News and politics live updates: Coalition polling crisis deepens, NDIS spokeswoman calls for party rebrand

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has welcomed Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat to Parliament House in Canberra ahead of the formal signing of a landmark security and cooperation agreement between the two nations.

The long-awaited Nakamal Agreement is expected to be signed later today, ending months of tense negotiations that delayed the pact after Vanuatu raised concerns about sovereignty.

Liberal NDIS spokesperson Melissa McIntosh says the Liberal Party must rebrand, as persist horror poll results bring the party’s future further into question.

“I think it’s time for the Liberal Party to rebrand itself. Some people think we’re stuck in the past and our policies need to resonate with the Australia of today and the future,” Ms McIntosh told Sky News on Monday.

“I think it would be a really good time to revisit our values, what we stand for and the way we project ourselves to Australians. It’s obvious we’re not tracking in the polls, it doesn’t mean that you change your foundations, but it certainly might be time to relook at how we express ourselves externally.”

“You can’t keep getting poll after poll saying that it’s diabolic out there and just ignore it.”

Australian icon Paul Hogan has shared his thoughts on Pauline Hanson, days after the One Nation leader said Australia needed to be a monoculture, using the actor as an example of what the country needed.

“Bring back Paul Hogan and Norman Gunston,” she told the Senate last week as she continued to define her vision for a One Nation Australia.

“These are the essential features of Australian monoculture, and there’s nothing remotely exclusionary about them.”

Well, Hogan is back (in the conversation) and Senator Hanson may not be happy with his thoughts.

Speaking from Los Angeles, where he now lives, Hogan, 86, described Hanson as “so racist” and a “pelican”.

Read more.

Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming said she was forced to make a complaint to the police accusing a colleague of placing her in a headlock — an allegation she partly retracted — because the Liberal Party refused to investigate.

In a dispute that could make it harder for the Coalition to win power in Victoria, Ms Deeming said she was mistaken to accuse fellow Liberal Matthew Guy of placing her in a headlock at a crowded community event last month but insisted the male MP touched and held her against her will.

Ms Deeming said in a statement through her lawyer, Tim Houweling, that she was not “attributing motive” to Mr Guy, in what appeared to be an attempt to lower tensions without withdrawing the assertion she was manhandled.

“After the CCTV footage was released to media, our client was able to view the footage for the first time,” Mr Houweling said in a statement issued to The Nightly.

“She accepts that she misunderstood the technical meaning of the term ‘headlock’, but maintains that she used it in good faith to describe what happened.

Read the full exclusive here.

Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Ted O’Brien is “not reading too much” into the most recent Newspoll results, despite the Coalition struggling to gain numbers.

“Any politician would be a fool to not look at the polls but they’d also be bigger fools to read too much into it,” he told Nine.

“People are feeling the pain right now. The budget hasn’t helped and Mark (Butler) is right. Post-budget, of course, you do see some fluctuation in polls.”

Meanwhile, Opposition leader Angus Taylor spoke on Sydney’s 2GB this morning, “We were in freefall ... We’d seen two bust ups with the Coalition. Now the Coalition is solid. Solid as a rock,” he says.

“It’s going to take time because people need to rebuild trust in the Coalition, in a Liberal Party and National Party that has breached trust”.

Australia and Vanuatu are set to sign a landmark strategic agreement in Canberra today, bringing an end to months of negotiations that delayed the deal over concerns about Vanuatu’s sovereignty.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat are expected to formally sign the Nakamal Agreement almost 10 months after a planned signing ceremony in Port Vila was abruptly cancelled.

The final pact has been softened from its original form, with both nations removing clauses that would have restricted “third party involvement” in critical infrastructure such as ports, airports and telecommunications, provisions widely seen as targeting future Chinese investment in the Pacific nation.

A pair of polls has confirmed a post-Press Club headache for Pauline Hanson and One Nation, showing a slide in popularity since her high-profile speech.

They have even worse news for the coalition, with the much-respected Newspoll putting support for the opposition at a historic low of 17 per cent.

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

Newspoll, printed in The Australian, has Labor on 33 per cent (up three), with One Nation on 29 (down two) and the Greens on 14 (up two).

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

The numbers are a sweet tonic for Anthony Albanese and his party, which has battled for post-budget credibility after breaking promises on tax.

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

The polls are the first major surveys since Senator Hanson’s expansive speech at the National Press Club which set the national discourse for days.

On that outing, she decried paid parental leave and suggested Australia should reject what she described as a failed policy of multiculturalism and instead become a “monoculture”.

Read more.