Politics

Clive Palmer Is Going To Keep Sending You Those Stupid Texts Whether You Like It Or Not

Oh good.

by Tom Clift  15 January 2019
Clive Palmer text messages

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Last week, you probably got a text from Clive Palmer, or at least know someone who did. The United Australia Party leader has been bombarding voters with unsolicited messages promising high speed rail and affordable power, and pledging to “make Australia great”.

Unsurprisingly, people aren’t too happy about it.

Despite the backlash, however, Australia’s second-rate answer to Donald Trump has no plans to stop harassing people over the phone.

“We’ll be running more text messages as we get closer to the election,” Palmer told reporters on Monday at the launch of his new video game (which is a whole other thing I’ll get to in a minute). “It’s a way of stimulating debate in our democracy, it’s a way of people being able to communicate with each other and it’s recognised by the Liberal and Labor parties, who brought in the legislation, supported it in Parliament, as a desirable feature of Australian public life.”

The messages are in fact allowed under the Privacy Act, and apparently do not constitute spam under the Spam Act. So yeah, might be time to throw your phone into the ocean.

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Palmer said he had already sent texts to 5.6 million mobiles, and insisted there was “no limit” to the amount of money he was willing to spend in his bid to get back into Parliament.

He also dismissed claims that he still owed money to former employees of his collapsed Queensland Nickel refinery as “fake news”.

Anyway, the game. It’s called Clive Palmer: Humble Meme Merchant and features a cartoon version of Palmer collecting biscuits while battling various other members of the Australian political scene, including Bill Shorten who is depicted as a cockroach and Rupert Murdoch who is depicted as the Grim Reaper.

“I love my memes and this takes it to the next level,” Palmer told reporters, despite admitting that he hasn’t actually played it.