Party is over for Palmer United, as Clive says it’s time to disband

Clive Palmer is disbanding his political party after just four years.

Clive Palmer has decided to call time on the Palmer United Party experiment, ending a meteoric rise and fall in Australian politics. Picture: Tara Croser

Clive Palmer is disbanding his political party after just four years and briefly sharing the balance­ of power through his Palmer United Party senators during the previous parliament.

The businessman, who won the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax in 2013 and three Senate seats under the PUP banner, yesterday announced that he was cancelling the registration of the political party with the Australian Electoral Commission.

In a statement released by PUP, Mr Palmer said “current political conditions were different from 2013 when the party was formed to oppose carbon and mining taxes”.

“I would like to thank the members and thousands of Australians in every state ... who have supported the party,” he said.

The party surprised most pundits with its success in the 2013 federal election and grew to become the fourth largest political party in Australia.

Mr Palmer was previously a member of Queensland’s Liberal National Party and one of its biggest donors. But a falling out with the Newman government led Mr Palmer to establish his own party, initially recruiting two ­former LNP MPs, Alex Douglas and Carl Judge, who had ­defected from the government benches.

At a federal level, the PUP fielded candidates in all 150 House of Representatives seats at the 2013 election but only Mr Palmer won. Two Palmer candidates, Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus, were elected to the Senate, later followed by Dio Wang, controlling the balance of power.

But in-fighting resulted in all state and territory members quitting the party by the end of 2014, with Senator Lambie.