of grievance. The Newspoll this is based on does have One Nation at 15%. It has others at 14%. That includes independent MPs. But the question isn’t asked about whether the Coalition needs to harden up its central principles, or return to a more small-L liberal position. Just as when the Greens get a boost, it is not asked of Labor if they need to harden up their progressive principles. But if its One Nation or the far right? Suddenly we all need to jump to the beat of angry (mostly) white, people and respond to that seriously.

Q: Does this drift to One Nation mean you have to harden up your conservative principles?

Kovacic:

I think what it does is it tells us that there are, there is a movement of views in the country, but effectively a week is a very long time in politics and two and a half years is an even longer time. So, there is a lot of work we need to do between now and then, particularly when it comes to policy formulation. And I don’t think you can rest on any particular part of a poll in the interim, because if you do, you lose sight of the bigger picture. We need to ensure that the policies that we are developing now, and we are working very hard to develop those, meet the needs and the aspirations of Australians.