Clive Palmer, patriot parrot in search of a refuge, blows his trumpet

Trumpet of Patriots!

How long might it have taken for Clive Palmer to come up with such a magnificently flatulent title for his reborn political vanity project?

Very 2025, of course, spiced with a fragrant, unmistakable whiff of another reborn political fragrance, Donald Trump.

Indeed, Palmer declared in announcing his new party on Wednesday that it believed in Donald Trump’s policies, it wanted to make Australia great again, and its biggest policy would be to emulate Elon Musk’s efforts to cut government waste.

So excited was Palmer that he stumbled over the brave new name and called it, briefly, Trumpet of Parrots. Which, spookily, sounded perfectly apt.

We can barely wait to see Palmer outfitted in a T-shirt bearing the Trumpet logo, which features a lion (not a parrot, sadly) actually blowing a trumpet.

Clive and his alleged brains trust needed a new party name pronto as Australia heads towards a new federal election.

A last refuge, you might say, this being the era for those calling themselves patriots.

But Palmer was caught short of a brand name for the political delectations he plans to let rip.

A couple of years ago, perhaps unwisely, he deregistered his latest political iteration, the United Australia Party.

The UAP was, of course, created from the ashes of such triumphs as Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, and before that, the Palmer United Party.

In truth, the coup de grace that dispensed with the UAP seemed an act of mercy.

After spending approximately the GDP of a halfway respectable country, or $100 million to be a little more accurate, Clive’s UAP managed to elevate no more than a single candidate to parliament at the last election, a chap who regularly lurches to the far right, Senator Ralph Babet.

Babet still cloaks himself in the grand title of leader of the United Australia Party, which seems bold, considering it was voluntarily deregistered in September 2022, a few months after he was elected.

No one, least of all Palmer or Babet, has ever bothered explaining why the party’s name was put out of its misery.

Government lawyers in a recent High Court case pointed out a registered party had a few obligations, including transparency in disclosing donations, and “one possible explanation” for the UAP’s deregistration was that it sought to avoid those obligations.

Whatever the reason, Palmer and Babet spent a large amount of Clive’s pocket money trying to argue the UAP should be reregistered.

The High Court had to explain that a party could not reregister within the same electoral cycle and the law was valid. No dice.

No barrier to Clive Palmer.

As the serial creator of political entities, he just needed a new name, which he picked up by subsuming another party that had registered the name last year, after failure to launch under previous monikers Australian Federation Party and Country Alliance.

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