Foundation , party founder 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, 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. 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. In 2020, the party's founder, Clive Palmer, was charged with fraud and corporate misconduct offences. It was alleged that he had diverted at least $10 million to the benefit of the Palmer United Party in the weeks before the 2013 election. Palmer spent $60 million at the 2019 election. The United Australia Party was renamed as Clive Palmer's United Australia Party on 31 January 2020.
2021 iteration On 11 August 2021, an application for the party name United Australia Party and party abbreviation UAP to be officially registered was approved by the
Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). On 23 August 2021, Independent MP
Craig Kelly having been elected as the Liberal representative for the
seat of Hughes, joined the party. Kelly became the leader of the party, with Palmer remaining as the party's chairman. In September 2021, the
Sydney Morning Herald reported on objections to the application to change the name to the United Australia Party that had been made to the AEC. The objections described it as an act of political anachronism and cultural appropriation or theft.
2022 election Several of the UAP's Senate candidates for the
2022 Australian federal election have espoused
anti-vaccine beliefs, or are business associates of Palmer himself. The UAP encouraged supporters to preference most sitting MPs last on their votes, except in seats with MPs that support policies proposed by Craig Kelly. Seats where the UAP did not preference the incumbent last include
Bass (TAS),
Chisholm (VIC),
Flynn (QLD),
Greenway (NSW),
Mackellar (NSW),
Reid (NSW),
Wentworth (NSW) and
Wide Bay (QLD). Despite the party preferencing most incumbents last, the party still directed its preferences to the
Nationals in regional and rural electorates. In
Queensland, the party preferenced the
Liberal National Party over Labor and the Greens in all but four electorates:
Dickson,
Griffith,
Groom and
McPherson. The party preferenced incumbents last in all
Western Australian seats. Palmer claimed that he preferenced the Liberals above Labor in 55% of seats and Labor above the Liberals in 45% of seats. despite an estimated $100 million advertising campaign.
2022 deregistration On 8 September 2022, the UAP was voluntarily deregistered as a party. Ralph Babet, the party's sole senator, told media the deregistration was for "administrative reasons" and that the party will "reestablish before the next election". Following this ruling, Palmer announced he had joined the
Trumpet of Patriots and had become Chairman of the party in order to contest the election. ==State and territory politics==