Do we like Clive Palmer?
Our score: 2 out of 10. A loud run of his own harmful campaigning against trans people, plus vaccine flyers that drew criticism, with only a little real good to set against it.
Clive Palmer is the Queensland mining billionaire who owns Mineralogy and who started the Palmer United Party in time for the 2013 election. He then won the seat of Fairfax. His voting record is thin: They Vote For You has him attending just 31 of 422 possible votes while he sat in the House.
The Queensland Nickel collapse is the story that follows him. In 2019 liquidators chased about $200 million in claims, including an alleged $115 million loan to his company Mineralogy that was never repaid. It settled in the Brisbane Supreme Court for an understood $110 million, including repaying $66 million of taxpayer money used to pay sacked workers. The article carries no admission from him.
Then there are the 2018 ASIC charges, which allege fraud and dishonesty over the Coolum resort buy-out and an alleged transfer of more than $12 million that ended up funding his party's 2013 campaign. He tried to stop the prosecutions and lost his appeals. The Court of Appeal's reasons said his applications were designed to end the cases, and his barrister has denied any wrongdoing. The last report we could open, from February 2024, had them still in the Magistrates Court, so we can't tell you where they've landed.
Now the harm check. For the 2025 election his Trumpet of Patriots party ran on a policy of recognising “two genders, a male and a female”, and he said he didn't want “males dressed as females” in schools. When pressed at the National Press Club he said “There's either a man or a woman”, and later admitted he'd got sex and gender confused. Equality Australia's CEO said the ads cause real harm to real people.
On vaccines, a NSW mayor told a parliamentary hearing that flyers his party sent out in 2021 were deceptive. His side has called the material alternate information rather than anti-vaccine. The 2025 campaign was reportedly a $60 million flop: 1.85 per cent of the national vote and no seats. His reaction was “It doesn't worry me, I earn more than that [$60 million] every couple of months”.
The recent stuff is more of the same. In February the Epstein files released texts in which Steve Bannon reportedly claimed credit for Palmer's $60 million 2019 ads. Palmer says Bannon had no part in them, though he now admits a call happened after earlier saying he'd never spoken to Bannon. In March he said he'd run again in 2028 on a manifesto that would scrap net zero and double the health budget, without saying how it would be paid for.