Hanson gets emotional revisiting decades-old Abbott feud

Pauline Hanson has hit the road to campaign as her party pulls ahead in the polls. (ABC News: Keane Bourke)

Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where Courtney Gould gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.

As Anthony Albanese stood in front of a Medicare banner and Pauline Hanson put her hand out for donations, voters could be forgiven for thinking the election was two months, not two years, away.

The prime minister wanted to get back on territory where the government feels most comfortable fighting, laying down the challenge for One Nation to outline its plans for health and education.

But the minor party had other ideas. Buoyed by overtaking Labor for the first time in several opinion polls as the most popular political party, it launched an appeal of its own.

“Fire the liar,” the message read in all caps. The call out was to donate so One Nation could spread the message. It amassed over $2 million in 48 hours – a number anyone who’s tried to sell a Freddo frog or raffle off a meat tray for a local club could only wish for.

The three-word slogan wasn’t even a line One Nation dreamed up itself. Hanson’s chief of staff, James Ashby, got the idea from Sky News host Peta Credlin.

"I was watching her show and I stole it off her. Nothing quite like a borrowed line," he told 2GB.

Credlin was part of the team that brought us some of former prime minister Tony Abbott’s most memorable slogans. She later admitted the lines used in the attack against the carbon tax helped bring down the Gillard government weren't entirely true.

“That was brutal retail politics, and it took Abbott six months to cut through and when he did cut through Gillard was gone,” she said in 2017.

Pauline Hanson is hoping her liar line will cut through to voters. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)

It’s clear the while the election proper is two years away, the campaign has already begun. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has done his best to attack the budget and the prime minister. His slogan is all about “toxic taxes”.

The government has conceded the most recent budget included broken promises. Of course, it argues the circumstances have changed and that’s why it acted. But it also acknowledged that doing so carries a political risk.

The Albanese government is paying an economic and political toll for Donald Trump's actions.

That risk is opening the door to the question of whether a broken promise is a lie. Hanson and Ashby will hope the recent press about the unprecedented donation drive, paired with whatever advertising that is funded by that, will c