For the right the next election is about renovation

It should not be about changing the government, even though the government may change hands as a result of brilliant candidate selection and campaigning.

Nor do voters have to believe either the Coalition or One Nation is presently capable of governing for this strategy to work. In fact the polling suggests most of them don’t.

The Liberal and National Parties are where they are now in significant part because of poor candidate selection. They’ve selected many people who don’t think like their own voters and take those voters for granted. They will never win back trust until they fix that.

They need to apologise for their past behaviour, and nothing says sorry more than removing the miscreants. Leaving them there screams insincerity.

Which is One Nation’s opportunity.

Pauline has taken to saying she’s ready for government. That is a mistake.

What she is ready for is holding the mainstream parties to account, and she can plausibly do that by providing electors with a choice of personnel.

Despite his bad performance Albanese is the preferred Prime Minister, but he’s only in that position because most think neither One Nation nor the Coalition is up to governing.

They also can’t see either winning in their own right, far less governing in some sort of alliance. So there is no harm in One Nation and the Coalition admitting this. Voters will welcome the truth.

They do not need to ask voters to believe in a government which the voters themselves think is implausible. They need to ask a much simpler question: who is the best non-Labor person to represent this electorate?

What both parties need is to commit to holding Labor to account and finding the best candidates to represent the 46 per cent of Australians whose first preference would go to one or the other of them.

That changes the nature of the contest between them.