The database breach of Clive Palmer’s political parties might throw up a few liability problems for the Queensland billionaire, given that one of the affected databases is for an unregistered party while his control of the second one is contested.
Australia’s politicians have carved themselves out from a vast swath of the rules that apply to the rest of the country, but most notably the Privacy Act. That allows them to build massive databases of information – drawn from the voting register, then cross referenced with every bit of information you ever give an MP’s office.
It also appears to exempt them from the civil and other consequences of letting that data get stolen, although this is yet to be tested in court.
The problem for Palmer is that the first of the two databases is for the United Australia Party, which was deregistered in 2022 and wouldn’t qualify for those exemptions.
And Palmer’s control of the second, Trumpet of Patriots, is a matter of considerable dispute.
Margin Call understands Palmer has previously claimed the UAP membership was up to 85,000 people, while about 15,000 ToP members were in addition to that.
We first brought you news of the fight for control of ToP on June 24 – the day after the alleged data breach, curiously enough. The blue was sparked by Palmer’s move to deregister ToP with the AEC, after claiming to have ousted president Glenn O’Rourke from any role within the political party.
ToP is a rebranded version of the old Australian Federation Party which has been around for more than 20 years under various names – firstly as the Country Alliance, then the Australian Country Party, then the Australian Federation Party and finally the name change to Trumpet of Patriots.
O’Rourke and Federation Party loyalists have been fiercely resisting Palmer’s moves to deregister the party, and Margin Call hears a whisper that Palmer may even have briefly abandoned that effort in recent weeks.
But the fight for control brings up another key question: whose databases, exactly, have been breached?
ToP operates three separate websites. One at trumpetofpatriots.org, one of the same name with the suffix com.au and a third ending in net.au. Only the first has been updated with a notice warning members about the data breach.
The other two, which Margin Call understands are still under the control of the party’s pre-Palmer executive, have no such notice. And the notice on the Palmer-controlled website for the party asks aggrieved members to make contact through a United Australia Party email address.
This all suggests Federation Party loyalists don’t believe it is their systems that have been breached but those of Palmer.
Which makes the question of who is legally in control of ToP a far more critical one. If it’s the party’s pre-Palmer executive, did Palmer have any right to be holding on to that data at the time of the breach?
When asked on Friday, an AEC spokesman told Margin Call the commission was still sorting through the competing claims, and would notify the warring parties when it had made a final determination.
If Palmer does intend to pursue ToP’s deregistration, no doubt it will all wind up getting put before the courts to sort out. And the recent data breach will add just a little bit of spice to the stakes.
Brickbats for Fortescue at mining reform meeting
As Treasurer Jim Chalmers lumbers towards his economic reform talkfest in late August, federal government ministers have begun taking the temperature of their stakeholders ahead of the main event.
At the most recent one, hastily convened with Resources Minister Madeleine King in Perth this week, Fortescue made itself zero friends in the broader industry.
Margin Call hears that most of the meeting was made up of the mining industry’s traditional grumbles such as environmental approvals, industrial relations – that sort of thing.
But the top of Fortescue’s reform agenda? Removal of the diesel fuel rebate.
Fortescue founder Andrew Forrest has been quietly lobbying since 2021 to wind back the scheme which back credits companies the fuel taxes paid for running heavy vehicles on private roads.
Scheduled to cost the federal budget around $10.8bn this financial year, about half of the total has traditionally been claimed by the mining industry.
Fortescue moved its lobbying campaign into the open this year, arguing the credit was a direct disincentive to big mining companies electrifying their massive haulage fleets – which Fortescue has promised to do by 2030.
Rather than remove the credit completely, Fortescue wants to limit it to $50m for larger consolidated companies which would effectively exempt family farmers and small businesses from any penalty.
Needless to say, this is not a popular opinion among the rest of the industry delegates to King’s talkfest. Margin Call understands that the response from the rest of the room to Fortescue’s representative was swift and scathing, and King was said to have (again) ruled out any changes to the scheme under the current government.
Rio good, BHP bad?
On the subject of Chalmer’s August talkfest, Margin Call noted another little curiosity in the Treasurer’s latest round of invitations to the three-day event, released on Friday.
On top of Commonwealth Bank boss Matt Comyn, Atlassian founder Scott Farquhar, Wentworth teal MP Allegra Spender and a smattering of government bods, the latest round of worthies include many of the usual suspects brought along to these things such as Kerry Schott and Ken Henry, for example.
Also included were Rio Tinto non-executive directors Sue Lloyd-Hurwitz and Ben Wyatt. Lloyd-Hurwitz, of course, is also the chair of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, as well as sitting on the board of Macquarie Bank.
Wyatt is one of a number of current and former Labor state treasurers invited to the full three days of the event.
Curiously enough, though, the biography of Wyatt released by Chalmers’ office notes his role on Woodside Energy’s board but not that of Rio.
Perhaps a move to stave off any early perception that Rio’s interests might get an outsized representation at the event?
As things stand, no other senior resources industry figures have yet rated an invitation. And there’s no surprise that Rio would be preferred over BHP, given the latter’s aggressive campaign against the federal government’s industrial relations agenda.
Still, if you’re going to put your finger on the scales, we think you should at least be upfront about it.
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