Clive Palmer’s campaign to re-enter parliament crashes despite record spend
Despite his record $50m spend, Clive Palmer’s campaign to re-enter parliament has crashed.
Clive Palmer’s campaign to re-enter federal parliament has crashed, despite his multimillion-dollar advertising spend.
The billionaire businessman appears to have missed out on a Senate spot in his home state of Queensland where he headed the upper house ticket of his United Australia Party.
In counting tonight, the UAP had only 0.23 per cent of a quota, leaving Mr Palmer well behind One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts on 0.72 per cent of a quota for the last Senate spot in Queensland.
Ironically, UAP preferences have put the Liberal National Party in the hunt for a third Senate spot in the Sunshine State, possibly at Mr Roberts’s expense, who is pushing to regain the position he was forced to relinquish over a dual citizenship problem.
Mr Palmer appears to have emerged from the election empty-handed, the record $50m-plus he splashed on the campaign not yielding a single seat on counting tonight.
Nationally, UAP secured only 2.3 per cent of the vote in the Senate, and 3.35 per cent in the House.
While UAP preferences have flowed to the Liberal Party and the LNP, decisively in some seats in Queensland, it represents a poor return on Mr Palmer’s massive investment.
Voters clearly did not buy his wall-to-wall messaging.
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