Clive’s Senate hopeful has business achievements of Titanic proportions

A United Australia Party Senate candidate has an impressive CV — most of it from working for its leader.

United Australia Party Senate candidate James McDonald. Picture: Tara Croser

Clive Palmer candidate James ­McDonald, who is well-placed to win a Senate spot, puts forward an impressive business resume peppered with international triumphs, but much of that experience has come working for the Queensland billionaire.

With recent polling finding support for Mr Palmer’s United Australia Party is substantially stronger than expected, and it emerging yesterday that the ­Coalition had entered a preference deal with him, attention has fallen on other key candidates on the UAP’s ticket.

Mr McDonald’s UAP biography states he has “extensive international business experience and has been involved in many high-profile mergers and acquisitions” and had been “directly involved in raising more than $US150 billion ($214bn)”.

The West Australian Senate candidate’s LinkedIn profile expands further on his past employment, and states he was the “global marketing director” for Blue Star Line, from 2012 to 2014.

Blue Star Line is the company Mr Palmer is using to execute his plans to build Titanic II, which he has said would be a replica of the ship that sank in the ­Atlantic Ocean in 1912. Mr Palmer announced the plan in 2012, on the centenary of the disaster, but construction, due to start in 2014, has been delayed. He has said the ship would be built in China — the largest non-military vessel to be built there.

Mr McDonald has been UAP’s national director since February 2018.

His resume states he left Blue Star Line in October 2014, and in February 2015 became Mr Palmer’s chief of staff. Mr McDonald could not be reached yesterday.

Mr Palmer, who is subject to ongoing action by the federal government over the collapse of his Queensland Nickel Refinery in Townsville, was elected as an MP in 2013.

He spent one term in parliament as leader of his Palmer United Party, as the United Australia Party was then called.

After Mr Palmer left office in 2016, Mr ­McDonald worked as a “senior managing consultant” at Mr Palmer’s Palmer Sea Reef golf course, at Port Douglas in north Queensland, until February last year “to oversee the golf course and club house”.

Mr McDonald, who completed a bachelor of business management, tourism, hospitality and marketing at the University of South Australia, started his career working as a travel agent for three years, his LinkedIn biography states.

After this, he worked as a “travel and logistics manager” at ­Imagination Investor Commun­ications and as a “project man­ager” for Imagination Europe.

Imagination Investor Communications is a London-based advertising and marketing company.

UAP’s website states Mr ­McDonald “worked with major global brands such as Facebook, General Motors, Agricultural Bank of China, and Petrobus co-ordinating their marketing, communications and logistics being directly involved in raising over $US150bn”.

“James says it is an honour and privilege to be endorsed by the United Australian Party to lead the Senate team in WA,” the UAP website says.