The United Australia Party (UAP), formerly known as Clive Palmer's United Australia Party and the Palmer United Party (PUP), is an Australian political party formed by billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer in April 2013. The party was deregistered by the Australian Electoral Commission in 2017, revived and re-registered in 2018, and voluntarily deregistered in 2022 (but remained registered in Victoria). It was re-registered again in 2026. The party fielded candidates in all 150 House of Representatives seats at the 2013 federal election. Palmer, the party's leader, was elected to the Division of Fairfax and it reached a peak of three senators following the rerun of the Western Australian Senate election in 2014. When the party was revived under its original name in 2018, it was represented by ex-One Nation senator Brian Burston in the federal parliament.
At state and territory level, the party has been represented in the Parliaments of Queensland and the Northern Territory. Two members of the Queensland Legislative Assembly joined in April 2013, while three members of the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly, joined the party in April 2014. Both the Queensland members and the NT members left the party later in 2014.Carl Judge quits PUP: Palmer United Party's only Queensland MP resigns to become independent – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) . Abc.net.au. Retrieved on 5 May 2015.PM – PUP defiant despite defection of NT politician 09/09/2014 . Abc.net.au (25 November 2009). Retrieved on 2015-05-05. The party unsuccessfully contested the South Australian, Tasmanian, and Victorian state elections in 2014. Since the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia, the party has supported anti-lockdown politics.
On 23 August 2021, independent MP Craig Kelly joined the party, becoming its first representative in the lower house since Palmer's retirement in 2016. Kelly became the leader of the party, with Palmer acting as the party's chairman. The UAP announced a preference deal with the Liberal Democrats for the 2022 federal election, where each party encouraged its supporters to choose the other as their second preference. Candidates were endorsed to run in every lower house seat in the May 2022 federal election as well as the senate and Ralph Babet was elected as a senator for Victoria at that election.
History Foundation
Palmer announced in November 2012 he was considering re-forming the United Australia Party, which ceased to exist after it was folded into the present-day Liberal Party of Australia in 1945. He had been a longtime supporter of the federal National Party and the Liberal National Party of Queensland (LNP). Palmer's nephew, Blair Brewster, had applied to trademark the party name two months earlier. There was speculation that it would join forces with Katter's Australian Party, but this did not take place. A month following the party's founding, Palmer announced that the party would be renamed the Palmer United Party, so that registration could be granted, and to avoid confusion with a separate party that was already registered with the Australian Electoral Commission, the Uniting Australia Party. The party continued to brand itself as a revival of the old United Australia Party, with the party’s website claiming that the three leaders of the original party—Joseph Lyons, Robert Menzies and Billy Hughes—were its former leaders.
2013 and 2014 elections
In April 2013, Palmer announced he was relaunching the UAP with the goal of running candidates in the 2013 federal election and had applied for registration in Queensland. He told Lateline "It's a reformation of the original party". The party also endorsed candidates to run in the Senate. In the state of Victoria, two retired sportsmen were announced as Senate candidates: Australian rules football player Doug Hawkins and boxer Barry Michael. Peter Slipper, the independent (formerly LNP) member for the Division of Fisher (and previously Speaker of the House of Representatives), joined the party on 11 May 2013, but the party revoked his membership within hours.
In the 2013 election, Palmer won the Sunshine Coast-area seat of Fairfax with a 26 percent primary and 50.03 percent two-candidate preferred vote, a margin of 53 votes. Senate candidates Glenn Lazarus (a former player of the National Rugby League's Canberra Raiders, Brisbane Broncos and Melbourne Storm) and Jacqui Lambie were elected for Queensland and Tasmania on preferences, after primary votes of 10 percent and 7 percent respectively. The nationwide vote in the Senate was 5 percent. The outcome of the Senate vote in Western Australia was disputed and the Australian Electoral Commission ordered a re-run of the vote for April 2014.
In October 2013, Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party senator-elect Ricky Muir, of Victoria, agreed to enter into an informal alliance with the PUP. One of the seats in Western Australia’s special election was won by the PUP’s Dio Wang, with first preferences of 12%, an increase of 7%, giving the PUP bloc four senators when new members took their seats in July 2014. Muir soon left the alliance, followed by Lambie who resigned to sit as an independent in November 2014, and similarly, Lazarus in March 2015.
Following the April 2014 Western Australian special election, an advertising monitoring company reported that the PUP spent A$477,000 on TV advertising during the party's re-election campaign, which exceeded the combined spending of the Liberal, Labor and Greens parties on campaign advertising.
Resignations and deregistration On 11 August 2014, Queensland Palmer United Party MP Alex Douglas resigned from the party to become an independent citing cronyism: "When I resigned from the LNP in November, 2012, I publicly stated there was a culture in the LNP, and there still is, of looking after mates and relatives, and that I do not support these flawed ideas."
On 8 September 2014, Northern Territory PUP MP Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu resigned from the party and returned to the CLP, saying "there is no party structure in PUP and no help available". He said that Palmer had promised to give resources and staff to himself, Anderson and Lee, but had got "nothing" at all. He added that Palmer hadn't met with him at all since his initial defection from CLP.
On 8 October 2014, Queensland's only remaining PUP MP Carl Judge resigned from the party to become an independent.
On 24 November 2014, Senator Jacqui Lambie resigned from the PUP, announcing that she would remain in the Senate as an independent. Lambie's resignation followed several weeks of disagreements with party leader Clive Palmer, culminating in her voting with a group of senators calling themselves the "coalition of common sense" in passing a disallowance motion on legislation supported by PUP to repeal the Future of Financial Advice reforms introduced by the previous Labor government.
On 29 November 2014, Northern Territory MPs Alison Anderson and Larisa Lee announced they were resigning from the PUP to sit as independents. Anderson stated that she and Lee could no longer tolerate the "absolute chaos" in a party that had become a "national disgrace". She also accused the PUP of doing almost nothing to connect with them. Lee said that the PUP had "just kind of left (us) in the dark" after promising that she, Anderson and Kurrupuwu would be in a position to carry the party's banner and help them fight for Aboriginal rights.
On 13 March 2015, Queensland Senator Glenn Lazarus announced his resignation from the PUP, accusing Clive Palmer of bullying, swearing and yelling at people. Lazarus stated "I have a different view of team work. Given this, I felt it best that I resign from the party and pursue my senate role as an independent senator." His wife Tess Sanders-Lazarus joined in, saying "I did make it clear to Clive that I was not happy with being bullied and spoken to using foul language." Palmer sacked her and denied their accusations. PUP national director Peter Burke, responded by saying: "There is no doubting the timing of Senator Lazarus's defection from the party which came after Tess' sacking as a result of her not doing her job." Mr Burke said Tess Lazarus was dismissed for spending her time writing speeches and questions for her husband instead of working on agreed party duties. "After repeated efforts to have her engage in the correct party duties were ignored, the party had no alternative but to dismiss her."
Palmer United Party support collapsed at the 2015 federal by-elections, losing more than two thirds of its vote at the December 2015 North Sydney by-election, polling last of 13 candidates with a primary vote of just 0.5 percent, compared to 1.7 percent at the 2013 federal election. The party lost more than half its vote at the September 2015 Canning by-election with a primary vote of 3.1 percent, compared to 6.9 percent at the previous election.
Despite having had four parliamentarians elected at the 2013 election and subsequent 2014 Western Australian Senate election, only one, Dio Wang, contested the 2016 federal election for the Palmer United Party. Glenn Lazarus and Jacqui Lambie quit the party mid-term. In early May 2016, party leader Clive Palmer announced he would not seek re-election to his seat of Fairfax and later that month also ruled out running for a federal senate seat, ending his involvement in Australian electoral politics. The party fielded a single House of Representatives candidate in the Division of Herbert, and senate candidates in every state. Two months later, Wang lost his Senate seat in the double dissolution election, as the Party lost all representation in a near-total swing against it, receiving less than 0.01% of the House of Representatives vote.
On 23 September 2016, the PUP applied for deregistration in all states. A party spokesperson stated that the party was always set up primarily as a federal party, but would no longer contest state elections.
On 19 April 2017, Clive Palmer announced that he was formally disbanding the Palmer United Party and would cancel its registration as a federal political party with the Australian Electoral Commission. It was formally deregistered on 5 May 2017.
2018 revival On 23 February 2018, Palmer announced that he would register the party again to contest seats at the next federal election. On 17 June 2018, he relaunched the party as the United Australia Party.
On 18 June 2018, Clive Palmer announced the reformation of the party as the United Australia Party, with former One Nation senator, Brian Burston joining as its first political member and senate leader. It was re-registered by the Australian Electoral Commission on 12 December 2018.
As the 2019 federal election approached, the party faced a series of controversies. It was reported that the nomination papers submitted by at least 19 UAP candidates were too incomplete or inconsistent to demonstrate that they are not dual citizens, which would render them ineligible under section 44 of the Constitution, although the nomination forms require candidates to affirm that they are eligible under s 44. In May, the claim made in her campaign material by Queensland UAP Senate candidate Yodie Batzke that she was an "adjunct lecturer" at the Cairns campus of James Cook University was denied by that organisation. It said that she had delivered guest lectures there but was not an adjunct lecturer.
The party contested every lower house seat in the 2019 Australian federal election and made a preference deal with the Liberal party. The UAP failed to win seats in either chamber, but by directing its preferences to the LNP, the UAP helped the LNP garner a two-seat swing in Queensland, thereby allowing the Coalition to regain its majority.