By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Politicians who have just lost their seats in the federal election would do well to remember that life after politics can take our former elected representatives to some unusual places.
CBD has long been intrigued by the post-political life of former Liberal frontbencher Wyatt Roy, once Australia’s youngest MP and minister, who is now earning a pretty penny in Saudi Arabia as head of innovation at Neom, the futuristic desert city project that is part of the petro-state’s squillion-dollar image rebrand.
Former Liberal frontbencher Wyatt Roy celebrating Saudi National Flag Day.Credit: Instagram
The kingdom has been spending eye-watering sums trying to shrug off a global pariah status earned through its barbaric treatment of women, and the dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 (de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is widely suspected of having ordered the killing – including by the CIA – although he denied this).
Roy’s current Saudi job has placed him at the centre of the geopolitical universe. When US President Donald Trump was in Riyadh at an investment forum on Tuesday to sign a $219 billion arms deal with MBS, Roy had a good seat in the crowd, documenting the historic moment on all his social media platforms with breathless excitement.
“‘We are witnessing the birth of a modern Middle East – defined by commerce, not chaos.’ – President Trump tonight in Riyadh,” the ex-politician wrote on social media.
“It’s been a big day flying the flag at the Saudi–US Investment Forum,” Roy posted across Instagram/LinkedIn/Facebook/X, with pictures of the president addressing the crowd and shaking hands with the crown prince, plus another of Trump’s billionaire buddy Elon Musk.
“Even Elon was in the room – promising Starlink, robotaxis, humanoid robots … and maybe a tunnel or two.”
Young Roy (he turns 35 next week) didn’t take up our invitation to enlighten us further.
He has always been an adventurous sort. Months after losing his Queensland seat of Longman in 2016, he unwittingly found himself caught in a firefight between Islamic State and Kurdish militants while on a self-funded trip to Iraq which earned the ire of then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who called the whole thing stupid. God forbid a bloke in his 20s go on a wild gap year after giving up much of his youth to Canberra.
Roy is now head of innovation for Saudi Arabia’s Neom.Credit: Instagram
And Roy’s reference to “flying the flag” is not just the stuff of metaphor.
More recently, Roy has been taking to Saudi life like a duck to water. A recent Instagram post featured the former MP jetskiing on a device known as a wake foil across a patch of sea while waving the kingdom’s green flag. In honour of Saudi National Flag Day, of course. Life after politics never looked like so much fun.
Palmer puzzles High Court
Clive Palmer did not provide much work for the Australian Electoral Commission’s vote counters. His Trumpet of Patriots failed to get anywhere in this month’s poll despite a typically blustery multimillion-dollar advertising campaign across all platforms, including – full disclosure! – the one you are reading now.
But the billionaire mining magnate did provide plenty of work for the High Court, all because of the mess he ended up in when he deregistered his United Australia Party after the 2022 poll, and then reregistered it last year in readiness for this year’s election.
A cute move. But no dice, said the AEC, citing the Commonwealth Electoral Act, which allowed the reregistration but barred the party from contesting an election until 2028.
Palmer and his $110 million senator, Ralph Babet, elected in 2022, took the matter to the High Court, which unanimously ruled against them in February. It was Palmer’s fifth High Court loss (yes we are counting), a decision which spawned the oddly titled Trumpet of Patriots party.
On Tuesday, the court published its reasons for its ruling. And they were lengthy, with the seven-member full bench producing six separate judgments. But each path reached the same destination, rejecting Palmer’s legal challenge.
The current High Court (from left): Justice Jayne Jagot, Justice Simon Steward, Justice Michelle Gordon, Chief Justice Stephen Gageler, Justice James Edelman, Justice Jacqueline Gleeson and Justice Robert Beech-Jones.Credit: High Court
And yet, after days of hearings, cash burned on Palmer’s own legal fees (plus the government’s costs, which he’ll have to pay) and findings running more than 100 pages, we are none the wiser as to why Palmer went through with his deregistration malarkey, when the electoral laws would clearly stop a party with the same name standing at the 2025 election.
It would seem Justice Jacqueline Gleeson is in the same boat.
“There was no material before this court to explain the circumstances of the voluntary deregistration of the United Australia Party that gave rise to this case,” she wrote.
Although amid the arid constitutional law jargon, the judgments ponder the possibility that Palmer did so as a way of dodging transparency requirements, which force him to disclose just how many millions of dollars he was burning on the UAP vanity project.
All the judgments noted that the disclosure laws included an obligation on a political party to reveal its political donations. Justice James Edelman made a particular point of outlining the numerous donations of more than $1 million received by the UAP from Palmer’s Mineralogy company.
Justice Robert Beech-Jones suggested the provisions of the Act existed to stop parties “gaming” the donation disclosure system by deregistering and reregistering between election cycles.
So was the whole thing a cynical, too-clever-by-half attempt to avoid Palmer revealing how much money he was wasting? If so, it backfired spectacularly, with Clive forced to drop the well-recognised UAP for the flaccid Trumpet of Patriots.
We asked the big man’s representatives about this, but heard nothing back. So, much like Palmer’s obsessive love of litigation, the fate of his Palmersaurus dinosaur theme park, and the perennial question of when Titanic II will ever hit the high seas, it remains a mystery.
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