The Sketch: Clive Palmer cops a spray as new signing bursts on the united ship

A sprinkler goes off under Clive Palmer’s lectern. Picture: AAP

Back when Clive Palmer was promising Titanic II, it was possible to briefly shelve niggling doubts (such as his record) and picture that tragic vessel reborn, ­finally arriving in New York in all its bittersweet splendour. Palmer never did deliver Titanic II, but yesterday he sort of honoured the original when unwanted water put an end to his proceedings.

But first time as tragedy, second time as farce — in which spirit Palmer’s Parliament House press conference was ended by a lawn sprinkler erupting in front of his lectern, though it was admittedly less like an iceberg puncture and more like a rogue bidet.

As we ponder the water spraying willy-nilly and folks scattering in front of a “Bringing people ­together” banner, it would be ­fitting to ask the questions ­normally asked in times of ­pandemonium: Where are we? What the hell is going on?

Clive Palmer leaves a press conference after a water sprinkler is turned on. Picture: AAP.

The setting was a parliamentary courtyard, where Palmer had announced his plans for a comeback or, in other words, what promises to be the most bafflingly pointless sequel since Highlander II. (Here’s how Roger Ebert opened his half-star review of that flick: “This movie has to be seen to be believed. On the other hand, maybe that’s too high a price to pay.”)

With the Palmer United Party moniker sadly consigned to history’s InSinkErator, Palmer has gone with his original choice: United Australia Party. Given Palmer’s record of keeping a party together is not far behind Pauline Hanson’s, that “United” is doing some seriously heavy lifting in the optimism stakes.

As if to underscore this, the presser’s other star attraction — or at least until the surprise hydration — was senator Brian Burston, the latest in the long production line of Hanson’s disillusioned and departed. As announced yesterday, he is to be UAP’s leader in the Senate. This came as a surprise of some heft to everyone who’d heard him tell the Senate a short time earlier he would be sitting as an independent. (He also ­expressed his desire to be a whip, which as an independent would have to involve some self-flagellation.)

Then Labor MP Cathy O’Toole arrived to tear Palmer a new one over unpaid entitlements for workers at Palmer’s nickel refinery in her electorate. One person characterised O’Toole’s intervention as the derailing of a trainwreck — which, when you think about it, is either a huge ­challenge or a case of lily-gilding.

And then the sprinkler. Some might have been tempted to fleetingly believe it was Parliament House’s immune system kicking in. More prosaically, a wrongly opened valve was given as the ­explanation for this premature ­irrigation.

Palmer eventually turned up in the safely dry environs of the public gallery in the House of Representatives to watch question time. He didn’t turn up to question time all that much when he was an actual member in the joint, but as Joni Mitchell taught us, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.