Queensland election: Clive Palmer’s media man to run as part of $1.3m boost to UAP’s war chest

Clive Palmer’s media adviser Andrew Crook will run for the billionaire’s United Australia Party.

Andrew Crook. Picture: AAP

Clive Palmer’s media adviser Andrew Crook will run for the billionaire’s United Australia Party, one of nine family, friends and business associates drafted to boost the mining magnate’s ability to spend an extra $1.35m at the campaign.

The Sunshine Coast-based Mr Crook confirmed he would run for the LNP marginal seat of Chats­worth (2.9 per cent) in Brisbane, less than a week after criminal charges against him were dropped over an ­alleged kidnap plot.

He told The Australian his political slogan would be “an honest Crook for George Street” and said his six-year legal battle had shown him the state’s justice system was “broken, malicious and needs ­fixing”.

Mr Crook was charged in late 2014, along with former policeman Michael Featherstone and ex-AFL footballer Tony Smith, with one count of fraud and one count of retaliation or intimidation against a witness, as part of a plot targeting an NAB bank manager.

The Director of Public Prosecutions dropped the charges in the Brisbane Magistrates Court last week.

Mr Crook is not expected to ­actively campaign for the seat of Chatsworth.

His candidacy means Mr Palmer’s United Australia Party is currently running in 44 seats. Under Queensland’s new expenditure caps, this means the party can spend at least $6.6m on its campaign. For each seat a party stands in, it can spend $92,000, and each candidate endorsed by a party can spend an extra $58,000 on their campaign.

As well as Mr Crook, Mr Pal­mer is running his wife, Anna, her father, Alexander Sokolov, her brother, George Sokolov, and Mr Palmer’s former and current employees James McDonald, Andrew Rockliff, Craig Gunnis and Nui Harris, as well as his nephew Martin Brewster.

Convincing his known associates to be political candidates has added at least an extra $1.35m to his campaigning war-chest.

Labor has already asked the Electoral Commission of Queensland to probe Mr Palmer’s use of his flagship private company, Mineralogy, to spend an extra $1m to promote the UAP and attack the ALP by declaring it as a “third party”.

Labor argues that Mineralogy — of which Mr Palmer is sole director and secretary — should be considered an “associated entity”, with its campaign spending included in the party’s overall cap.

Instead, Mineralogy is paying its staff to work on the UAP campaign, running yellow billboards all over Brisbane and Townsville saying “Clive says … give Labor the BOOT,” and publishing anti-Labor newspaper, television and radio advertisements.

Premier Annastacia Palas­zczuk on Monday singled out Mr Palmer, saying she expected the campaign to be tough, nasty and personal.

“It’s been very personal and very nasty in the past few months ... I expect Clive Palmer to throw everything at it,” she said.

Five of Mr Palmer’s private companies, including one deregistered in 2016, have donated more than $2.12m to the UAP since the end of June, including the biggest single donation in Queensland political history: $2m from Mineralogy on September 16.

A UAP spokesman said Labor’s complaints mean it was “scared” of the minor party’s intervention. He claimed the Palas­zczuk government’s expenditure cap was designed to stop political competition.

Labor’s Attorney-General, ­Yvette D’Ath, said the reforms were designed to keep big money out of politics, after Mr Palmer spent more than $80m on advertising ahead of last year’s federal election. Labor partly blamed his intervention for then-­opposition leader Bill Shorten’s loss.

Mr Palmer is facing criminal charges for fraud, laid by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, over two payments worth more than $12m made at the 2013 federal election campaign — when he was elected to the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax — to the alleged benefit of his Palmer United Party.

He denies any wrongdoing.