Possible Senate bid for Palmer

Clive Palmer has positioned his United Australia Party to back him for a surprise tilt at the Senate.

United Australia Party leader Clive Palmer is yet to endorse a candidate in the Queensland seat of Herbert. Picture: AAP

Clive Palmer has positioned his United Australia Party to back him for a surprise tilt at the Senate and prove his professed intent to return to parliament is serious.

Despite the millions he has poured into promoting the new party, its best shot at getting a candidate up is in the Senate from Mr Palmer’s home state of Queensland, or possibly Tasmania. Its one existing parliamentarian, One Nation Senate defector Brian Burston, will struggle to be returned in NSW.

Mr Palmer has insisted he would stand for the House of Representatives in the Townsville-based seat of Herbert, but available polling shows that UAP’s vote is well short of putting him in the running to win there.

And while the billionaire businessman has trumpeted the preselection of candidates in 134 federal seats across all states and the territories, the UAP is yet to finalise its Senate ticket in Queensland, leaving open the ­option that he could change tack and go for the upper house.

Adding to the intrigue, the Palmer party has not endorsed a candidate in Herbert, even though Townsville has been a focus of the national advertising spending that is costing about $1 million a week coupled with generous donations from Mr Palmer to local community and sports groups. He had also promised to move his family to the north Queensland city to pave the way for his nomination.

This, too, failed to eventuate, heightening speculation that Mr Palmer’s intention all along had been to run for the Senate, the easier challenge, or that he would sit the election out.

A special Newspoll for The Australian nine weeks ago, conducted at the height of Mr Palmer’s TV advertising blitz during the Australian Open tennis tournament, found that the UAP’s ­primary vote in Townsville was 8 per cent, a relatively meagre ­return on his hefty investment.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation was bracketed with Katter’s Australian Party on 9 per cent, and the Greens were on 7 per cent — too far behind to stop either of the majors, each on 32 per cent primary. Herbert is the most marginal seat in the country, held by Labor’s Cathy O’Toole by only 37 votes.

Mr Palmer’s ad spree has puzzled the major parties. Though wary of his spending power, strategists for Labor and Queensland’s Liberal National Party say they are mystified by Mr Palmer’s decision to step back into politics after his deeply unhappy term in parliament in 2013-16.

That began with the Palmer United Party riding high with three senators and its voluble leader catapulted into the lower house from the election that brought the Coalition to power federally under Tony Abbott. It ended with PUP a spent and discredited force, down to one senator, and Mr Palmer failing to recontest his seat of Fairfax on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in the face of certain defeat there at the 2016 election.