Last week, Simon Holmes à Court and Clive Palmer presented two very different visions for the future of independent politics at the National Press Club in Canberra. They’re both wealthy men, and interested in influencing the next federal parliament via the election of independent candidates, but that’s where the similarities end.
Billionaire Palmer wants to import Trump-style politics to Australia via his latest political incarnation Trumpet of Patriots. Holmes à Court (not a billionaire) wants a meaningful political response to the climate crisis, integrity and a fair go for women.
Palmer is completely hands-on with the selection of candidates, the design of advertising and is the public voice of his movement. Holmes à Court says he’s hands-off, and describes his role as being limited to supporting community-driven candidates and processes, via his organisation Climate 200.
While Palmer says he will be standing candidates everywhere (these people are still being recruited, apparently), Holmes à Court’s team is targeting 35 specific seats, in a variation of the technique which saw teals and others elected to a number of crucial former Liberal seats in the last federal election.
In 2025 this movement is also targeting some Labor-held seats.
Alternative facts, anyone?
Last week in Canberra, Simon Holmes à Court had to spend much of his time correcting lies that had been told about him, such as that he was a renewable energy mogul who stood to make a motza from net zero (actually less than two per cent of his investments are in renewables), or that the Climate 200 movement was ‘cashed up’ compared to its competitors (he pointed out that the entire independents movement had a $25 million budget at the last election, compared to over $500 million from the major parties).
As for the suggestion that cost of living was now the main issue for most voters, not climate, Holmes à Court sensibly responded that the two issues are intimately linked. He then revealed that Liberal Andrew Constance’s recent public remark that the Paris targets would be off the table under the Coalition had immediately led to an ‘immense’ spike in donors to Climate 200 from across the country.
Emulating his orange hero, Clive Palmer said a number of things which were clearly wrong, including that there are only two human genders, that Australians don’t need to be welcomed to their own country, that Elon Musk’s team had uncovered $5 trillion of waste in the USA, that social security was being paid to people who were 150 years old, and that Australia’s debt could be solved by imposing a 15 per cent licence fee on iron ore exports.
Clive Palmer currently has one senator in federal parliament, former real estate agent Ralph Babet, who spends most of his time re-tweeting extreme right wing ratbaggery. His former protégé Jacqui Lambie has long since disassociated with the billionaire and gone her own way.
While Palmer has little chance of winning any seats in 2025, his main political function remains to deliver disaffected votes to the Coalition via preferences, whose policies promise to make him even richer.
Of course Citizen Palmer told the press nothing of the sort, but claimed he had ‘an investment in Australia’. In between eating Tim Tams, he said that funding national political campaigns, inflicting Tucker Carlson on everyone and plastering himself on billboards across the country was his ‘hobby’, and more exciting than playing lawn bowls.
Radical trust
For Simon Holmes à Court, something more existential is at stake. He said that it was incredibly refreshing to speak with donors, ‘who, like me, have a radical trust in this new form of democracy.’
Using the David and Goliath analogy, he said his role was to help people build an amazing slingshot, and aid them to ‘climb the wall of incumbency’.
It’s hard to argue with his proposition that the major political parties are more focused on fighting each other than fighting for Australia. By way of contrast, Holmes à Court said his movement was about finding leaders with vision and courage who make decisions based on evidence, in the best interests of their communities and nation.
‘This election is truly a sliding doors moment for our country,’ he said. ‘Will Australia emerge improved or impaired?’
Whatever happens in 2025, both Holmes à Court and Palmer stand to lose out in the future as a result of the deal recently cooked up by the big parties to stifle independent competitors, but these new restrictions will clearly impact community-based campaigns far more than those funded by billionaires.
The next federal election is due to be held on or before 17 May.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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