Nutjob candidates, cooker alliances and crocodile tears notwithstanding, Palmer’s endgame isn’t winning seats, it’s ensuring the “drill, baby, drill” party is returned to power, writes managing editor Michelle Pini.
SURE, there’s a newly-elected madman loose in the Northern Hemisphere ranting about being “saved by god to make America great again”, but here in the South, we know an election is nigh when one of our homegrown nutbags appears to derail it.
As many tried to avoid Trump’s inauguration by tuning in to the Australian Open this week, billionaire and chief election scammer Clive Palmer resurfaced to begin his tri-annual assault on our senses, this time with tales of woe and concern for Aussie battlers.
TEARS AND PRAYERS, NOT LUNCHES, FOR THE POOR
And in the process, Palmer’s efforts may well help elect the Trumpist Peter Dutton as Australia’s next prime minister.
Emulating the confected empathy and political strategy of fellow billionaires in the U.S., Palmer’s advertising blitz – commenced even before a confirmed Federal election date – was all about children going to bed hungry, the cost of living breaking families and offering “prayers” for our fellow poor Australians.
All very admirable, one might think, were it not for a couple of small details.
The first is that there would be decidedly fewer children going hungry if Palmer and his billionaire buddies – both here and elsewhere – reined in their greed just long enough to pay their employees equitably — or at all, in Palmer’s case. The billionaire famously refused to pay retrenched workers their entitlements when his nickel refinery went broke back in 2016, after bankrolling his political party to the tune of $20 million.
Palmer didn’t seem too concerned for the children of his employees when he said at the time:
“It’s not my problem.”
There would also be fewer children going hungry if the wealthiest among us paid their fair share of taxes.
According to a new Oxfam report, Australia’s 47 billionaires make an average of $67,000 an hour, or 1,300 times more than the average Australian worker. The report also states these individuals and corporations have used their power and influence to ‘rig the economy’ and pay lower taxes than the rest of us.
Or, perhaps, there would be less suffering if Clive and his mates just stopped digging and drilling — at least long enough to lessen the speed at which man-made climate change will herald further global food and water shortages, and natural disasters, creating more homelessness.
The second problem with Palmer’s feigned concern is perhaps even more ironic, since, if he really cared about alleviating hunger and homelessness in Australia, he could try redirecting some of his obscene wealth towards this end.
For example, for just $820 million of his $4.6 billion personal fortune, Clive could feed every homeless person in the nation (approximately 122,000 people at $6,720 per year) for an entire year.
Palmer, who also owns a vast swathe of houses in Queensland, Perth, Bulgaria and French Polynesia, might also like to donate a couple of mansions to help house at least a few dozen people sleeping rough.
Then there’s the issue of Palmer’s favoured major party – the Liberal Party – and its disdain for the downtrodden. This was again highlighted this week, as Dutton announced free lunches for businesses, though his state counterparts in Queensland earlier rejected free lunches for hungry school children.
BUYING ELECTIONS MUSK-STYLE
It seems Clive prefers to spend his pocket change (around $123 million in the last election plus a couple of million on the “No” vote, alone) on ad campaigns designed to derail elections and referendums, instead.
As we saw in the last election, $123 million bought him just one seat. But Clive doesn’t even need to get anyone elected to undermine democratic elections; he just blitzes our communication channels with a constant stream of emotive and/or fear-mongering messages. These are designed to prey on people’s latent feelings of guilt for the reality of inequality or general fear and anger. This shame and anger is then ostensibly directed towards the two main parties.
In this way, it is possible to create the illusion that UAP is about “real people”, not politicians and big business — never mind that a vote for Palmer’s party will still help get the Coalition elected.
And as long as UAP runs even one electoral candidate, his advertising onslaughts can legally include harvesting our data and spamming us all with unsolicited text messages — messages urging people not to trust the major parties, as well as spreading dangerous anti-vax disinformation, in the process.
In a press release received yesterday, Babet commended Trump for withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organisation (WHO). Supporting text messages about the evils of the WHO and legitimate medical advice will likely begin soon.
HANGING WITH NUTTERS
Palmer even regularly deregisters UAP after elections have concluded and then revives it in time for the next national election campaign. Last time, he did this in every state except Victoria, which inexplicably elected Ralph Babet to the Senate. Of course, nutjob Babet was significantly aided via preferencing from Clive’s Liberal Party mates — the ones from the major party he pretends not to trust.
Nonetheless, the advertising campaigns sufficiently undermine progressive candidates just enough to give a leg up to the party that most suits Palmer’s business interests — the Coalition.
SUING YOUR COUNTRY
And when he’s not digging up fossil fuels or interfering in Australia’s democracy, Clive likes to spend his spare time – and change – to sue Australian governments.
After previously losing his lawsuit against the WA Government, assisted by Liberal mate and former Attorney General Christian Porter, in 2023, Palmer commenced legal proceedings against the Australian Government for $300 billion on behalf of a company he set up offshore. The fact that the company was based in Singapore allowed Palmer to revisit the case in an international Court.
It’s hard to understand how anyone can buy the narrative from a billionaire who doesn’t even pay his own workers and sues his own government, that Palmer is concerned about the poor.
Then again, we only have to look at the U.S. where convicted felon, Trump – a billionaire aided and abetted by a gang of fellow billionaires – has just been re-elected. And where his chief supporters and two of the richest people in the world, Musk and Zuckerberg, welcomed him with fascist salutes and rearranging algorithms to further their vested interests of getting even wealthier.
It appears Palmer may now also be joining forces with all available cookers to create a new super-baked collection of nutbags, as he recently applied to trademark the “Clive and Pauline Party”.
Nutjob candidates, alliances with other cookers and crocodile tears for the poor notwithstanding, the endgame isn’t winning seats, it is ensuring the party best equipped to maintain the “drill, baby, drill” mentality is returned to power. It doesn’t matter if UAP candidates get elected since their preferences go to the Coalition, anyway.
Though the Coalition managed to get toppled despite Clive’s considerable efforts in 2022, it will be interesting to see exactly how much he will spend this time around to ensure that isn’t repeated.
Whatever Clive is plotting and regardless of what his party will be called, a vote for Palmer’s party will be a vote for Peter Dutton.
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Follow managing editor Michelle Pini on Bluesky @michellepini.bsky.social and Independent Australia on Bluesky @independentaus.bsky.social.
