Clive Palmer has swivelled the gun turrets and Peter Dutton is in his sights

Clive Palmer has a new party, but the same shade of yellow. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

As Ukraine is finding out in the worst possible way, one of the interesting things about self-made billionaires who go into politics is that they tend to be massive opportunists.

You don't get rich writing cheques, as Donald Trump has personally established over years of not paying employees.

Just like you don't get rich saving Czechs, as demonstrated by the United States' strategic silence in 1968 when Vladimir Putin's forebear Nikita Khruschev coordinated a crunchy ram-raid on Ukraine's near neighbours to snuff out the Prague Spring.

Rich guys change their minds. They didn't get into politics because of ideology, so no-one should be surprised when it turns out they don't have any.

And Clive Palmer, the closest domestic approximation the Australian market can muster to the American president, has changed his mind in the five years that have elapsed since he poured many millions of dollars into extinguishing Bill Shorten's 2019 bid for The Lodge.

(This was a bid so promising, let us not forget, that Sportsbet paid out more than $1.3 million to punters backing a Shorten win, two days before he lost.)

But this time, Clive Palmer has swivelled the gun turrets. This time, he says, he's planning to bankroll candidates in every Coalition and Teal-held seat, and target Peter Dutton specifically, on grounds of insufficient Trumpiness.

Ain't love a kick in the head?

But first, some background.

Palmer's big week

For more than a decade now, the federal electoral landscape has featured the unmistakeable form of Clive Palmer, endlessly available beyond the constraints of his mysterious day job, draining the nation of yellow ink and shedding hundred-dollar notes like dandruff.

In the past two election campaigns, the Palmer spend ($80 million in 2019, $120 million in 2022) has comfortably exceeded that of all the other parties combined.

Major parties rush through scandalously self-serving legislation on election funding

Photo shows A composite image of Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese, both wearing thick-rimmed glasses and looking stern.

For once it seemed the government was not just sitting like a hapless duck in the crosshairs of a question time attack.

Labor's annoyance with Palmer harmonises rather nicely with the Coalition's dead-set loathing of Climate 200 sponsor Simon Holmes a Court, which is why the government and the Opposition were able recently to put aside hostilities for long enough to forge a bronto-deal on political donations reform that from 2026 will clip the wings of both the above-mentioned gentlemen, while relieving Joe Public of more taxpayer campaign dollars for … let me check … oh yes. The major parties.

Consensus at last!

But that wasn't even the worst news of that week for Palmer Inc.

Palmer deregistered his United Australia Party after the 2022 election, thus evading the nuisance of ongoing party administration, like financial disclosures, and majestically ignoring lawyers' warnings that under the Electoral Act this would preclude him from firing the old gal up again for Election 2025.

He then attempted to re-register the UAP last year, only to find that the lawyers were absolutely correct.

Now, there's nothing more irritating on God's earth than a lawyer who's been proved right, so Palmer sensibly appealed the whole thing to the High Court.

But what's the High Court? Just more lawyers in nicer wigs, after all. And in their dismal, specious, fact-based, woke-mind-virus-infected way they chose to uphold the Electoral Act, ploughing the fields of Palmer 2025 with salt.

Yellow ink and outdoor advertising futures plummeted sickeningly overnight.

New party, new lion

But wait! Are those hoof beats in the distance? What stirring alarum floats on the breeze? Is that the smell of … freedom?

Yes. Yes, it is. Last week, we learned that Palmer is to re-enter the fray, astride a new and gleaming steed, an existing political party of his recent acquisition called "Trumpet of Patriots".

A little background: Trumpet of Patriots was formed in 2021 by South Australian management consultant Nick Duffield, who described ToP as "one of Australia's fastest-growing political parties". Trumpet of Patriots did not achieve party registration in time for the 2022 election, a tragedy that Duffield attributes to the Australian Electoral Commission's shameful capitulation to "the freedom-last ethos of the Labor-Green Coalition", but which an AEC spokesman says was more to do with ToP's failure to meet the standard requirement of 1500 members.

Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson trade barbs over failed bid to unify parties

Photo shows Palmer scratches his head.

Entering their 70s, Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson attempted to unify their parties to capture more disaffected voters. But the deal fell apart.

At any rate, Trumpet of Patriots merged with the already-registered Australian Federation Party for the purposes of the 2022 poll and under that banner garnered a total of 4902 Senate votes in SA (coming in a respectable thousand votes or so ahead of the FUSION: Science, Pirate, Secular, Climate Energy Party, which only managed 3770).

And now, in addition to its totally valid party registration, Trumpet of Patriots has a new chairman, a vastly improved campaign kitty, and a video endorsement from Tucker Carlson, famous for being one of the rare carbon-based life forms on the planet too right-wing for Lachlan Murdoch.

Oh, and Trumpet of Patriots also has a brand-new crest; a lion tooting nobly upon a bugle, with a rippling Australian flag and the Latin motto "Honor Omnia", or "Honour Above All".

Henceforth, this new livery will be superimposed upon Palmer's customary cheap-and-cheerful black and yellow campaign strip.

So many questions.

Could these lion-v-tiger design vibes split the Big Cat vote, for instance?

Also, is "Honour Above All" a kind of bold emblem choice for a political party bought off the peg by a guy who lost his last party in what looked very much like an attempt to squirrel out of bog-standard accountability requirements?

On the name itself, it is probably best not to linger. That nagging, prickly feeling deep in your basal ganglia is a pre-nacreous, oystery itch of suspicion that "Trumpet of Patriots" might be Tucker Carlson's pet name for his tackle. Shut that down. Shut that down RIGHT NOW, or we’ll all go mad.

Policy-wise, the party will be offering a charcuterie-board of Trumpy treats; swamp drainage, sporting bans for trans women, the dismantling of various "woke" type activities and so on ("I'm sick of getting in the Qantas plane and hopping in Sydney and getting a welcome to my own country," Chairman Clive griped to Sky's Paul Murray).

And of course, Trumpet of Patriots is all for an Elon Musk-style efficiency drive.

"We've got to change this country, and we've got to cut back on government expense," declared Palmer, whose own record of fiscal prudence is exemplary, apart from that time three years ago when he spanked more than $120 million on putting one real estate agent in the Senate.

That $120 million senator — Victoria's Ralph Babet, who compensates for his lack of legislative impact by drafting doomed motions on abortion and making moody, American-style videos about the nobility of being the one guy who'll tell you the truth even though everyone's trying to silence him and so on — will not be joining Trumpet of Patriots, it turns out.

Senator Babet is to continue under the United Australia Party flag in the Senate, where he will presumably play some kind of guest soloist role (Oboe of the Unborn?).

Where's the success?

The Palmer election apparatus is operatic, eye-catching and expensive. Its figurehead promises a $90 million blitz this year, with special focus on Coalition and Teal seats.

The deeper question is, though: If big money talks in Australian politics, why hasn't Clive Palmer been more successful? He's spent more of it than anyone.

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For a $200 million outlay in the past two elections on hundreds of candidates, Palmer's secured one senator. Whereas Climate 200 — the other bunny in the gun turrets of the new donations laws — spent just $13 million in 2022 on supporting 23 candidates, eleven of whom were elected.

The answer is that when it comes to campaign spending, size isn't everything. It's more about what you do with it.

Let's compare: In 2022, Climate 200 backed independents in seats with large groups of voters who felt cheesed-off with the incumbent but disinclined to vote for the other major party on offer. In every seat that fell to a "Teal" challenger, the incumbent got more primary votes, but the Teal candidate came second and skated over the line on preferences.

The Palmer approach — a carpet-bomb assault of shouty ads and pop-up videos that terrify children between episodes of Paw Patrol — won him a national vote of around 5 per cent, which in the "Teal" seats shrivelled almost to statistical insignificance. In Wentworth, Goldstein, Curtin, North Sydney it was 2 per cent. In Kooyong, 1 per cent. In Mackellar, 3 per cent. Why would Clive Palmer this year target the Teal seats, when they are the ones in which he causes the least excitement?

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Enter Hanson, exit Hanson

There were seats in which the Palmer vote was higher; typically the outer metropolitan areas of Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, where in some pockets Palmer polled up to 10 per cent.

In the Queensland seat of Wright, for instance, which stretches from the Gold Coast hinterland to the outskirts of Toowoomba, the LNP's sitting member, Scott Buchholz, looks pretty comfy on a 10 per cent margin.

But the Palmer and One Nation candidates got about 22 per cent of the vote between them in Wright in 2022 — just a shade over what the Labor candidate obtained.

Sky News last week broke the news that one of the fallback plans Palmer has been working on late last year was a formal alliance with Pauline Hanson, in which Palmer would pour some serious money into the One Nation brand and together they'd be the Clive and Pauline Party.

It came to nothing, owing to an all-too-predictable tussle over who would be the boss: "She wanted to be Idi Amin or someone like that, and I said you can't be president for life, not even I can be president for life," Palmer said scornfully, in a version of events contested — naturally — by Team Pauline.

There's no doubt that the number of Australians disheartened by the major parties is on the rise. And a serious consolidation of the Palmer/Hanson voter base would indeed be a worry for Peter Dutton. 

But while its chairman remains more interested in attention than results, one suspects the Trumpet will remain in the brass section.