Can Angus Taylor rekindle the romance?

Last week I went to an LNP event for small business with Angus Taylor as the guest speaker. It's my first LNP event ever, and it was also the first time for a significant proportion of the audience.

Three-hundred people turned-up. That's a significant number. It was a free breakfast, but still it's a large enough number to say that while the Liberal Party might look dead, it is not buried yet.

People were there to check out Taylor, and from the questions they asked they were there because they were angry with the federal budget.

Anger is one of the most effective motivators in politics because more people know what they are against than what they are for. It is the most valuable coinage for opposition parties because it can unite supporters around you and against the government.

At least it can when you have more or less a duopoly. But what about a three, four or even five-party system?

If you count the Coalition as one party, the last time we really had a duopoly was in 2010 when the two majors shared 81.61 per cent of the vote between them. It slipped below 80 per cent in 2013 (although the Coalition share of the vote was well over 40 per cent) and has been slipping ever since.

At the moment, according to the latest Newspoll, the split is One Nation 31 per cent, Labor 30 per cent, Coalition 18 per cent, Greens 11 per cent, and others 10 per cent, with each of those blocs holding at least one seat in the House of Representatives, and more than that in the Senate.

Now anger against the government can translate into votes not just for the official opposition, but for any in the 'not the government' pile.

I don't think either of the major parties has adjusted to this reality, and from what I saw on Friday, that definitely applies to the Coalition.

Part of the fracture in Australian politics, and the reason Pauline Hanson is riding so high, is that voters have lost faith in the political class.

This is particularly significant for the Coalition. Literally half the 40 per cent or so of the electorate that used to vote for them has moved to One Nation.

Taylor wants those voters back. He has no alternative. How do you move from 18 per cent and second place ,13 percentage points behind One Nation, to top place?