Clive Palmer spends up on Facebook

Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party has pumped more than $84,000 into Facebook ads in the first three weeks of the Queensland election campaign.

Clive Palmer in Cairns for the Titanic II dinner at the Pullman Cairns International. Picture: Stewart Mclean

Billionaire Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party has pumped more than $84,000 into Facebook ads through the first three weeks of the Queensland election campaign — more than one-fifth of the spend on traditional media in the three-month lead-up to the polls.

The spend on Facebook by the UAP outpaces that of the LNP and Labor, which were largely on par with respective outlays of $59,300 and $57,900, according to data compiled by the Queensland University of Technology.

Mr Palmer is well known for his advertising spend in election campaigns. During last year’s federal election, spending by the UAP exceeded that of the major parties but it failed to win seats.

In the lead-up to the campaign, UAP spent $419,952 on ads on metropolitan free-to-air TV, press and radio in Queensland between July and September, Nielsen data shows. The tally dwarfed Labor’s ad spending, which came in at $237,049, and the LNP’s advertising outlay, which tallied $91,615.

It is unclear whether the UAP advertising spending includes that paid for by his flagship company, Mineralogy. The company — behind the billboards and media advertisements used across Queensland — is also behind the largest donation to a Queensland political party after it gave $2m.

Lobby groups, unions and issue advocates have also been spending up considerably on Facebook advertising.

Left-wing advocacy group GetUp has spent $26,900 to date over the campaign, more than both The Greens and One Nation, which have paid $15,800 and $26,200 respectively.

Advance Australia ($22,400), Queensland Resources Council ($18,800) and Shooters Union of Australia ($15,300) are among top spenders on the social media site.

Weekly social media analysis of the campaign by the Queensland University of Technology suggests that in the race for premier, the LNP’s greater spend on Facebook advertising has had ­little impact on engaging voters at the same level as Labor, who has achieved more than double the reactions, comments and shares.

While candidates across the political spectrum receive largely positive interactions from voters, the LNP has not roused as much of an outpouring of support. The Greens and Labor candidates have received more strongly positive reactions through the campaign, including love, care, haha and wow, while One Nation candidates attract a considerably larger proportion of “sad” and “angry” reactions.

“LNP candidates have thus far failed to generate much in the way of clearly positive or negative responses: no more than 10 per cent of all reactions to their posts are clearly positive, and very few are clearly negative; the vast majority are simple likes,” the report for week three of the campaign read.

But assertions in the QUT report that GetUp had spent money on the campaign could not be supported.

Archived advertisements retrieved through Facebook Ad Library shows the money spent by GetUp through the period analysed was on nationally focused campaigns.

A spokesperson for GetUp said the group has not been campaigning in the Queensland election.

“GetUp has not spent any money on Facebook election ads in Queensland on the Queensland election campaign,” the spokesperson said.

“We are not campaigning in the Queensland election in any capacity and have not paid for any advertising.”