Trumpet of Patriots rush to preselection is proving a big risk

The herd of minor parties seeking political office is being interpreted as the finishing post for the traditional two-horse race of federal elections, but the new diversity includes so many eccentrics, misfits and undesirables that there are questions about candidates’ vetting standards.

This election campaign has already been sullied by racial abuse and petulant corflute battles, but the number of political hopefuls with dubious histories of past misdeeds and criminal convictions is adding to the odour.

Clive Palmer, Trumpet of Patriots chairman, eats a TimTam during an address to the National Press Club of Australia.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

And one party, the Trumpet of the Patriots, seems to have more than its fair share of problem candidates. With antecedents in Victoria 21 years ago, the party went through various iterations until gatecrashed by the former federal MP Clive Palmer after a High Court ruling he could not register his United Australia Party for the 2025 federal election. A grateful Trumpet of Patriots made Palmer chair, and the party rushed to fulfil his promise to field candidates in all seats. As the Herald’s Harriet Alexander reports, some are rather high-risk choices:

In NSW, David Sarikaya – convicted of fraud and later declared bankrupt, who has a doctorate in psychology from a non-accredited online American College of Metaphysical Theology, was born Ali Davut Sarikaya but has also gone by the name David Kaye, and is prohibited by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission from providing health services – is standing for the seat of Reid.

In Queensland, the party’s candidate for Dickson, Michael Jessop, was arrested last July outside a residence on the Sunshine Coast after police were called about suspicious behaviour. Police found camouflage clothing, weapons, rope, tape, a shovel, an axe, and a body bag in his car. Gabrial Pennicott, running for Wide Bay, was declared bankrupt and imprisoned for fraud in Victoria in 2011.

There are few limitations to standing in federal elections: candidates must be 18 and cannot be citizens or subjects of a foreign power, undischarged bankrupts or convicted of an offence that received a 12-month jail sentence. And over the years, the relatively benign requirements for candidacy have seen frivolous candidates stand for such frivolous groups as the Deadly Serious Party, the Imperial British Conservative Party and the Sun Ripened Warm Tomato Party, without damage to our nation’s body politic.

Indeed, a self-styled descendant of the Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne, Prince Todd Charles Juchau, is standing in New England for the Trumpet of Patriots.

But for Palmer, politics is never frivolous. His money lifted Trumpet for Patriots out of obscurity but made the party careless about its responsibilities in picking candidates. As the election campaign tightened, Trumpet for Patriots chose some candidates whose suitability for public life is questionable.

Palmer has a larger world view than his supporters. He learned the importance of money while working in the political machine behind the Joh Bjelke-Petersen governments of the 1980s. Subsequently, he poured millions of dollars into his UAP. His party gained few seats but secured vital preference vote flows to other conservative candidates. That remains Palmer’s real game this election.

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