A Liberal frontbencher has broken ranks, urging the party to look at a rebrand after its latest dismal polling.

Shadow NDIS minister Melissa McIntosh said she was “putting herself out on a limb” in suggesting the Liberal Party needed to reconsider its messaging.

“Some people think that we’re stuck in the past and our policies need to resonate with the Australia of today and the future,” she told Sky News Australia on Monday.

“I think it’d be a really good time for us to revisit our values. What we stand for and the way we project ourselves to Australians.”

It follows polls at the weekend showing a dip in support for One Nation, following leader Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club speech. The results were even more dire for the Coalition, with the respected Newspoll showing backing for the opposition falling to a historic low of 17 per cent.

Labor reclaimed a narrow lead in both the Newspoll and Redbridge surveys, released on Sunday night.

Newspoll, published by The Australian, has Labor on 33 per cent (up 3), with One Nation on 29 (down 2) and the Greens on 14 (up 2).

The Redbridge poll had Labor on 30 per cent support (up 2) compared to One Nation’s 29 (down 2), with the Coalition on just 18 (down 2) and the Greens on 14 (up 2).

That poll, reported in The Australian Financial Review, also showed Hanson’s net approval falling 10 points from a neutral position to be -10.

Liberal leader Angus Taylor’s personal approval ratings, meanwhile, fell to their lowest level since he replaced Sussan Ley.

McIntosh said the Liberals couldn’t continue to shrug off their poll slump.

“That takes a lot of work inside the party to go back to our roots, and then to look at our messaging and our communications to the Australian public, because you can’t keep getting poll after poll saying that it’s diabolical out there and just ignore it,” she said.

Despite her intervention, she threw her support behind Taylor, claiming the Coalition’s slump in the polls was about the “party itself”.

“We can’t put the blame on Angus. I think the Liberal Party itself needs to go through a rebrand,” McIntosh said.

“We’ve got some decent policies coming out. Angus is working super hard to get the party on track to be releasing our policies earlier, and we’re all committed to do that.”

Taylor said voters were “angry” at the system, and while he took the polling seriously, the election was still a way off.

“But we do know that we’ve got some real work to do to rebuild trust with the Australian people and that takes time,” he told 2GB radio.

“We’ve lost trust over an extended period of time, both during Covid and since then … the bust-ups of the Coalition in the last year is an example of that.”

Cabinet minister Murray Watt said polls could be expected to bounce around until the federal election, which is not due for two years.

“We have seen a bit of a change in the public mood towards One Nation since Pauline Hanson’s press club speech,” he told ABC News Breakfast on Monday.

“That speech was a bit of a reality check for a lot of Australians who were thinking about voting for One Nation, because they got to see that as much as people are under pressure at the moment, things could get worse under One Nation with all the cuts they were talking about imposing.”

The polls are the first major surveys since Hanson’s speech, which dominated news cycles in the days afterward. She criticised paid parental leave and suggested Australia should reject what she described as a failed policy of multiculturalism and instead become a “monoculture”.

She later claimed the Socceroos – whose squad includes migrants and former refugees – were a monoculture because they represented Australia.

Hanson also copped a blast from actor Paul Hogan, who she cited as an “essential feature of Australian monoculture” in her speech.

“She’s a pelican,” the beloved US-based actor and comedian told the AFR at the weekend.

“Outrageous, so racist. It sounds very much like this stupid boofhead over here, Trump.”

In the fortnight since Hanson’s speech, Taylor has struggled to articulate his party’s position on multiculturalism alongside its own hard-line immigration policy.

The Coalition is in a concerning position according to polls, sitting well below the 32 per cent support it got at the 2025 election.

It will use this week, the final parliamentary sitting week before the winter break, to ramp up its criticism of the government’s changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing.

That will include a so-called “widow’s tax” affecting jointly owned investment properties. Under Labor’s changes, an owner will lose concessions if widowed or divorced.

-with AAP