Clive Palmer Plans To Resuscitate His Party - Reckons It's Time To "Join The Resistance"

But he's not sure he'll run


Article heading image for Clive Palmer Plans To Resuscitate His Party - Reckons It's Time To "Join The Resistance"

Clive Palmer is planning to resuscitate his political party, vowing to contest every upper and lower house seat at the next federal election.

But the former federal MP will let his wife decide if he should seek to re-enter parliament.

Mr Palmer says he should never have deregistered the party after he opted not to recontest his Queensland seat of Fairfax in 2016, and PUP is bigger than him.

"I made a mistake. I thought that the Palmer party needed to have Palmer in parliament," he told AAP on Friday.

"In actual fact, we had a very large number of people that wanted to continue to be engaged."

Mr Palmer doesn't believe voters will be turned off by the gradual implosion of his party after the 2013 election, when defections saw its three senators reduced to one, Dio Wang, who went on to lose his seat in 2016.

Neither is he worried about the party's rebirth being damaged by an ongoing legal case about the collapse of his Queensland Nickel business, and a probe by the corporate regulator.

But Acting Queensland Premier Jackie Trad said voters would remember Mr Palmer's past actions.

"If Clive Palmer wants to run in any election, I think that Queenslanders will walk into the ballot box, see Clive Palmer's name on the ballot paper and remember what he did to hundreds of works in Townsville," Ms Trad told reporters in Brisbane on Friday.

"Quite frankly there's still a lot of people in Townsville doing it tough because of the poor management of Queensland Nickel."

In an earlier statement, Mr Palmer said PUP's executive committee had made the decision to revive the party, not just him.

"Turnbull and Shorten don't care about our future generation and seek to deprive rather than provide opportunities for young Australians," he said.

"It's time to join the resistance."

23 February 2018




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