The announcement of Clive Palmer’s Senate tilt is bound to have a range of people sighing, giggling behind their hands, and making light of the United Australia Party’s chances at the next election.
There will also be reference to the fact that he spent tens of millions of dollars on a campaign in 2019 but got not much in return when it came to seats in Parliament.
All that money and not a seat to show for it? Of course, that assumes a seat in Parliament was the sole objective. A seat in Parliament might have been a fringe benefit but the Palmer campaign was heavily focused on the Labor opposition.
The Coalition won.
It poses an important question as we get closer to this year’s election. Should we really be looking more deeply at what is happening out in the electorate as far as parties like the UAP are concerned rather than opting for flippancy and taking the piss?
The 2019 election, on which Palmer spent a lot of money, was conducted without a pandemic as its backdrop, and the pandemic — along with other factors that have led to voter dissatisfaction with establishment parties — could well lead to outcomes that surprise those who have not been paying attention.
Kosmos Samaras, a former Australian Labor Party campaign director, runs RedBridge Group, a consulting practice that conducts polls and surveys looking at voter attitudes.
Samaras advises caution in assessing the contemporary political landscape because there are indications of changing attitudes. People who were previously voting for the two major parties are seriously considering putting their vote elsewhere and not simply treating it as a protest vote.
There is the real prospect, Samaras says, that people will move away from the Labor Party, the Liberal Party or the Greens because of the financial and social pain caused by the pandemic and accompanying measures, and that they will vote for a party such as the UAP.
What does this mean from the point of view of analysis of what is to come?
The first thing that must happen is that the motivations of people looking at parties such as the Palmer vehicle must be understood. Their voters could change the course of the next election and the nature of electoral demographics for years.
Mocking them for considering a vote for a minor party could confirm in their mind that the major political parties do not understand, or just disregard, their concerns, and are instead obsessed with playing political games.
There is equally a need to understand that blanket advertising works. Calling the ads silly or stupid and ridiculing them out of hand dismisses the power of advertising. Old hands at campaigning saw the 2019 campaign executed by Palmer as destroying Labor’s chances of victory.
Remember the advertisement that heralded Craig Kelly as the country’s next prime minister that ran last year? People ridiculed it. They retweeted it. They flicked it on to friends. And in doing so, they provided Palmer with the best possible return on investment. They could not help themselves. It got attention. Advertising works.
What will the UAP do in a state such as Victoria where unpopular restrictions have seen the growth of a protest movement that is a bit like a cottage industry churning out one rally after another? Some rallies have even been attended by Kelly, the parliamentary leader of the UAP, advocating a vote against the established parties that imposed various health measures such as masks and lockdowns.
Major political parties and some of the elected representatives have also hardly made themselves look good. Consider the various appearances before anti-corruption commissions and auditor-general reports into various infrastructure schemes that were used as a way of shovelling funds to electorate the Coalition wanted to hold or, alternatively, win from Labor.
It might be tempting to dismiss Palmer, Kelly and the UAP as being a joke but to do so may cause us to miss the whole point.
Those people considering a vote for parties like the UAP may be leaning that way because they’ve had a gutful of what they see as major parties letting them down.
Have you written off the UAP as a joke or do you think they may be on to something? And why? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Whilst we cannot always predict the future from the past, surely we can be confident that what Palmer is doing is working to ensure the LNP retains power. It is highly unlikely the UAP will win, but the consolation prize is an LNP victory so that Palmer can work his mining concessions.
I suspect his advertising will appeal to non-sophisticated voters–most of the electorate–if only because of the colour and the claim to be breaking new ground by strongly opposing the three main establishment parties. It is cynicism writ large, but that is the underlying ethos of politics in a neoliberal age.
There is a significant minority of people in our society who are stupid enough to go to mass community gatherings without taking even the most basic protective measures such as wearing a mask, whilst in the middle of a ‘once in a century’, potentially fatal pandemic.
There is a significant minority of people in our society who are stupid enough to refuse to take protective vaccines, whilst in the middle of a ‘once in a century’, potentially fatal pandemic, despite the fact that these vaccines might save their lives.
What makes us think that this same significant minority isn’t stupid enough to, first, fall for Palmer’s line of BS and, second, vote for it?
We give our citizens too much credence at times. I have just been for a medical test and was told that I had to pay for it because the medcare rules have changed. I used a throw away line about that that not being unusual as the Prime Minister is known for lying. (No changes to Medicare). I got the “What are you on about look.” and she was the one that had explained the new rules to me.
It cost me $200 so now to relieve my frustrated acute anxiety I have to convince 200 people not to vote for the LNP Liars.
Unfortunately it’s difficult to elude Palmer’s advertising campaign. From what I’ve seen the UAP is promising nothing. They claim not to be the Greens, Liberals or Labor. Beyond that there is no platform…or have I missed something?
You missed something very big. They will abolish all mandates and this alone is enough
for a landslide away from the 2.5 party system.
And the something very big is? Clyde’s backside? His timtam bill? His ego?
You underestimate the numbers of people vaccinated and overestimate the freedumb sovcit crowd.
The only landslide will be when Clyde falls over at the top of the hill.
Freedom!
One could also say: From what I’ve seen labor is promising almost nothing. They’re not the liberals, greens or uap. Beyond a mostly inconsequential platform they have virtually nothing … or have I missed something?
If you have and manage to find it, please don’t tell AA.
He would immediately withdraw it, as he has done every other policy once proposed for the betterment of the country.
Nonsense as usual
As stated in last week’s Worm – “He ditched the last policy of any worth and I’ve already forgotten what it was“
Obviously
I would like to see a big non-partisan education campaign to increase voter awareness of how to vote, the different results of voting above and below the line, the diff between upper and lower house voting etc….the level of disengagement in the aussie voting public needs to be treated as a kind of societal problem, not necessarily on par with problem drinking and gambling mind you, but sort of in the same ballpark.
I mean, disengagement has led us to the current wretched state of zero-quality governance, and it is disengagement that allows the fundamental pillars of our democracy to be eroded by pollies, pretty much in full view of a sizeable chunk of the population who either don’t care, or don’t see it for what it is.
That education needs to start early in the piece and continue throughout. I was fortunate in secondary schooling years when we hit VCE HSC in 1989 that the English theme text were Nelson Mandela’s No Easy Walk to Freedom, Orwell’s 1984, Robert Bolt’s A Man for all Seasons, and – my all time favorite – Machiavelli’s the Prince. It still have them.
Clive Palmer et al are the fat old white men version of the young white men on 8kun and previously 4chan. On one hand they tell everyone they are in it for the lulz and they’re not really serious. On the other hand, they are either actually really serious, or they are being manipulated by someone really serious. Best not to laugh at them.
We are in the age of the end of the reign of smug white men. They know that, and they are going to make sure we suffer before they go. Palmer’s advertising campaign in the last election had results, and I cannot understand why people who should know better claim that it didn’t because he didn’t get a seat. That’s not why he ran that campaign. In running the campaign that he did, he proved that the big lie works, as did the dirty social media campaign that the LNP ran. Maybe the ALP and the Greens and the independents who oppose the LNP in its current form should put their heads together and run a campaign aimed not at getting them in but at keeping Palmer, the LNP, and any party or individual of Palmer’s ilk (ie far right) out.
Good point, one thinks this is the raison d’etre, we see young fogeys on the street for ‘freedom protests’ in a threatening coalition including fringe or extremist groups, for both legacy and alt media focus on content denigrating ‘science’ but promoting cliched Kochian ‘freedom & liberty’.
However, like Capitol Hill (Tea Party before) many middle aged or older who watch from afar can then be conditioned by legacy media (plus social media), or rabbit holes like Sky AD/Spectator etc., through old (originally WASP anti-semitic) tropes like ‘the great replacement’; LNP operators hope that many old Labor can be peeled off.
This has been identified in the UK, EU and US by research, i.e. traits of ‘collective narcissism‘ and ‘pensioner populism‘ by leveraging ageing demographics to vote for nativist and/or libertarian policies masquerading as ‘conservative‘ aka Brexit, Trump, Hungary, Poland etc. for authoritarian socioeconomic policies to follow (too often via Koch think tanks).