By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
CAIRNS News can cheer Clive Palmer’s latest drive into the electorate based on the radical reforms of President Trump’s revolution.
Palmer says his Trumpet of Patriots party will deliver “common sense solutions” for Australia.
We worry however, that yet another minor party on the ballot papers will simply dilute the non-major party vote. We suggest that Palmer talk more with the alternatives such as One Nation, Katter Party and Family first and maybe do some deals to maximise the effect of the non-major party vote.
Palmer has already tried and failed to do a $10 million deal with One Nation, in addition to a $500k donation to Pauline Hanson’s defamation fight with WA Senator Mehreen Faruqi. It’s a tough call for a well-established minor party like One Nation to give away its identity.
Running yet another minor party is also a tough call in a political system rigged towards the major parties, with the Greens and Teals dominating inner-city electorates and directing preferences mostly towards Labor. Perhaps the focus need to be on the Senate, to return Malcolm Roberts and Gerard Rennick plus two or three other like-minded individuals.
Palmer announced on Wednesday that he had joined Trumpet of Patriots which was reportedly first registered with the AEC in 2011, after his attempts to re-register the United Australia Party in time for the upcoming federal election failed.
Palmer told Paul Murray of Sky News that the driving force for his new political endeavour was seeing President Trump’s “tremendous victory” in the United States, as well as revelations from Elon Musk’s review into government expenditure.
Great sentiment, we say, but one that Uniparty leaders Albanese and Dutton would see as terribly distasteful. Oh sure, Dutton will do some cuts, but he and his handlers basically want “the system” to remain intact.
Mr Palmer says the nearly four trillion dollars of government expenditure being wasted in the US every year, is reflected in in Australia too. “We’ve got to change this country and we’ve got to cut back on government expense.”
Palmer also has personally experienced sabotage by the entrenched green-indigenous lobby as represented by the dizzy-headed inner-Sydney MP Tanya Plibersek, who in 2023 as Environment Minister blocked his proposed new Central Queensland Coal Mine based on bogus claims that it would damage the Great Barrier Reef and groundwater. The proposed mine site in the Galilee Basin is more than 480km from the coast.
Palmer suggests cuts to foreign aid program in order to boost spending on welfare programs, stating there are 3.7 million Australian households struggling with food security, and the government needed to “make sure we can feed all of those people”.
“It’s a real disgrace that the government’s given 600 million dollars to the PNG government to have a football team yet we’ve got hungry Australians. You know Albo only gives one million dollars a year to Food Bank for food relief. That’s just inadequate,” he said.
Palmer says there needs to be a review of spending and experts with experience in government need to be appointed to figure out how things could be run “better and cheaper”.
He specifically noted the “60,000 government consultants that are ripping this country” by getting paid “four or five times the wages per hour of public servants”. He says this money ought to go to schools and hospitals.
He also Albanese for hiring an additional 36,000 public servants, despite the increase being partly the result of a government decision to reduce the number of consultants.
Mr Palmer says his party has already conducted a poll, to be released next week, that shows Trump’s policies are popular in Australia. “People want change and they want us to come together and do that, and we’ll be doing that,” he said.
