Poor Angus Taylor.

I imagine he took over the leadership of the Liberal Party with high hopes three months ago, but there is already speculation about whether he will make it to the federal election.

The latest poll by DemosAU has the L/NP vote down 5 points at 18 per cent (and this is the combined vote of the Liberal and National parties!). This is 12 points behind One Nation.

It was almost tempting to feel some sympathy towards Angus. The reality is the issues here go far deeper than just his leadership. My view is that even a strong conservative leader at this stage would struggle to save the Liberal Party, as they’d still be leading the same deeply divided and tarnished party.

However, any sympathy I was tempted to feel evaporated last week.

I believe strongly that Pauline’s appearance at the National Press Club will be remembered in history as a decisive moment. For once, we had a politician in front of the national press, speaking in the most direct fashion about the most pressing issues facing Australia and, in doing so, representing the views of millions of Australians who have, to date, felt ignored.

One of the key issues raised was in relation to multiculturalism. This has been an article of faith for the progressive elites. To question it in their world is akin to blasphemy.

Well, Pauline didn’t just question multiculturalism, she dismantled it.

And she was right to do so.

Multiculturalism, as we’ve experienced it in recent decades in Australia, is leading to the fragmentation of our shared national culture. As One Nation, we want one national culture, we want unity and shared values, not separateness. Pauline couldn’t have made it any clearer that she was not talking about the colour of people’s skin. She said we live in a multiracial society.

All of this was very clear.

You would have hoped that the leader of the Liberal Party would have embraced the fact that, finally, a politician was taking on one of the left’s sacred cows. If he was a genuine conservative, he would have done so.

Sadly, what we got from Angus Taylor was the opposite.

It is my view that he misrepresented Pauline’s speech in an extremely disappointing way. He accused her of saying the opposite of what she said. He either hadn’t bothered to watch the speech, or he took the opportunity to smear Pauline in line with the accusation of racism peddled in the media.

In short, he accused us at One Nation of wanting to judge people on the colour of their skin, despite Pauline’s speech making it extremely clear that she wanted the opposite.

In addition to making it clear that her comments about multiculturalism had nothing to do with race, Pauline also pledged to abolish the National Indigenous Australians Agency, which is, in my view, largely based on racial grievance.

Pauline stated: ‘My vision for Australia is that we’re all Australians. Remember, regardless of race, colour, creed, or where you are from, we’re all treated as Australians equally on an individual needs basis, not based on race.’

There is something very depressing about the way in which the Liberal Party leader responded to Pauline’s speech.

For me, it was a real mask-slip moment. Despite all the Liberal Party’s protestations that they understand how the party went wrong in the past and how it must change, his response to Pauline’s speech tells us all we need to know.

He will not change the Liberal Party.

Another recent episode that points to the same issue was the recent internal debate they had in public about whether or not, at a future election, the Liberal Party would look to preference One Nation.

We had the new federal president, Tony Abbott (former Prime Minister), indicating they would. The actual supposed leader, Angus Taylor, then made different comments, but ones that sort of aligned with the federal president’s. Then we had the Liberal treasury spokesperson, Tim Wilson, publicly contradicting both of them by indicating they wouldn’t preference One Nation. This is a party split down the middle that doesn’t even seem to know who its leader is these days.

Is it Taylor or Abbott?

At One Nation, we have a huge duty to ensure that Australia secures the conservative leadership it desperately needs because it won’t come from the Liberal Party.

In South Australia, we have a strong team and we have effectively become the opposition to the state Labor government.

It’s critically important that, as a party, we build on this success across the country. Only if we break free of the stranglehold that the uniparty has placed the country in can we hope to chart a brighter future.