After running as a federal candidate for the United Australia party in the seat of Reid, these are my observation about the reasons why UAP suffered a humiliating defeat, despite the big spending budget.
Even before I joined the party and put my nomination as candidate, I struggled to find any physical trace of the party. The party has no offices, no declared officials and no branches. The only way to contact the party was through an email on the website, and no response was received, ever.
From day one after I joined the party and put in my nomination to run as a candidate, I was shocked by the UAP structural and image problems that prevented the party from progressing and increasing its votes and its chances to win any seat for the last decade. It seems that these problems will continue in the future, as Clive insists on treating the party as a business.
Some of these problems are:
1- The party has no structure to allow internal democracy: the party has no state managing committee, no spokesperson, no policies committee and no branches.
The party is in fact not a political party, it is just a business branch of Clive Palmer’s companies.
2- Members had no say in choosing the candidates, design of the leaflets or corflutes or have a say about preferences.
3- Party centralised campaign with no enough funding for local campaigning and most of the campaign materials were not fit for local campaigning. Simply: No professional campaigning.
4- Party is not consistent in its political campaigning: it is campaigning only once every three years during the Federal election: it is a seasonal shop for seasonal products.
5- The lack of
internal democracy resulted in the big mistakes that happened in the last
election.
Some of these mistakes were:
a- The party is the only political party that gave its candidates an order early in the campaign not to talk to the media (in an email from state directors on 22 Feb 2022 after ABC journalist Elise Worthington contacted some candidates to ask few questions, which sent Clive into panic)
b- The party has no written policies: Clive makes policies on the run with no consultation of members or candidates
c- When the Ukraine conflict started, Clive disendorsed candidates that did not agree with it.
d- the biggest mistake was the disgraceful How To Vote Cards recommending UAP voters to preference Liberals ahead of freedom parties like One Nation, Great Australia party, IMOP… which caused the biggest backlash against the party among freedom voters.
e- The funding scandal resulted from Clive’s bid to prevent any member from gaining any influence by enforcing ALL candidates to use blank materials: same corflutes, same leaflets, same t-shirts, same hats… Even Facebook was the same and candidates were “customers” and not admins of their own pages. Many candidates spent huge amounts of money believing they will win significant votes or they will win their seats based on fake “internal poll”. Now the party told all of candidates: good luck, we will not pay for these campaign costs.
6- Party never had an appropriate AGM (required by the constitution) to elect its managing committee members in the states. The state party never elected any spokesperson or media committee to deal with the media on behalf of the party. Palmer is the Chairman, spokesperson on all issues, secretary, treasurer, policy maker….
7- The campaign was conducted based on lies from Clive: whenever Clive faced any situation of distrust and threat of rebellion, he resorted to lying. When his policy on Ukraine faced many resentments, he came up with the lie of internal poll predicting that UAP will get 15 – 18% of the votes, will win 4-10 seats and at least 6 senate spots, threatening that any disunity for any reason will jeopardise party’s campaign and the chance to win the seats. He even told me that I will win Reid, as I was the most vocal candidate against his dictatorship. Just to silence me by selling me and others a mirage. Clive also made promises that were never delivered: that every household will receive leaflets for local candidates sent through centralised delivery twice before election day. No single leaflet was sent to any household, except in Hughes.
To keep this dictatorship:
1- The party never registered at the state level in any state. Previously, the party registered in QLD, won seats and then every MP defected from the party after experiencing total dictatorship and bullying from Clive.
2- Clive photo is everywhere: on every How to Vote Cards, candidates’ leaflets, the Facebook, Website…. The voters know only their local candidate (which is different in each election) and Clive.
3- Centralisation of the campaign and the funding to keep all resources in the hands of Clive. Even after AEC starts refunding seats that got more than 4%, the money will go to Clive, to kill any prospect of self-sufficient branch.
The party had the biggest budget among parties that contested the last 3 federal elections. Most of the budget was wasted on centralised campaigning, which did not win UAP many votes. We are aware that many of the campaign materials were big waste that will be destroyed by the tip. The millions wasted should have been allocated to local branches to manage local campaigns in each seat.
We noted on the campaign that the voters’ refused to vote for UAP as they refused to vote for “Clive party”, because “Clive needs to pay his collapsed Nickel company workers” or because they do not want to re-elect Morrison’s government through a dodgy preference deal. We discovered after the election was over that these arguments were the biggest hurdles that poisoned the UAP campaign. For the last decade, the party was considered by voters as a back door to re-elect LNP or/and a company of a corrupt businessman.
Many members now believe that UAP was created to save LNP from collapse. Otherwise, why is UAP refusing to win any seat in state elections, if we know that 4.5% of the votes are enough to win a seat on the NSW Legislative Council on full quota?
Now, after many members and candidates started campaigning inside the party against the dictatorship, and in a bid for Clive to refute their claims, he announced that he will “buy” a party in NSW and Victoria and will run candidates in these states. We were told at one of the Zoom meetings with Clive that contacts were already done with the Open Sydney party to buy it, and that party refused. Clive insists that his millions will buy one of these smaller parties to run candidates in the next Vic and NSW state elections, Nov 2022 & Mar 2023.
Why buy a party if you could have registered state parties?
Just to silence the dissent from the members and candidates after the humiliating defeat on 21 May?
Currently, we are building a political branch in Reid and surrounding areas. We know that the hundreds of thousands of UAP voters have good hearts and intention to vote for the party that let them down. We are trying to find them an alternative: democratic, transparent and grass-root alternative. We will announce the details of this movement soon.
Knowing the reality of the UAP dictatorship under Clive, we expect Ralph Babet, who was elected to the senate for Victoria, to defect soon from the party. Remember that the average time needed for any politician to defect from UAP was 2 years. Remember Jakie Lambie, Glenn Lazarus, Alex Douglas, Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu, Carl Judge, Alison Anderson, Larisa Lee…?
I give Ralph
less than 1 year to defect.
