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One Nation Co-Founder: Worst Ever Newspoll Result A Voter 'Protest' Against Turnbull

The Liberal Party leadership debate continues.

One Nation co-founder David Oldfield has called the Liberal Party's worst ever Newspoll result a "protest" by voters who are disappointed with Malcolm Turnbull's leadership and are now showing support for other parties in parliament.

Appearing on Channel Ten's The Project, Oldfield claimed the "natural" party for disenfranchised Liberal and Labor supporters to shift towards would be Pauline Hanson's One Nation because they already have sitting members in Canberra.

He also claimed Monday's poll results -- which saw the Labor party extend its two-party-preferred lead to 10 points and Coalition support jump to One Nation, is a similar movement to the one seen in the initial rise of the One Nation party in 1997.

"People do need somewhere to go when they want to make a protest and it should be understood still a lot of this is protest... People want to vote for somebody else. The natural place for them to go is One Nation," he began.

"The only thing that's different is there are four One Nation senators... The sorts of numbers you're seeing in the polls are not new. What's different is the Coalition or someone needs to deal with One Nation because they have so many sitting members already."

The former One Nation Deputy Leader then went on to suggest Turnbull was not a true representative of his party, which has led voters to stray from supporting him.

"If Malcolm was more himself he would probably get a lot of support from Labor voters but they wouldn't vote for him. They'd just support what he was doing as a fun thing to do in polls or in the media," he said.

"Malcolm's problem is that he's not really a Liberal. I'm not really sure what he is. I think that's how most people see Malcolm. He doesn't seem to stand for anything particularly at all and doesn't stand for the things he promised."

The poor Newspoll results have been largely attributed to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's explosive claims on Thursday that the Coalition government is risking defeat while under Turnbull.

This is despite fellow Liberal Party Minister Christopher Pyne saying Abbott doesn't have significant in-party support to undermine the current leadership.

However, one supporter has spoken up.

Conservative South Australian senator and recent Liberal party defector Cory Bernardi called Abbott's proposed five point plan -- including reducing immigration, cutting the renewable energy target and scrapping the Human Rights Commission -- "good ideas" that are "absolutely spot on" on The Bolt Report on Monday.

"What Tony Abbott said the other day was the truth. We need to cut power bills for people, we need to cut government spending, we need to trim our immigration and all of the things he spoke about," he said.

"What hope is there for the Liberal Party anymore?"

Turnbull played down the polls in Canberra on Monday, telling reporters he wouldn't be distracted by Abbott's "outburst".

"What we saw was an outburst on Thursday and it had its desired impact on the Newspoll, it was exactly as predicted and calculated," he said.

"I'm not going to be distracted by that, it's a fact of life, that's what's happened."

Coalition MP George Christensen also weighed in on the debate while on The Bolt Report, saying voters are fed up with consistent changes in party leadership on both sides of politics and don't want to see another "overthrow" of a Prime Minister.

"I'm not going to be advocating for another overthrow of a Prime Minister, we have seen so many of them in recent history," he said.

"I actually think it's led to the malaise that we're in where the public are saying, you know, 'pox on both of your houses'. We've seen this mess under the Gillard years and now we've seen it again in the last term of parliament and they certainly don't want to see it once more."

.@GChristensenMP says voters don't want to see another 'overthrow' of a prime minister. #theboltreport MORE https://t.co/seha1QxL3Apic.twitter.com/SDuvd6xdwp

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) February 27, 2017

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