Federal Election 2025: Clive Palmer slams ‘boring’ campaign and ‘disappointing’ Peter Dutton

Clive Palmer has slammed the Federal election as “boring”, saying he was disappointed with Peter Dutton’s campaign performance to date, as he racks up a bill of more than $70 million on his own party’s campaign.

At a wide-ranging near hour-long press conference in Perth on Thursday, the Trumpet of Patriots chairman revealed he was willing to spend as much as $100 million on the campaign, which has sought to capitalise on Donald Trump’s style of politics.

Asked who he thought would win the upcoming election, Mr Palmer would only say it would become clear when he revealed the party’s preferences in Canberra on Thursday.

“It’ll become very obvious what’s going to happen in this election right after tonight, if you look at things,” Mr Palmer said, before adding: “I’m very disappointed in Peter Dutton.”

“I’m disappointed he hasn’t captured the opportunity to create some issues. I’m not attacking the individual, I’m just disappointed that this is such a boring election.

“Albanese says something, and what’s the response from Dutton: ‘I’ll match it’.”

“It was a perfect opportunity for Dutton to get up and say, we’ve had three years of a declining living standard in this country, and we’ve got to reverse it. We’ve got to make some tough decisions to reverse it.”

Mr Palmer said he had spent as much as $70 million on the Federal Election campaign to date, and was on track to spend upwards of $100m.

“Whatever it takes for the cause of freedom, because my family’s had a strong commitment of this country,” he said.

Standing alongside Victorian Senator Ralph Babet and his WA candidates, Mr Palmer said he supported Mr Trump and his tariffs, which have dominated the first half of the election campaign.

“I think they’re a good thing, in a sense,” he said, but then added: “That will be a good headline for you. That will make sure we don’t get any votes.”

“When we see Donald Trump’s policies, they seem to be policies that we could use here, some of them, like, for example, DOG(the Department of Government Efficiency) and Elon Musk.

“He’s eliminated $5 trillion a waste . . . you don’t want waste in your country.”

But the mining billionaire turned federal MP was also quizzed on the status of legal action against the Federal Government in the Hague, which carries a claim of $300 billion in damages after the High Court refused to overturn a WA decision against a mine application.

“We’re at the jurisdiction stage where that Australia is objected to the claim on the basis of jurisdiction and probably, I’d say next month, the international tribunal of arbitration will give an award on that to us and say that Australia is wrong,” he said.

“Then we’ll go ahead with the case, and probably will be awarded billions of dollars, which we can then spend for the benefit of the Australian people.”

Mr Palmer also released new policies, including an 80 per cent cut to immigration rates in Australia, as well as a 15 per cent licence fee on all iron ore exports.

His return to WA comes after a pandemic-era stoush with Mark McGowan’s decision to close the State border, but Mr Palmer denied the famed war of words — which ended in court — would hurt the party’s chances.

“You’ve got to give a lot of credit to Mark McGowan in a political context – it’s one of the oldest tricks to have an ogre that you can blame all your problems on, or distract the community on what’s actually happening in your state, and that’s what he did with me,” Mr Palmer said.

“I don’t regret saying that we shouldn’t have borders in Australia. I don’t accept that the COVID crisis was a real crisis.”