Paul Bongiorno

When the organisation is in such dire straits and they turn to someone like Abbott, a former prime minister, a political pugilist of some note, it's clear they're saying, look, we want you to be the president and probably lift us, do more than just make sure we're fundraising.

Look, I don't expect to be in the media every day, but on the other hand, I do think that my presence now in this senior role...

will demonstrate to people who might have been sceptical that the Liberal Party is fair dinkum about abolishing net zero, fair dinkum about cutting back mass migration.

And the danger here is that in making someone like Abbott the president, they're creating another focus other than the parliamentary leader.

Look, the party president is the organisational leader, not the political leader.

But I don't think there's ever been a party president who's taken a vow of silence and I'm certainly not going to start.

Well, it's in his blood.

There's no doubt about that.

He has been asked this question, and he's given the impression that if he ever does make a comeback, which is not on his mind now, it'd be after the next election.

I guess one of his problems would be finding a seat where the voters would actually vote for him, given that he lost.

He was the first to lose a rock-solid Liberal seat to a Teal Independent.

He knows how to do that.

Well, if you take some of the work done by the Redbridge polling group,

First of all, their MRP poll, which went to every electorate in Australia trying to work out which way they would go.

And then just the normal poll, if you like, this week that found One Nation the most popular political party.

The challenge is there forever.

for Labor to hang on to government, either as minority or majority, or worst-case scenario, depending on the trend of the polls that seems to be established, they could be pushed themselves into opposition.

So, you know, it's very high stakes.

In fact, Wayne Swan, the national president of the Labor Party, sent out a fundraiser this week pointing out that the interview that Pauline Hanson gave last weekend on Sky, where she...

for the first time, went into quite a bit of what she thinks and where she wants to head.