How Clive Palmer dished up deal

ON Wednesday night, Clive Palmer was in a good mood. Holding court at a popular Sydney restaurant, he was on the verge of another coup.

Palmer United Party founder Clive Palmer and his three elected senators this week. Picture: Sam Mooy

ON Wednesday night, Clive Palmer was in an ebullient mood. Holding court at a popular Chinese restaurant in Sydney's Sussex Street, near the Labor Party's head office, Palmer was on the verge of another political coup.

Having already spent between $8 million and $12m getting three candidates elected to the Senate - not to mention himself to the House of Representatives, pending a recount - he was about to cement his influence over politics for the first term of the Abbott government.

Ricky Muir, the neophyte politician from a small town in Victoria, had agreed to join his team, pledging to vote in a bloc with the Palmer United Party's senators.

The announcement would be made public the next morning, but a Chinese banquet to celebrate the "recruitment" of Muir came first. It wasn't a wild affair; Palmer was due at the nearby ABC studios for a pre-arranged appearance on Lateline.

But it was an opportunity for Muir to get to know the three senators with whom he would make or break key legislation opposed by Labor and the Greens in the upcoming parliamentary term.

After dinner, the entourage - minus Muir, whose presence would give away the game - piled into a big black van and took the short drive to the ABC.

Palmer refers to his media appearances as "feeding the chooks" - an old Joh Bjelke-Petersen line - but this was more of a tease. Yes, he told host Tony Jones, he had an agreement with another senator.

Was it the Motoring Enthusiast Party senator-elect, Jones asked?

"You'll have to come to the press conference tomorrow to find out," a playful Palmer replied.

His senators - Glenn Lazarus, Jacqui Lambie and Zhenya Wang - appeared on Lateline in non-speaking roles, sitting in a row in the background of the studio.

The announcement the next morning was the Clive Palmer show: an 11-minute press conference that revealed little, except a threat that it would be a "very, very, very, very cold winter" unless the government negotiated with them as a group, and gave them extra resources.

The announcement was the culmination of weeks of talks between the six newly elected minor-party senators.

The discussions came to a head late last week when Ashley Fenn, Victorian director for Family First, which will have Bob Day in the Senate from July 1 next year, told Palmer of his interest in a possible deal. A few days later, Palmer had hosted all of the Senate newcomers - with the exception of the Liberal Democrats' David Leyonhjelm - at a meeting in Brisbane.

The senators had been talking over the phone since it became apparent they would hold the balance of power in the Senate after July next year. When they came face to face in Brisbane, it became clear a formal alliance between Palmer and Family First was not going to work.

Family First was wary of being swallowed by the coal baron's juggernaut. But it still wanted to be part of the deal that the six newly elected minor-party senators had struck to work together.

At stake were the resources and staff that would be available to them. Family First wanted the staff resources of the crossbenchers to be pooled and run as a centralised executive, with specialists in different areas of government policy, and the senators sharing their research and advice.

Fine in principle, but difficult to organise in practice when each senator had their own ideological obsessions, and would want to hire staff with like-minded views. And whoever was hired would obviously be highly influential when it came to advising the gang of six which way to vote.

By the next day, the idea of an alliance had been reduced to just the Palmer senators and Muir.

Before sealing the deal with Palmer, Muir and his gatekeeper, Keith Littler - the party founder, a Queensland filmmaker and rev-head who hadn't even meet Muir in the flesh before he was pre-selected - consulted the man who helped get him elected.

Glenn Druery, the master of the dark arts of preference harvesting, told them to join with Palmer. They would be far more powerful as one of a group of four than as a lone voice.

Druery has stood for public office multiple times, for a variety of parties, but these days he spends his time organising tiny, single-issue parties, corralling their sometimes fractious, eccentric and often egotistical candidates and advising them how they can get elected with minuscule primary support via a tight swap of preferences.

It works. Druery was the man behind the infamous "tablecloth" ballot paper at the NSW state election in 1999, when 264 candidates from 81 parties stood for election.

Druery's triumph was to get Malcolm Jones, from the Outdoor Recreation Party, elected with 0.2 per cent of the vote. NSW changed its electoral rules to prevent a recurrence, but the commonwealth has done little, apart from making it a bit harder to register a party.

Although they all say they are "like-minded", the six incoming senators' life experiences and characters vary widely.

Day is a seasoned political operative, self-made businessman and former Liberal Party member; Leyonhjelm has been around the edges of politics for years and has a consistent, if perhaps fringe, libertarian approach to issues.

Although Palmer himself is a former backroom operator who learnt his politics during the Bjelke-Petersen era, none of the three Palmer senators has any political experience: Lazarus, the rugby league legend nicknamed "the Brick with Eyes"; Wang, a mining executive for one of Palmer's projects; and Lambie, the forthright ex-military policewoman who refers to herself as Pauline Hanson with balls.

Then there's Muir, a nobody from nowhere until he was elected with 0.5 per cent of the vote. He's an unemployed timber mill manager with five kids who loves to go bush in his four-wheel drive.

After some initial exposure that focused on a kangaroo-poo-throwing home video, he had been locked away from the media and even from his own Victorian party members.

The motorists' policies consist of one or two paragraphs on a handful of issues. In an interview with The Australian, he said he was having an "'awesome time" since the election, but admitted it was all a bit overwhelming.

The first part of the plot of the 1930s Frank Capra classic movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington could easily be adapted to the Ricky Muir story. A governor of a mid-western state picks a boy scout leader to fill a casual vacancy in the Senate, believing his naivety will allow him to be easily manipulated. Once in Washington, Smith becomes a figure of fun, branded a bumpkin. He falls under the influence of a wily senator. Sound familiar?

Of course, by the end of the movie, Smith realises he has been played for a fool and makes a triumphant stand against money politics. Who knows how the Ricky Muir story will end?