Exclusive: Clive Palmer predicts Pauline Hanson will be the federal opposition leader after the next election, but that One Nation will quickly unravel as her newly minted MPs quit.
The mining billionaire – who is buying $20 jeans from Costco amid his rapid weight loss – attributes Senator Hanson’s polling success to free publicity and the Liberals’ poor performance, while denying he is jealous of his fellow political outsider.
A wide-ranging interview with the man and money behind all those yellow United Australia Party (UAP) billboards, ads and brochures reveals a plan to spend as much as $100 million to displace Ms Hanson as the go-to option for fed-up voters in 2028.
If he can do that, Mr Palmer believes he will win enough power in the lower and upper houses of federal parliament to force a likely Labor-led government to adopt key UAP policies, such as stopping immigration and the pursuit of net zero.
His most strident criticism of the One Nation leader was to suggest she won’t be able to hold together a large group of MPs.
He told this masthead that Ms Hanson has a “track record with people who’ve resigned when they’ve been appointed as One Nation members,” Mr Palmer said.
The UAP – and National Party – note that about two-thirds of One Nation MPs elected to state or federal parliaments have later quit.
“It’s a difficult thing to stand at a national election with 140 or 150 candidates,” Mr Palmer said. It is “very hard to get everyone co-ordinated. And we’ve seen what’s happened in South Australia, where she got a guy elected who was a gay married to a Muslim guy, right?
Mr Palmer said he believed Ms Hansen would make a move to the lower house of federal parliament and would get more votes than the Liberal party “based on the Liberal party’s current performance because we don’t know what it is”.
Mr Palmer then invoked the famous Monty Python “Dead Parrot” sketch, saying: “John Cleese said, ‘If the parrot is dead, you can’t revive him’ — and the Liberal Party is a dead parrot.”
That’s a reference to newly elected One Nation MP Jason Virgo who — in an emotional maiden speech to SA Parliament in May — said he was openly gay, had a Muslim partner from Indonesia and “loves migrants”.
“Which are very anti-Pauline Hanson people. He got through, won a seat in (state) parliament, and yet he wasn’t a typical party member if you know what I mean, so it wasn’t consistent,” Mr Palmer said. “So that does show a little bit of lack of control, but I think they’re trying to fix that, right?”
One Nation is not alone in having problems with defections. The former Palmer United Party had three federal senators at one point. But two – Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus – then left to sit as independents.
Mr Palmer said he talks to Senator Hanson quite often and celebrated her birthday with her: “I had a bit of cake with her. Broke my keto diet.”
He said Ms Hanson is successfully highlighting problems in Australia, such as immigration, with One Nation arguing for a drastic cut to overseas arrivals.
But Mr Palmer’s UAP wants zero immigration – apart from family reunions and work visas – for an indefinite period, while infrastructure and housing supply catch up.
The yellow brochure he has spent $7 million sending to all households says “actual immigration, not net immigration, is approaching one million per year.”
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there were 568,000 migrant arrivals last year, down from 661,000 in 2024. These figures include temporary and permanent visa holders, as well as foreign students.
This masthead asked the UAP to justify the “approaching 1m per year” claim but the information provided did not do so.
The zero-immigration policy was written by Mr Palmer’s wife, Anna, who immigrated from Bulgaria in 1993 when she was 18. She married a close friend of Mr Palmer’s soon after and he walked her down the aisle.
More than a decade later, they lost both their partners to cancer within weeks of each other. They consoled one another, then started dating, and married in 2007.
“My wife is an Australian citizen,” Mr Palmer said. “She thinks that people who are Australian citizens should deserve the attention of the government more than people who are not Australian citizens.”
While his proposal would effectively stop long-term entries from any country, Mr Palmer was critical of One Nation’s policy of refusing “migrants from nations known to foster extremist ideologies.”
Mr Palmer said: “I think it’s bad to create hate in the country. We want to have a different feeling.
“We don’t want to discriminate against people based on culture, race or anything.”
When Mr Palmer was elected to federal parliament in 2013, representing the Sunshine Coast electorate of Fairfax, his aim was to become prime minister. He retired before his first term, of three years, was up.
He said that now he just wants to get his policies adopted by whoever is in government.
If he could have just one implemented, it would be abolishing the pursuit of net zero, which he claimed would save the government about $1.9 trillion – a figure he and the UAP have repeatedly said is partly based on budget forward estimates.
No evidence has been produced to support the savings estimate.
This masthead asked Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s office for the government’s forecast for Commonwealth-related transition costs. In its response, it cited an answer Mr Bowen gave in 2025, which was that the government’s spend to date was $75bn.
The Nationals claim the bill could be $9tn.
The Liberals say a net-zero energy system would cost taxpayers at least $642bn, citing detailed analysis by Frontier Economics.
“I can guarantee you, that’s the wrong number,” Mr Palmer said, adding that the Frontier figures did not “count replacement of the grid”. That is incorrect.
Mr Palmer then turned to Australia’s homelessness and cost-of-living crisis while seated inside a car worth about half a million dollars.
“I’m very upset when I see a family sleeping in a car, in a park, anywhere in this country,” he said.
When it was pointed out he was discussing homelessness while sitting in a vehicle worth enough to buy a house in some parts of Australia, Mr Palmer replied: “I think the car is doing its job by getting me to talk to you.”
By axing net zero and the NDIS, along with imposing a 25 per cent gas export tax, the UAP has said it could fund a 100 per cent increase in the health budget and 30 per cent lift in pensions.
Mr Palmer said he was prepared to spend up to $100m on the UAP’s federal tilt. The party doesn’t contest state elections any more.
If Mr Palmer’s dreams materialise, when he returns to Canberra representing the currently Liberal-held north Gold Coast seat of Fadden, he will tip the scales at just 85 kilograms.
Before Mr Palmer left the House of Representatives in 2016, he weighed 153kg and was falling asleep during debates.
On a low-carb, high-fat keto diet, in four months he’s dropped from 123kg to 98kg.
“It’s very easy doing keto,” Mr Palmer said, while eating eggs for breakfast. “I recommend it to everybody. I never feel hungry. I always feel happy.”
He said his severe hypertension, Type-2 diabetes and arthritis have gone. He can work till midnight instead of having a 2pm nap.
“I think my appearance is better as well. But I’m not doing it for appearances sake.”
Like Ms Hanson, Mr Palmer defended Karl Stefanovic over that controversial interview with UK anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson.
On his new podcast, Stefanovic had said he admired the tenacity and courage of Robinson, whose criminal history includes assaulting an off-duty police officer.
Mr Palmer said Stefanovic had been shut down in a “woke, predictable” attack for simply trying to “draw more out” of Robinson.
“I did journalism at uni,” Mr Palmer said. “One of the things they teach you is to nod. Why do you do that? Because you draw more out of people because they think you’re sympathetic.”
Near the end of the interview with this masthead, Mr Palmer said: “The biggest things that I’m doing in my life … haven’t happened, but they will happen in the next year. We’ll give you a new headline.”
Asked to elaborate, he said he wanted to end Australia’s reliance on foreign fuel. He wouldn’t provide more detail. But it’s thought that the plan pertains to his Queensland coal interests.
One Nation did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Nor did Liberal MP for Fadden Cameron Caldwell.