While the Liberals have been performing reasonbly well in Parliament lately, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley still finds herself in an unenviable position. Ley's presiding over a party split over its political identity – and even who should be leading it.

She's being undermined by insurgents, most notably Andrew Hastie, a leadership aspirant who recently quit the frontbench complaining he was being excluded from formulating policy on immigration.

To talk about the Liberals' internal strife and what Australians make of it, we're joined today by a former Liberal insider, Tony Barry .

Barry used to be a party strategist, but these days he's a director of the RedBridge Group , which taps into the public mood through extensive polling and focus group research.

Barry said voters – especially“Coalition defectors”, who had stopped voting for either the Liberals or Nationals – are sending strong signals about how to woo them back.

A third of those voters also said they felt the Coalition“no longer represents people like me” and was too divided. Meanwhile, a majority of Australians consistently describe themselves as either unaligned or centre left.

Barry said it was possible to be seen as from the right and still win back-to-back elections – like former prime minister John Howard, who was in power for 11 years – but only because:

Barry said the biggest danger for the Coalition is how“catastrophically uncompetitive” it's become with women and younger voters. By the next federal election, close to half of all voters are expected to be Gen Z and and millennials.

Barry said the lesson from history was that the Coalition urgently needed“a unifying purpose” around bolder economic reform, including lower taxes and government spending cuts.

He said Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson had shown how the party could win back city seats won by Teals or other challengers.

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