#flogs

Running where: All states and territories for the Senate (in the NT below the line only), and many divisions in the House of Representatives

Prior reviews (mostly as the Palmer United Party): federal 2013, VIC 2014, federal 2016, VIC 2018 (Bobby Singh, Palmer United independent), federal 2019

What I said before: “Palmer and Friends live in an alternate reality.”

What I think this year: If Palmer and Friends lived in an alternate reality in 2019, hoo boy they’ve transcended to an even more demented sphere this year. Clive’s busy asserting—utterly falsely—that his party is the continuation of the United Australia Party of 1931–45. He’s also so historically illiterate that he has claimed Billy Hughes as a UAP prime minister (Hughes was a UAP member but it was not one of the three parties he represented as PM). But the misrepresentations of history are mainly an annoyance to political historians like me. The substance of the party’s demands are where we should be looking, because it’s dangerous, goofy stuff.

Clive Palmer has now combined his angry self-interested mining populist energies with the climate-denialist, anti-vax, covid-conspiracist cult ravings of horse-paste enthusiast Craig Kelly, who is now the party leader. Kelly is currently the Member for Hughes, where he was re-elected for the Liberal Party in 2019 because Scott Morrison intervened to ensure Kelly was not challenged for preselection. Onya Scott, look at where that got us, you flog.

Google the UAP and you get both an ad for the party website with the slogan “take our country back”, then another hit for the same website but with the slogan “freedom forever”. On the website itself—once your eyes adjust after being blinded with so much bright yellow you think you accidentally loaded JB Hi-Fi’s website—the slogan is “save Australia”. This party is now a grievance machine of very angry cranks who think something has been stolen from them; it’s rooted in the conspiracy theorist thought patterns that convince people who are generally pretty comfortable that they are in fact the great victims of the world. It’s where you want to be main character of history and the smartest person in the room spotting unseen connections.

UAP’s policies are pure undistilled racist populism. They demand unworkable low-interest home loan laws, improper superannuation fund restrictions (no international investment, which is an important part of a diversified portfolio), even more unworkable and dangerous foreign policies shot through with xenophobia (particularly Sinophobia), and mineral policies that basically just serve to enlarge Clive’s bank balance.

As for the event of the moment, the pandemic, UAP’s attitude is simply this: do nothing. No restrictions, ever, no matter how medically necessary. Oh and they are very keen for you to be able to have ready access to “alternative” treatments that at best do fuck-all and at worst are much more likely to kill you than covid is. If you’ve seen the party’s posters around, or the signage used by the many covid cookers who’ve leapt aboard Palmer’s wagon, you know that they want FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM. You can read this as FREEDOM (to get covid) FREEDOM (to die from not being vaccinated) FREEDOM (to burn the planet). Just a bunch of incredible plonkers.

My recommendation: Give the United Australia Party a weak or no preference.