Not voting in House of Representatives is tactical: Clive Palmer

CLIVE Palmer has defended his parliamentary voting record as a ploy to give his party the upper hand in Senate negotiations.

CLIVE Palmer has defended his dismal parliamentary voting record as a deliberate tactical ploy to give his party the upper hand in Senate negotiations with the Abbott government.

The Palmer United Party leader and member for Fairfax, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, is regularly absent from the House of Representatives when votes occur. He often steers clear of Canberra altogether when parliament is sitting.

Again missing from parliament yesterday, Mr Palmer defended his voting record at a press conference in Brisbane, where he confirmed PUP’s support for asylum-seeker policy changes.

“From our party’s perspective, I don’t want to vote too much in the House of Representatives,” Mr Palmer said. “Once I vote in the House of Representatives, it indicates to the government and the opposition what our position will be when legislation reaches the Senate.

“That undermines our ability to negotiate when they already know six weeks before how we stand on an issue.

“ I’ve sacrificed that ability so we’ve got a greater leverage in negotiating in the Senate.”

The three PUP senators hold the balance of power in the upper house.

The outspoken politician and businessman said he had “no concern” about his absences, or what voters in his electorate would think.

This week, Mr Palmer’s bid to launch a Senate inquiry into Queensland’s Liberal National Party government was stymied after federal Labor refused to let it examine the previous Bligh Labor government.

Yesterday, he blamed the Greens for reneging on a promise to support the inquiry, which would have seen a committee of five senators hold hearings into public governance in more than 10 Queensland towns and cities.

The Greens instead sided with the Coalition to expand the inquiry’s scope to include Anna Bligh’s government.

“The reason that didn’t go ahead was the Greens … the Greens put in writing to us their position (and) two hours or three hours before the (Senate vote), they were unable to deliver on what they said,” said Mr Palmer, a former life member of the LNP.