By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
If there’s anything Clive Palmer loves to burn his money on more than federal elections, it’s litigation. Particularly, the expensive, obstructive and often entirely fruitless kind.
Those two worlds collided on Wednesday when the High Court delivered the billionaire mining magnate another stinging loss, which could restrict his ability to play political chaos agent at the upcoming federal election.
Clive Palmer has come a cropper in a predictable way in his latest litigation.
For reasons probably only known to Palmer, his United Australia Party was voluntarily deregistered with the Australian Electoral Commission in 2022, shortly after his $110 million man Ralph Babet (the cost of the election ad spend) won a seat in the Senate. One suggestion raised in the most recent court tussle was whether Palmer was trying to dodge transparency obligations that would force him to reveal just how much money he’s burning as a major political donor.
Palmer wanted to re-register the UAP ahead of this year’s poll, but was barred from doing so until the following election under electoral laws. That means that the UAP name and logo won’t appear on the ballot paper.
Palmer labelled the Electoral Act “draconian and unconstitutional”, arguing that it breaches the implied freedom of political communication, and hired Sydney silk Dominic Villa, SC, to take the case to the country’s top court. On Wednesday, the High Court held that the laws were valid, and ordered Palmer and Babet to pay the costs of the case.
For those counting, Palmer is now 0-5 before the High Court. And that’s not even counting last year’s decision to reject a special leave application related to an ongoing legal saga involving his alleged breaches of the Corporations Act. We reached out to the big guy’s peeps for a comment but, unusually, didn’t get a response.
Not that Palmer won’t be back soon. This week, Labor and the Coalition struck a deal to pass laws lowering caps for political donations. No surprises who’s promised to challenge those laws … in the High Court.
Aunty’s teal tribe
Can you smell it in the air readers? The oncoming storm of a federal election campaign? More likely a damp squib come polling day in either April or May. Avengers are assembling - the latest being a new community independent preparing to launch Operation Overlord on the Gold Coast beaches of the Liberal National Party stronghold of Moncrieff.
The Voices of Moncrieff group recently chose former Queensland Rail executive Nicole Arrowsmith to take on the LNP’s saxophone-playing Coalition MP Angie Bell.
Nicole Arrowsmith, independent candidate for Moncrieff on the Gold Coast, sporting her baby blue - not teal - jacket.
Arrowsmith’s team is distancing herself from the “teal independent” label. And to be completely fair, her nicole4moncrieff.com.au website is not bedecked in teal – more like baby blue.
But Arrowsmith was selected by the Voices of Moncrieff community group, and we hear there is some Climate 200 money in there as well. So far, so teal.
While Arrowsmith might not be formally joining the grouping, she has done one very teal thing – hired a former ABC journalist. In this case, ex-ABC Indonesia correspondent George Roberts who has signed on to run the campaign. Roberts, who also worked as a federal political reporter, a taxi driver and once ran a furniture shop importing Indonesian furniture, left the public broadcaster last July.
He is joining, former ABC types including the member for Goldstein Zoe Daniel and staffers Francis Leach, Peter McEvoy, Angela Pippos, Jim Middleton and Gillian Bennett. When you are onto a good thing …
Nabbing the big guy
CBD recently brought word that The Guardian had made a big shock signing, nabbing The Australian Financial Review’s Canberra bureau chief Tom McIlroy to fill one of the many vacant roles in its troubled Press Gallery bureau, signing him up to work alongside political editor Karen Middleton as chief political correspondent.
The Prime Minister is a huge Gough Whitlam/Blue Poles fanboy. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
That’s only the second most important bit of news for McIlroy, who’s a (soon-to-be) published author, with a new book, Blue Poles: Jackson Pollock, Gough Whitlam and the Painting that Changes a Nation, set to hit the shelves later this month.
McIlory’s work, on the National Gallery of Australia’s once-controversial abstract expressionist masterpiece, which the Whitlam government helped the nascent gallery purchase for the astonishing sum (in 1973) of $1.3 million, has been a few years in the making. But the biggest coup is yet to come. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese himself is set to launch it at the National Library in Canberra next month.
Now, the PM is a busy man with an election looming. And plenty of press gallery types have tried to get the leader to their weddings, book launches and other soirees. How did McIlroy succeed where others failed? Well, we hear Albo can’t stop talking about Blue Poles and recounting the story of its acquisition by Labor legend Whitlam, while also pointing out that it was his government that gave the National Gallery a much-needed funding boost, while the Coalition left it in a state of leaky disrepair. No doubt, he’ll find a way to mention that as well and also that the painting is worth north of $500 million today.
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