Political maverick Clive Palmer detonated a pre-election bomb on Wednesday when he announced a new political party with the slogan ‘Make Australia Great Again’.
The Trumpet of Patriots party will rely on the mining magnate’s deep pockets to contest every seat in the House of Representatives and those up for election in the Senate.
Its aim is to imitate US President Donald Trump by ‘draining the swamp in Canberra’.
‘The Trumpets of patriots will put Australians first and make Australia great again,’ Mr Palmer proudly pronounced.
His prediction that the party’s leader, Suellen Wrightson, will become the ‘next Prime Minister of Australia’ was immediately branded ‘plainly potty’ by a seasoned journalist.
Mr Palmer, who will serve as the party’s chairman, mimicked Trump’s own disdain for ‘mainstream’ journalists when he fired back: ‘Well it’s certainly not potty’.
‘That’s because it’s a very low entry for journalists in this country that don’t really have the proper analytic skills,’ he added.
‘If we have a look about, you’ll find in the coming days that President Trump’s policy in Australia has the support of more than 30 per cent of Australians, and you’d see a party taking that same support up against the Coalition.
Political maverick Clive Palmer (pictured left) detonated a pre-election bomb on Wednesday morning when he announced a new political party with the slogan ‘Make Australia Great Again’
Its aim is to imitate US President Donald Trump by ‘draining the swamp in Canberra’
‘It happened in the United States. It’ll happen in Australia too.’
It’s certainly a massive gamble, given Mr Palmer shelled out almost $125million last election for his now-defunct United Australia Party – for not much at all.
Indeed, all he has to show for that princely sum is just one seat in the Senate, belonging to part-time real estate agent and full-time provocateur Ralph Babet.
But what does the Trumpet of Patriots party actually stand for? What is Mr Palmer’s vision for Australia? How does one go about ‘draining the swamp’?
Here, Daily Mail Australia takes a look at what we know so far about the party’s policies.
Cutting government waste
This is central to the party’s identity and is a clear echo of the Elon Musk-run department of government efficiency or DOGE in the US.
In fact, Mr Palmer name-checked the X and Tesla owner.
‘Our biggest policy is to cut government waste, much as Elon Musk is doing in the United States,’ he said.
However, actual details about how the Trumpet of Patriots would go about slimming down government bureaucracy in Canberra were thin on the ground.
‘Our biggest policy is to cut government waste, much as Elon Musk is doing in the United States,’ Mr Palmer said
Mr Palmer suggested his party planned to trim the red tape in the ‘same way as Musk’.
‘We plan to have a team of people…who can go through the procedures in Australia that sees more and more of the public sector having more and more of our capital,’ he added.
‘You’ve got to realise the public sector doesn’t create wealth and it’s the private sector that does. So the more money we’ve got in the private sector creating jobs, wealth and growth the bigger taxation and the better taxation base we’ve got.’
Recognising only two genders
In a carbon copy of the US President, Mr Palmer said his new party would only recognise two genders – male and female.
‘We don’t want men in women’s sports and we don’t want males dressed as females confusing our children in our schools,’ Mr Palmer said.
‘All children should be entitled to a safe and normal environment in our schools and public toilets.
‘All children must be entitled to decide who they are and what their sexual orientation is when they’re adults, and not have it foisted on them before they have even commenced puberty.’
Trump signed an executive order recognising only male and female sexes just days after being sworn in as President.
Trump signed an executive order recognising only male and female sexes just days after being sworn in as President
Recalling Kevin Rudd
Mr Palmer also claimed he would recall former PM Kevin Rudd as the Australian ambassador to the US, following damaging revelations of the former prime minister’s bad-mouthing of Trump.
‘It’s time to bring Kevin Rudd back from Washington,’ Mr Palmer said.
‘There’s not too many ambassadors in Washington that have insulted the president of the United States.
‘Kevin Rudd ranks alone in that and Australia needs an elected representative in Washington that can support our nation in a time of toil, in a time where our living standards are declining and when our people are hungry.’
Mr Rudd has in the past labelled the President a ‘village idiot’, a ‘traitor to the West’ and ‘the most destructive president in history’.
Trump has previously signalled his disapproval of Mr Rudd, branding him ‘nasty’.
‘I don’t know much about him. I heard he was a little bit nasty,’ Trump told GB News last year.
‘I hear he’s not the brightest bulb, but I don’t know much about him. If he’s at all hostile, he will not be there long.’
Mr Rudd, whose job is to advance Australia’s interests with the new Trump administration, has in the past labelled the President a ‘village idiot’, a ‘traitor to the West’ and ‘the most destructive president in history’
Feeding the hungry
Mr Palmer has long campaigned to raise awareness about the hunger crisis in Australia.
But his solution to the food crisis is also apparently rooted in cutting government waste.
‘There’s over 3.7 million Australian households in this country that don’t have enough food, that can’t afford it because of the cost of living that the Labor Party has brought upon them because of the excess spending and waste in our public service, we find Australian children going to be at night hungry,’ Mr Palmer said.
The billionaire claimed he had donated $5million to Foodbank to help feed struggling families.
‘I was personally concerned about it, that’s why I donated $5million because I want to encourage other Australians, other billionaires who do nothing all day but sit on their a**e put money in,’ he said.
‘But it hasn’t had that effect. People tend to like to keep their money so I think the government should step in there.’
Mr Palmer, who is Australia’s sixth richest person, with an estimated wealth of nearly $23billion, also hinted that the Trumpet of Patriots would seek to cap immigration
Capping immigration
Mr Palmer, who is Australia’s sixth richest person, with an estimated wealth of nearly $23billion, also hinted that the Trumpet of Patriots would seek to cap immigration.
‘Too much immigration destroys our infrastructure, roads, schools and hospitals, creates congestion and the destruction of communities,’ he said.
‘Australia should be for all Australians living here. Trumpet of Patriots will put Australians first and make Australia great again.’
Building high-speed rail networks into major cities to enable cheaper housing
In perhaps his most left-field policy announcement, Mr Palmer pointed to policies brought in by the Japanese government to tackle their housing crisis.
‘When you look at some of the solutions that were adopted by the Japanese government when the same thing happened in Tokyo and Yokohama was to put a fast train just 120km outside of Tokyo and to develop cheaper land for their population where they could all commute to the city within 20 minutes,’ he said.
In perhaps his most left-field policy announcement, Mr Palmer pointed to policies brought in by the Japanese government to tackle their housing crisis (pictured: a bullet train in Japan)
Mr Palmer said this would allow young people to put a foot on the housing ladder.
This was supported by Ms Wrightson, who added: ‘We can solve the housing crisis by (building) fast trains from our capital cities to regional Australia to open up affordable land for housing with a 20-minute commute to the CBD.
Investing in Australian manufacturing
Asked whether he would seek to emulate Trump’s punitive tariffs would impact Australia’s steel production, Mr Palmer said ‘I don’t think so’.
‘I think we need more steel production in Australia, we need more manufacturing in Australia,’ he added.
‘We export so much iron to China and japan they use that for their manufacturing base and they become the world’s largest manufacturer.
‘We want jobs in Australia. We’ve got substantial iron ore deposits, substantial coal deposits, bauxite, copper, molybdenum – those minerals should be developed here.’
He also called for Australia’s steel mills to be brought into the 21st century with new technology.
‘It makes sense to invest in our country,’ he said.
Free speech
When questioned whether spending $123million to gain only one seat was a wise use of money, Mr Palmer claimed it was.
‘It’s a good use of my money because at the last election we spent $100million saying that the Covid vaccine was not safe and effective and it’s proven not to be safe and effective,’ he said.
‘One in five million Australians didn’t have the vaccine. That’s $20 each based on your calculations and that was a good investment.’
He added: ‘I’m more than happy to spend my funds on something protective, defending the rights of free speech and whatever is required to be spent it will be spent.’
‘I think we need more steel production in Australia, we need more manufacturing in Australia,’ Mr Palmer said (pictured: Mills, warehouses and storage yards of Port Kembla industrial site and sea port near Wollongong)
Asked if he would be running at the election, Mr Palmer claimed he was ‘too old’ and would only serve as a ‘functionary’.
At one stage, Mr Palmer misspoke and incorrectly referred to the party as the ‘trumpet of parrots’.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was immediately dismissive of the mining magnate’s new party when asked about it on Wednesday morning.
‘A bloke who spends over $100million to deliver one senate seat with a bloke who sits in the corner and just engages in conspiracy theories, I don’t think represents value for money,’ Mr Albanese said.
‘People are entitled to run but it’s a distortion of democracy when you have someone spending $100million on a campaign right around the country.’
Daily Mail Australia approached the Trumpet of Patriots for comment.