Paul Bongiorno

All of this simply isn't working.

And Paul Kelly, the venerable Paul Kelly in The Australian, said that basically there's defeatism in the Liberals and the Nationals with some of them saying, oh, we should form an alliance with one nation, forgetting that one nation is part of the existential threat to the Liberals and the Nationals for a very good reason.

If the primary vote stays where it is and where it's been for a while now, then the Liberal or National candidate will come in behind One Nation.

And therefore, their preferences will elect a One Nation candidate at the expense of a Liberal.

It's like cutting their own throats.

And there's a bit of an example of this.

Even though the Nationals did extremely well in Farah, they still didn't get a majority in their own right.

They needed preferences to get over the line.

And there is an argument, and

People within the parliamentary party are having this argument that had the Libs and the Nats preference, for example, the leading independent...

Maybe that would have pushed her over the line, but it certainly would have sent the message that, look, if you're inclined to our way of politics, then don't vote One Nation.

Instead, by preferencing One Nation in the way they did, they helped it get up.

And I don't like to use the word legitimize.

It's a democracy and they're a legitimate player.

But it certainly, as it were, authorised One Nation as a mainstream option.

And this is a tactic that Abbott seems happy with, that when you analyse it a bit further, does seem to be a recipe for even greater disaster.

Well, they make sure the party is organised, that its branches are there, that it's fundraising, that it's able to back up the parliamentary party.

In fact, Robert Menzies, when he founded the Liberals, he wanted to make sure that the organisational wing...

unlike the structure formerly of the Labor Party, was subservient to the parliamentary party, couldn't direct it on anything, and was there merely to serve what the parliamentary leader and the parliamentary party wanted.

However, what we do know that a party president, and let's just talk Liberals for the moment, has the cachet of being leader of the organisation,