Despite Clive Palmer’s outlandish claims of his party forming government, the United Australia Party leader has a canny election strategy: to benefit his mining interests. By Mike Seccombe.

What Clive Palmer wants for his $60m

As the argument raged this week about the Liberal and National parties’ allocation of preferences to fringe right-wing candidates at the upcoming election, one of those candidates, Clive Palmer, was utterly dismissive of all the fuss.

It was a debate over nothing, he said on Monday, because: “The United Australia Party will win government, consequently our preferences may never be distributed.”

It was not the first time Palmer had made this fantastical assertion. And there is further evidence of a fantasy preparation for government on the UAP website.

Palmer has, for example, put up a series of releases naming various members of his ragtag team “shadow ministers”. Examination of their credentials shows few have relevant experience. His “shadow assistant treasurer”, to take but one example, runs a tyre shop on the New South Wales central coast.

Not that it matters much. These people have titles, but no real responsibility for their portfolio areas. When it comes to policy statements, everything comes from the leader – although “policy” is really too grand a term.

Under the heading of “national policy” on the site, there are four dot-pointed motherhood statements, relating to lobbyists, refugees, “mineral wealth” and wealth more generally. In total they come to 158 words, promising nothing specific.

To get greater detail, you must trawl through months of media releases, which provide a series of unresearched, uncosted, often internally contradictory thought bubbles.

Palmer may lack credible candidates or policy, but he does have one thing in abundance – cash. Independent tracking suggests he spent $30 million on advertising between last September and mid-April. Palmer himself says the figure now is up to $50 million. The final figure may be tens of millions higher.

According to this week’s Newspoll, all that expenditure has bought him maybe 5 per cent of the vote. Yet he continues to insist he will win government.

“Fake news,” he told Today’s Deborah Knight on Monday, when she questioned the prospects of a UAP government, given the Newspoll numbers.

“For too long people have pandered to people on the media in the news and worrying what they think like and how they appeal. As I said, my wealth’s $4000 million. Do you think I give a stuff what you personally think, or anyone else?” Palmer raged. “I care about this country.”

BY 2016, PRO-COAL FORCES WERE DOMINANT IN THE COALITION GOVERNMENT, ENSURING NO MEANINGFUL ACTION TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE. THE FUTURE OF THE COAL BUSINESS LOOKED SAFE. PALMER QUIT POLITICS.

Last Wednesday, in a news release relating to the tragedy that is the Murray–Darling Basin Plan, Palmer lamented: “The sight of a million dead fish was sickening to every Australian and a blight on successive governments who have continued to botch the management of our most treasured and iconic river system.

“Corporate interests are being put before the needs of Australians who rely on this river system.”

If you stopped reading there, you would likely conclude Palmer favours tighter restrictions on water extractions and greater environmental flows. And fair enough, too, for that would accord with the scientific and other evidence showing the river system has been degraded through the overextraction of water by big irrigators, and by the corruption of process under the Nationals in particular.

But Palmer went on to attack the system that limits water extraction, and the idea that users should pay for what they use. His conclusion: the Murray–Darling Basin Plan isn’t working and therefore it should be abolished.

The Saturday Paper contacted Palmer’s campaign to seek further details of how he proposed to address the crisis and save the rivers and the fish, but received no response.

This is typical of many of Palmer’s “policies”, though – they are complaints about real or perceived failings of government that provide no alternatives. Or they make grand promises – such as a 20 per cent tax cut for people living at least 200 kilometres from their state’s capital, or a $150 a week increase in the aged pension, or tax deductibility on the first $10,000 in repayments on every home loan – but give no costings or other detail.

Read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2019/05/04/what-clive-...

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“I don’t know,” he said frankly, “because I had no Plan B. The only thing I know for certain is that I would like to resume my role as deputy captain of the Davidson Rural Fire Brigade.”

The occasion was Friday’s commemoration out at North Head of the Japanese mini-sub attack on Sydney on May 31, 1942, a ceremony that Abbott began early in his parliamentary tenure and was now presiding over for likely the last time. I advised him that everything he said could and would be used by me in his column. His mood I would describe as chastened, the man as resilient.

Surely, I suggested, the obvious step would be to be an ambassador somewhere, or even High Commissioner to Britain? All that pomp and pageantry, Tony, all that royalty?

“No,” he said firmly. “No interest. I don’t really do diplomacy.”

He is not alone in his political disappointment and showed me a warm text exchange he had between himself and Bill Shorten – on condition I not quote it – where they wished each other, and each other’s wives, well.

He had equally congratulated Anthony Albanese on his elevation to the Labor leadership. Albanese replied graciously in kind. All up, he is a bloke about to begin a new chapter of his life, he just doesn’t know what it is yet. In the meantime, as a former prime minister – Australia’s 28th – he will have the right to an office and three staff for life, and wishes to put his energies and resources to public service of some kind.

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/i-don-t-really-do-diplomacy...

Read from top.

Enjoy the retirement, Tony, or become an Anglican married priest, for the Parish of Lion Island, Pittwater. The seagulls there need some morality.... But do not try, contemplate a return to politics in 2022 or any time after or before this.

Actually, you could study the reality of global warming under the sobering tutoring of Tim Flannery and yours truly, Gus Leonisky — to become a voice of reason: GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC. Repeat after me: 

GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC.

Then you can be the deputy captain of the Davidson Rural Fire Brigade again without being accused of being an arsonist.