Disillusioned former foot soldier slams General Clive's 'army'

GLENN Mudie saw himself as a powerful cog in the Palmer United Party's campaign machinery but on election eve he walked away in disgust.

Glenn Mudie

GLENN Mudie saw himself as a vital and powerful cog in the Palmer United Party's campaign machinery as it gathered momentum on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

But on election eve, Mr Mudie, who was handling the Fisher campaign for Clive Palmer's running mate, Coolum dinosaur resort manager Bill Schoch, walked away in disgust and sent out SOS messages to everyone he knew to urge them to vote for someone else.

Mr Mudie said that if his conscience had not led him to abandon the PUP the day before voters went to the polls, the seat of Fisher would not have been won, as latest counting suggests, by the Liberal National Party's Mal Brough.

The 56-year-old sales consultant yesterday told The Australian he became deeply troubled over internal issues including a requirement that everyone in the party, including candidates, had to see themselves in a military sense as lowly privates, answering to the General -- Mr Palmer.

"I was told by Bill Schoch, 'We do not ever question anything that Clive wants us to do'," he said.

"It was Clive's way or the highway, and we were not to express our own opinions about how things should go.

"It was getting ridiculous. I thought it was undemocratic.

"At first I believed in the party's messages and its ethics. I was attracted to the idea of a businessman running for politics. I came to realise there is Clive and there are his puppets.

"I absolutely regret what has happened. I'm an Aussie and I love my country. It was not until the last week of the campaign that I started seeing the truth. This was Clive's show.

"After seeing the circus that's gone on here, I strongly believe now that the system has let us down. This has to be a wake-up call for everyone who didn't ask why Clive was running up here when he lives 200km away on the Gold Coast."

Mr Mudie said the last straw was the party's promise of a job in one of the Palmer companies for a young amputee in return for her handing out how-to-vote cards on election day -- a cynical bid, he said, to garner a sympathy vote.

Mr Schoch hit back at his former campaign manager, describing Mr Mudie as a turncoat deliberately planted by the LNP to destabilise the contest for Fisher, previously held by Peter Slipper. the disgraced former parliamentary Speaker.

The dissent comes as Mr Schoch declared he would win Fisher, contrary to early indications from the counting by the Australian Electoral Commission.

"Glenn was probably an LNP plant who was put on our ship to drive it on to the rocks, but that didn't happen," Mr Schoch said.

"He played a very significant role in getting our campaign together, but he left because he did not get his own way. He took with him our intellectual property -- material about staffing for the booths and contact details -- but we had other good people around us who rallied around.

"Glenn is overstating his importance if he thinks he has cost me the seat. I don't believe his leaving made any difference whatsoever. The machine rolled on. He was either totally incompetent or a plant who tried to get in to destabilise everything. Now he's showing his true colours.

"But I can tell you that I have won the seat. We will probably get 56 per cent after all the preferencing."

Mr Schoch rejected as "completely untrue" Mr Mudie's claims about the amputee. He rejected Mr Mudie's claims that he and Mr Palmer had run in the Sunshine Coast seats only to influence his business interests there.

"I was impressed with Glenn's enthusiasm, but he rubbed everyone up the wrong way. He has his own political ambitions."