Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has given a press conference today in which he announced that the United Australia Party (UAP) he founded has now become the undisputed largest party in Australia by membership numbers.
As of today, the party has just over 70,500 members. UAP is an ‘Australian First’ party, with a policy of ‘free choice’ regarding COVID-19 vaccinations. According to Palmer UAP is gaining new members at the rate of 500 a day, which was an ‘unprecendented situation.’
‘A lot of these people are former members of the Liberal Party, the Labour Party and the Greens, and they’re realising Australia needs a new direction…Australians are just sick of politicians lying to them.’
With its eye on the next Federal Election, UAP had already garnered 1000 nominations for House of Representatives seats and 500 nominations for Senate seats. The party would be standing candidates in each of the 150 seats in the States and in each Senate seat. Party polling was showing that they were going extremely well, especially in New South Wales and Victoria.
When asked why he thought there had been such a massive rise in support for UAP, Palmer said:
‘I think these are unprecedented times in Australia. I think the COVID politics, the lockdown in Melbourne, there’s been 240-odd days people being in lockdown, not being able to go out, the destruction of businesses, and certainly the response seems to have been over the top for the destruction its caused in the economy. There’s an increase of suicide deaths of 1500 people over the last year…there’s a 48% increase in the breakup of marriages and families, and so Australians think they we can do better.’
Speaking further, Palmer said:
‘We’ve got policies we think are important. The last Federal election we suggested Australia should move to nuclear power. We did that because its emissions free, and we can reach our emissions targets if we want to adopt nuclear power in this country…We want to see a party that sticks up for Australians and the national interests. We’ll have exciting policies coming out before the election, so Australians will know what we stand for.’
‘We’ve got around 20,000 of our members who’ve been double-jabbed and they’re very angry. They’ve been double-jabbed with the vaccine and their freedom has been curtailed. They thought, mistakenly, that when they got the vaccine they could visit friends for lunch, the could go out somewhere, but they’ve been locked up for months in Victoria and Sydney, and they’re angry at the lies they’ve been told by politicians.’
‘Many of the press have reported that this is an anti-vax party, but we’re not. We’re for vaccines, but vaccines that have gone through the tried and tested system of approval in Australia, which normally takes 7 to 8 years, so that we know what the effects will be on the community and there’s long-term/short-term safety data, and there’s safety data for pregnant women and for children. But unfortunately, all that’s been set aside in a state of fear, so we need to look at rational government that doesn’t react to fear.’
When asked if had received the COVID vaccine, Palmer said that he had not because there isn’t any COVID in Queensland.
In response to a question from a reporter about a man in Gold Coast hospital in ICU as a result of COVID, Palmer replied, ‘there are 150,000 people in Australia this year that have died and you haven’t reported one of their deaths. The road toll in Queensland is bigger over a holiday period than the total deaths of COVID in Australia, but we don’t shut our economy down, we don’t bar people from working, we don’t divide Australians and say I’ll treat you differently because of your health status.’
‘There’s a whole idea to set up a precedent based on fear. And what’s the fear? And if you look at the total number of people who die every day from diseases, it’s a normal occurence in the circle of life. It’s not something that’s out of control at all.’
