{"id":16740,"date":"2014-04-02T18:16:46","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T07:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=16740"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:58:10","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:58:10","slug":"pup-puts-its-money-into-wavotes-guineverehall-talks-to-ex-candidate-gary-morris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/pup-puts-its-money-into-wavotes-guineverehall-talks-to-ex-candidate-gary-morris\/","title":{"rendered":"PUP puts its money into #WAvotes: @GuinevereHall talks to ex-candidate Gary Morris"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Clive<\/a>

Clive Palmer of the Palmer United Party (PUP).<\/p><\/div>\n

The only election flyers I have received during this campaign have been from Palmer United Party (PUP). The first was\u00a0a CD of speeches and a Titanic clip, mass produced in China and distributed to every home in Western Australia; then a written message from Clive Palmer telling me that only PUP can get rid of the carbon and mining taxes.<\/p>\n

Our airwaves are saturated with Clive Palmer\u2019s voice, every ad break on television or radio features at least\u00a0one ad with either Clive or Des Hedland, their number two candidate. There is even one amusing ad featuring Christine Milne, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, all urging us to vote for PUP. Clive Palmer\u00a0tweeted on March 31:<\/p>\n

The @LiberalAus<\/a> don’t care about WA, only run 16 election ads in @thewest_com_au<\/a> up until March 27. Only @PalmerUtdParty<\/a> cares #wavotes<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Clive Palmer (@CliveFPalmer) March 31, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If advertisements equals caring, WA\u00a0is getting a whole lot of love from Clive.<\/p>\n

The one person missing from the blitzkrieg campaigning is the number one candidate Dio (Zhenya)\u00a0Wang. Mr Wang has been too busy for interviews and has also been a notable no-show at the three candidates’ forums held last weekend. Mr Wang is the CEO of Australasian Resources. Clive\u00a0Palmer is majority owner of Australasian Resources.<\/p>\n

In my endeavours to find a PUP candidate to speak to, I contacted my previous PUP interviewee\u00a0hoping for some help. Instead he informed me that he had resigned from the party as had many of\u00a0the candidates who ran for Lower House seats in the 2013 election. Intrigued, I met with Gary Morris\u00a0who ran for the federal seat of Moore for PUP in 2013 but resigned his membership earlier this\u00a0year.<\/p>\n

When Mr Morris joined the party was called the United Australia Party. He said: \u201cThen suddenly they\u00a0couldn\u2019t use that name and ended up having to change the name to Palmer United Party. I had my\u00a0reservations at the start as having a party with someone\u2019s personal name has never succeeded.\u00a0Clive\u2019s explanation was that because he had such a high profile, but as he was paying I just have to\u00a0suck it up as I had committed myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before the September 2013 election Mr Morris had lunch in Queensland with Peter Burke (Queensland director of PUP). Mr Morris recalled he said: \u201cI said Peter, Clive is after controlling the Senate, and he stopped and said ‘how did you work that\u00a0out?’ because he has all these high profile Senate candidates, and he said ‘yes it\u2019s true'”.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I thought I was on an uphill battle, as his concentration was on Senate candidates, none of the\u00a0House of Reps candidates were brought over to Brisbane unless they had a high profile. I had my\u00a0reservations then but I believed in what Clive stood for. But after the election we were dropped like\u00a0hot potatoes, not even a debrief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Morris then tried to start the state branch of PUP and they were told it was going to happen by October. \u201cI set up all the structures as I have done that type of thing before, but they just sat on\u00a0their hands and did nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Mr Morris whether he felt the current Senators-elect for the PUP would be directed by Mr\u00a0Palmer to vote one way or another, and if so that meant they may have a conflict of interest in terms\u00a0of the carbon and mining taxes which Clive Palmer did not vote on in the lower house due to his\u00a0personal conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should be free, there should be a party line but the party line shouldn\u2019t be about Clive Palmer\u00a0but a consensus of the party,\u201d Mr Morris said. \u201cUnder the constitution the executive council has the final say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Usually the executive council is elected by the party members, but they weren\u2019t in this case?<\/p>\n

\u201cI was actually nominated by a lot of the WA members, they wanted me number one or number two on the Senate ticket [for the recount],\u201d Mr Morris said. \u201cGot the letter on the Monday stating that I had failed to be\u00a0nominated by the national executive. The WA membership weren\u2019t even considered.\u201d<\/p>\n

The national executive is Clive Palmer, his wife Anna, his son Michael, and his three nephews Clive\u00a0Mensink, Blair Brewster and Martin Brewster.<\/p>\n

Peter Burke told Mr Morris that he couldn\u2019t vote anyway as there was not a state executive.\u00a0\u201cObviously that is why there was no state executive because we would have had control over who\u00a0was nominated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over a two-week period after the letter telling him he wasn\u2019t nominated, the WA membership of the\u00a0PUP fragmented and there were many resignations including Gary\u2019s. A lot have joined other political\u00a0parties but some including Gary are starting up their own grassroots party for WA issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt like subscribers to a newsletter, that\u2019s all it was,\u201d Morris said. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame as I think the PUP, this is my\u00a0view, is an extension of Clive Palmer\u2019s business empire. There is no separation.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as Palmer’s policies, Morris said: \u201cHe capitalised on what he heard people talking about, it\u2019s a marketing ploy.\u00a0I think their support has dropped this time, [and] the Greens are dying as a party. My prediction is four Labor and two Liberals.\u201d<\/p>\n

PUP preferences:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Australian Sports Party<\/li>\n
  2. Family First<\/li>\n
  3. Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party<\/li>\n
  4. Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party<\/li>\n
  5. Shooters and Fishers Party<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The only election flyers I have received during this campaign have been from Palmer United Party (PUP). The first was\u00a0a CD of speeches and a Titanic clip, mass produced in China and distributed to every home in Western Australia; then a written message from Clive Palmer telling me that only PUP can get rid of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":16775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,1650,170,585,881,920],"tags":[1729,2602,1730,2632,2637],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/CLIVE.jpg?fit=800%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-4m0","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16740"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}