Australian mining tycoon Clive Palmer is unvaccinated, flush with cash, and giddily irritating huge swaths of the Aussie electorate, as the billionaire makes yet another run for office—mirroring in some ways a very Trumpian playbook.
Palmer, who previously peddled anti-vax misinformation, has placed himself at the center of multiple controversies in recent months, exactly where he likes to be.
“Like Trump, Palmer is all about EGO,” the University of Western Australia emeritus professor Greg McCarthy wrote in an email to The Daily Beast.
ADVERTISEMENT
“He’s got this sort of ridiculousness about him as well, a bit like Boris Johnson,” added Benjamin Reilly, also of UWA. “You never know if anything that he’s actually doing or saying is serious.”
At the moment, Palmer is in the headlines over a defamation lawsuit he filed against the premier of Western Australia, who called him an “enemy” of the state.
Perhaps of greater importance: the billionaire announced this month that he will run for a Senate seat in Queensland in Australia’s upcoming elections, which are expected to take place in May. He also pledged to spend a record-breaking amount of money on the electoral cycle, upping his advertising blitz from 2019, when he reportedly blanketed the country with over $50 million in ads—more than both major parties combined.
“Think about in the United States one of the Koch brothers running for president or something and outspending the Democrats and the Republicans,” said Peter Chen, who teaches Australian politics at the University of Sydney. “It's that sort of crazy money.”
In some ways that cash was not well-spent. Palmer’s party, the United Australia Party, failed to win a single seat in 2019, but political analysts say he may have helped tip the election away from Labor, which had been expected to win.
“I've saved Australia from an extra trillion dollars of taxes,” he rejoiced at the time.
The spending marked “a huge shift in our democracy,” lamented Member of Parliament Patrick Gorman, a Labor Party representative, in an interview with The Daily Beast this week. “To say that he's going to beat his own record at the 2022 election is something I think is really dangerous for the way Australian democracy works.”
A representative for Palmer did not reply to a request for comment.
Already, Palmer’s ad spending this cycle has been “relentless,” said Glenn Kefford, senior lecturer at the University of Queensland. His bright-yellow advertisements, featuring the slogan “FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM,” are ubiquitous in newspapers, on billboards, and on YouTube—not to mention the unsolicited mass text messages that have irritated constituents across the country.
There are mixed opinions about what Palmer is seeking to accomplish through his spending and public antics. Some analysts believe he is merely playing games, reveling in the attention and dysfunction.
As insight into his personality, Palmer reportedly once stated that he considers “litigation” a personal hobby. In 2019, his lawyers threatened to sue a YouTuber who called him “Fatty McFuck Head” and a “dense Humpty Dumpty.”
Other observers think Palmer is seizing an opportunity to rile up disenchanted voters in order to promote candidates less inclined to regulate his mining activity.
“One of the most dangerous places to be in Australia is between Clive Palmer and his business interests. He is obsessed with money and obsessed with talking about his wealth,” said Gorman. The billionaire’s behavior, he argued, “is about preserving the business environment that is favorable for him and instilling fear in some people who are too scared to stand up to him.”
It’s not fully clear what odds Palmer faces of winning. He previously served in parliament from 2013 to 2016, though political scientists do not think he is likely to win again.
A December poll found that just 8 percent of Australians had a positive view of him, compared to 59 percent with a negative opinion—rendering him the “least likable politician” in the country.
Palmer has generated negative press over numerous issues, including a scandal involving workers at his nickel refinery who were not paid entitlements for several years after the business liquidated in 2016. As of last year, he was also facing fraud charges related to political spending in the 2013 election.
Even if he loses, however, Palmer’s party could still pick up seats.
“Thanks to the fact that our powerful upper house (Senate) is elected by proportional representation, Palmer doesn’t need to be widely popular to win seats,” said William Bowe, who publishes a blog about Aussie politics. “A few seats in the Senate would give [his party] very great influence as a swing vote, since there is essentially no chance that either of the main parties will have a majority there.”
Palmer nonetheless faces longer odds of acting as a spoiler than he did in 2019.
Like Trump, the billionaire has seized on wedge issues, including vaccines and lockdown restrictions. (He has even modified the former president’s catchphrases: “Put Australia First” and “Make Australia Great!”)
Yet those strategies may prove less potent Down Under, as the country’s compulsory voting laws make it harder to disenfranchise voters.
Politicians and political observers are also mixed on whether Palmer can replicate Trump’s ascent. Both are “boorish, extravagant, litigious and proudly unconcerned with political correctness,” said Bowe, though he argued that Palmer has so far been confined to the fringes.
Peter Chen, from the University of Sydney, added that Palmer is not “a fascist,” while “Donald Trump clearly was.” Moreover, he said, the mining tycoon has had a far more consistent track record in business.
To Gorman, though, Palmer represents an even less restrained version of The Donald.
“[Trump] at least had some people from the Republican Party that—even if he didn’t want to—he was forced to listen to,” he said. “Clive Palmer just does whatever crazy thing he wants.”
