Will Clive Palmer become Australia’s Trump?

Imagine Screaming Lord Sutch with hundreds of millions of pounds to spend. That probably best sums up the flamboyant Australian mining billionaire and serial election candidate, Clive Palmer.

Palmer is best known internationally as the entrepreneur who promised to build the “Titanic II” — a full-scale replica of the original Titanic. That project was launched ten years ago and work still hasn’t begun on the supposed ship, although Palmer has promised to secure a shipyard this year.

When it comes to his electoral efforts, it’s a similar story.

Having fallen out with the National Party, the junior partner in Australia’s conservative coalition, in 2013 Palmer founded the Palmer United Party, which is now called the United Australia Party. He was elected as a member of parliament in 2013 but lost his Queensland seat to the Liberal Party in the following election.

Since then, Palmer has had several protegees elected to the Australian senate and spent literally hundreds of millions on advertising campaigns for his UAP candidates in election after election, pushing his populist and nationalist agendas. In 2022, Palmer spent well over A$100 million nationally to get just one senator elected, a suburban estate agent from Victoria.

The UAP was deregistered as a party in 2022, and under Australian electoral law it was not eligible to re-register for the 2025 federal elections. Palmer’s challenge to this in Australia’s high court was unceremoniously thrown out, forcing Palmer to find a new party vehicle for his ambitions and money.

That’s why on Wednesday Palmer announced he is joining forces with a fringe, but registered, political party to contest a federal election later this year. The group is called, highly unusually, Trumpet of Patriots, and has a trumpet-blowing lion as its logo.

The billionaire’s check book now makes him the group’s chief trumpeter, spokesman and funder. Its aim, Palmer told a bemused Australian media, is to field candidates in every seat held by the current opposition Liberal Party, and by so-called Teal (environmental green mixed with Tory blue) independents who stole half a dozen affluent seats from the Liberals in the 2022 general election.

The group’s name is a clue to what it stands for: Donald Trumpism.

Launching his political venture, which featured a video cameo from Trump confidant and former Fox News presenter, Tucker Carlson, Palmer made it perfectly clear that Trumpet of Patriots is to be an Australian mini-me of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

“The party believes in the policies of Donald Trump, which is shown to be effective in bringing management back on track,” he said at the launch in Canberra’s parliament house. “[Liberal opposition leader] Peter Dutton has stated that he’s no Donald Trump, and we agree with him. [Labor’s Anthony] Albanese has presided over a declining standard of living for our country in each and every year he served as prime minister. Australia needs Trump policies… Trumpet of Patriots will make Australia great again.”

Palmer made clear that his new party was committed to mirroring Trump’s agenda on immigration, fighting wokeism, gender, and even imposing tariffs. The party’s website says Australia needs to “drain the swamp” and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is heading Down Under if Trumpet of Patriots has its way.

At one point in his launch pitch, Palmer mistakenly referred to his new party as the Trumpet of Parrots. He and his new friends certainly are parroting the Donald.

But, for all his protestations against “wokeism,” Trumpet of Patriots is not committing to challenging seats held by the socially progressive and very woke Australian Labor Party.

In Australia’s single transferable vote electoral system, where preferences from eliminated candidates can determine who actually wins a parliamentary seat, Palmer is seeking to pressure the Liberals to move from the center to the populist MAGA right to win his support.

It is shaping up to be a tight election, with opinion polls suggesting the most likely outcome is a hung parliament. Dutton’s Liberals have a good chance of unseating Albanese’s Labor government. He may appear a political buffoon, but Palmer is calculating that he can make the Liberals bend to his will to make sure they hold their seats.

Like Britain’s Nigel Farage and Reform, Palmer wants to cannibalize the conservative vote. It seems he prefers the return of a progressive, woke Labor government — which stands for everything he rejects — to the Liberals returning to office.