Clive Palmer’s cash lures One Nation talent

Pauline Hanson’s star candidate demanded $10,000 a month before defecting to Clive Palmer, who is promising much more.

Jen Sackley, a former One Nation candidate for the seat of Cook, but now a candidate for Clive Palmer's United Australia Party, poses for a photograph, in Townsville, Friday, August 10, 2018. The businessman and former MP is building a new support base for his United Australia Party in north Queensland, and plans to stand candidates in all 151 seats at the election due by May 2019. (AAP Image/Michael Chambers) NO ARCHIVING

A One Nation candidate demanded to be paid $10,000 a month before defecting to the start-up party bankrolled by Clive Palmer as his launching pad back into national politics.

Jen Sackley was a star performer for Pauline Hanson at last November’s state election in Queensland, running a strong second to Labor in the Cape York Peninsula seat of Cook. She jumped to Mr Palmer’s new United Australia Party after One Nation baulked at paying what she wanted, and as the wealthy businessman and one-time MP opened his wallet to plunder talent from ­Senator Hanson.

Ms Sackley, 60, has been employed by Mr Palmer to pull off the political equivalent of mission ­impossible — revive his parliamentary career in Townsville, the city brought to its knees by the collapse two years ago of his Queensland Nickel plant with the loss of almost 800 jobs.

The talk was he would never again be able to show his face there, such was local anger at how most of the sacked refinery workers were denied entitlements or short-changed. Mr Palmer insists the blame lies with the liquidators who are pursuing him and his companies over more than $300 million in debts racked by the failed QNI venture. And ­despite complaints that he is trying to buy his way back into public life, there are signs that his self-promoting is working.

Mr Palmer has now confirmed he will run for the Townsville-based division of Herbert, the tightest federal seat in the country held by Labor’s Cathy O’Toole by only 37 votes. “I’ve moved to Townsville, I’ve got an apartment there,” Mr Palmer told The Weekend Australian. “There is no doubt about it … I will nominate.”

Clive Palmer at a press conference where he announced a $10,000 donation to the Patriots Australia Military Motorcycle Club Townsville Chapter. Picture: Cameron Laird.

Ms Sackley’s defection last month to the UAP followed that of former One Nation senator Brian Burston, whose position in parliament provides a fast-track for the rebadged Palmer party to be registered by the Australian Electoral Commission. Other One Nation candidates have been told they can expect campaign funding worth up to $100,000 if they join the UAP.

Mr Palmer has also launched an advertising blitz to rehabilitate his battered image in Townsville, where he yesterday announced a $10,000 donation to the Patriots Australian Military Motorcycle Club, the ­latest in a string of cash grants to community groups. Radio spots trumpeting his intention to reopen the QNI nickel refinery are running wall-to-wall on local commercial radio, backed by TV ads and social media. He is also spending $250,000 a month on a national rollout of billboards.

Dismissing the outlay, Mr Palmer said it was “somewhere less than three days’ of my ­income”, a nod to how his troubled finances were turned around by a big court win in January over ­Chinese iron ore mine developer Citic Pacific, which was ordered to pay him $350 million plus royalties believed to be worth $200m a year.

Mr Palmer said Ms Sackley had been hired as UAP’s full-time north Queensland secretary, but would not be drawn on her pay. In May, while she was still with One Nation, she approached Senator Hanson to stump up a salary matching what she earned as a child safety investigator for the Queensland government.

Texts between Ms Sackley and Senator Hanson’s chief of staff, James Ashby, spell out her demands while they were negotiating for her to become One Nation’s candidate in the far north Queensland federal seat of Leichhardt.

“My regular income allows me close to $10,000 a month in my hand,” Ms Sackley wrote on June 14. “I would need to maintain this level of income or close to it to campaign with my team full-time.”

Mr Ashby replied: “I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable committing $10,000 a month. I’m sorry.”

Clive Palmer announces a $15,000 sponsorship package for the Saints Cricket Club in Townsville. Picture: Cameron Laird.

Ms Sackley said Senator Hanson had told her separately that the request was “not unreasonable”, and being turned down by Mr Ashby was not why she had left One Nation. “I have no doubt I have value as a human being and I think that’s a fair enough statement,” she said of the pay claim. “Candidates raise a lot of money for parties … and I don’t think it’s fair that the recognition is never there.”

Asked if promises of cash were being used to lure other One ­Nation candidates to UAP, Ms Sackley said: “Absolutely not.”

But grazier Sharon Lohse, who ran for One Nation in the central west Queensland seat of Callide at last year’s state election and hopes to contest the federal division of Flynn under the Hanson banner, said she had been offered campaign funding of $100,000 if she switched to “another party”.

The deal had been put to her this week by former One Nation state president Jim Savage, who helped bring Senator Hanson back into the fold ahead of her re-election to federal parliament in 2016 but then fell out with her. Ms Lohse said: “The conversation … led him to say he had an offer and asked whether I would consider running for a federal seat with another party where they would assist me in a way that One Nation couldn’t. He said this party was offering me $100,000 for its campaign. He wouldn’t say which party it was but when he talked about the money Jim made a reference to a ‘he’ as the person making the offer.”

Mr Savage rejected Ms Lohse’s account, denying he had been acting on behalf of Mr Palmer.

However, Mr Palmer confirmed he had a recent discussion with the One Nation stalwart about “the possibility of him joining our party”. Neither would go into details.

The cherrypicking of talent has extended to the recruitment by Ms Sackley of two other One ­Nation candidates, Sue Bertuch and Allan Evans, who ran in the north Queensland seats of Mulgrave and Townsville respectively.

Despite being NSW-based, Senator Burston has appointed to his staff former One Nation candidate Belinda Johnson, a one-time prison officer from Townsville with a colourful political pedigree, and Senator Hanson’s former right hand in the Brisbane office, Saraya Beric.

Asked if he was trying to buy his way back into parliament after his 2013-16 stint as MP for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax for the defunct Palmer United Party, Mr Palmer said: “That’s not true, of course. All it does is show that if you do have access to funds, you’ve access to being able to put your ideas forward. You can put forward a very bad idea and no one will vote for it.”

One Nation, Katter’s Australian Party and potentially UAP will vie for the protest vote on the Right, a worry for Malcolm Turnbull after One Nation polled strongly at last month’s Longman by-election and the LNP’s primary vote plunged to 29.6 per cent.