Clive Palmer denies having ever spoken to Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
Among the most startling revelations to come out of the recent release of millions of ‘’Epstein files’’ documents by the US Justice Department were claims people close to the first Trump administration had sought to influence Australia’s federal election in 2019.
Donald Trump’s former strategist — and some say the mastermind behind his first election — Steve Bannon is reported to have bragged to Jeffrey Epstein that he had told Australian mining magnate and one-time aspiring prime minister Clive Palmer how to do his messaging in an attempt to disrupt the 2019 election.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on charges of sex trafficking of minors, and was found dead in his prison cell a month later. Files relating to his arrest have remained sealed ever since, despite US court rulings directing that they be released.
Mr Palmer reportedly spent more than $60 million on newspaper, television, and social media advertising in the lead-up to the 2019 poll, but apparently not for himself or any of his United Australia Party (UAP) candidates, as UAP picked up less than 4 per cent of the primary vote and failed to win a single seat.
Instead, his messaging was negatively directed towards the Labor Party, and leader Bill Shorten in particular, and most pundits had predicted the ALP would win the 18 May election against a flailing Scott Morrison-led Coalition.
In a 10 May, 2019, statement just a week before the election, Mr Palmer said Labor wanted to destroy the sugar and coal industries of Central and North Queensland.
“Bill Shorten misleads the Australian public,” he said. “A vote for Shifty Shorten is a vote for a one trillion dollar bill.
“The United Australia Party supports the coal and sugar industries, which are the backbones of the economy.”
In an article on 20 May, 2019, Mr Palmer told The Australian Financial Review that his “end game was to stop Shorten introducing his taxes in Australia and destroying the country”.
“Scott Morrison’s policies are so much better than [Labor’s aspiring treasurer] Chris Bowen’s,” he said. “It was worth it to ensure those little grubs stayed out of office.”
And on 21 May, Mr Palmer told ABC Radio Queensland that UAP polling had told him Labor would likely win the election, so he “decided to polarise the electorate” with anti-Labor rhetoric in his advertising.
“We thought that would be a disaster for Australia so we decided to polarise the electorate and we thought we’d put what advertising we had left … into explaining to the people what Shorten’s economic plans were for the country and how they needed to be worried about them.”
In a printed text found buried in the documents released by the Justice Department, and sent just days after that election, Mr Bannon told Epstein: “I had Clive Palmer do the $60m anti china (sic) and anti climate change ads.”
Mr Palmer has been quick to deny the claims, telling media through a spokesman on Monday morning (2 February) that he had “never spoken to Bannon”.
It is now history that Mr Morrison won the election on the back of a major shift against Labor, particularly in Queensland, and that Mr Shorten was replaced as leader soon after by Anthony Albanese.
Mr Palmer went on to rebrand the UAP as the Trumpet of Patriots, and vocally supported Mr Trump’s policies during his first term and in the lead-up to his return to the presidency in 2024.
