Palmer's Trumpets boom, but is it just a giant racket?

Clive Palmer has been the big, brash spoiler of Australian politics for years -- and he's back again for the 2025 campaign. Who are the Trumpet of Patriots, and where did they come from? The Burne's Louie Cina investigates.

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Australia who hasn’t been subjected to a Trumpet of Patriots ad over the past month.

From giant yellow-and-black billboards adorned with the faces of party leader Suellen Wrightson and mining magnate Clive Palmer to controversial newspaper ads about gender, the Trumpet of Patriots have spared no expense getting their relatively new name out there.

Blunt and in-your-face, the ads are often centred around phrases that have become rallying cries in the culture wars. 

“It’s your country, you don’t need to be welcomed to it,” one billboard reads. “End wokeness” is emblazoned on another, and perhaps most controversially, there was the “There are only two genders – male and female” ad, which ran on the front pages of newspapers including The Age.

A Trumpet of Patriots ad in the electorate of Cooper in Melbourne’s north. Photo: Louie Cina

This isn’t anything new for Clive Palmer, who, according to The Australian Financial Review and The Guardian, spent a whopping $123 million on the last federal election and $60 million on the one before that. This spending came with minimal success, with no seats in 2019 and a single Senate seat in 2022.

This big-spending strategy hasn’t gone off without a hitch. 

Palmer was famously sued and ordered to pay $1.5 million in damages to Universal Music for violating their copyright by using Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It in an ad titled Aussies Not Gonna Cop It.

In this election alone, there have already been two high-profile blunders. 

The ABC found that a clip the party posted questioning the legitimacy of climate science was 20 years old and contained information that, according to a top climate scientist, “bears almost no relation to the truth”.

Palmer was also forced to apologise for the controversial two-genders ad, saying it should have read “there are only two sexes,” after a reporter informed him that the World Health Organisation’s policy he was quoting did not say there were only two genders, but rather that rigid gender norms are harmful.

But who are the Trumpet of Patriots, and how have they gone from being almost unheard of in January to one of the most visible parties in a matter of months?

Strangely enough, the party’s origins trace back to Victoria, where in 2004, a political staffer, a local councillor, a former union official, and a member of the Sporting Shooters Association founded a party named the Country Alliance. The party registered on a state level with the Victorian Electoral Commission and contested a couple of state elections and a federal election without winning a seat, before merging with the Victorian branch of Katter’s Australian Party to become the Australian Country Alliance.

This name change lasted a single state election, where the ACA again failed to win a seat, before changing its name to the Australian Country Party. After another unsuccessful campaign, the party chose not to contest the 2019 federal election and changed its name again to the Australian Federation Party the following year.

Around this time, a South Australian management consultant named Nick Duffield entered the picture. 

In 2021, he founded the Trumpet of Patriots to, in his own words, “create a political movement to provide an alternative to the Liberal National, Labor and Green Coalition, where common sense, truth and scientific principles were being abandoned by an incompetent and untrustworthy government.” 

The party’s main policies centred around opposing mandatory vaccines and COVID lockdowns. Although they sought to contest the 2022 federal election, the party was unable to be registered in time. The Trumpet of Patriots already had several candidates committed to running. They eventually struck a deal that saw these candidates run under the Australian Federation Party banner. Once again, none were elected.

In 2024, the parties formally merged, with the already registered Australian Federation Party renaming itself the Trumpet of Patriots in December. In February 2025, the party formally launched its election campaign with the announcement of former United Australia Party head Clive Palmer as its chairman, and Suellen Wrightson as party leader.

Both had joined from the United Australia Party, a party founded by Palmer in 2013, which was blocked from running in the upcoming federal election after voluntarily deregistering itself following the 2022 campaign, and not being legally allowed to reregister in the same election cycle.

You’ve probably seen their faces, but who are Clive Palmer and Suellen Wrightson — and what makes Wrightson qualified to be the future Prime Minister of Australia, as the ads proclaim?

Let’s start with Suellen Wrightson. The Trumpet of Patriots are running 100 candidates in the House of Representatives, meaning that, in theory — unlikely though it may be — they could form a majority government. If this happened, Wrightson, the party’s leader, would become Australia’s 32nd Prime Minister.

Despite Palmer’s ringing endorsements and her face being plastered on televisions and billboards across the country, very little information is available about Suellen Wrightson at first glance. A Google search reveals a locked Facebook account, an Instagram page with 300 followers and a single post, a very active X account, and a faceless, barren LinkedIn page listing her as a “Chief of Staff at Parliament House.”

According to her profile on the Trumpet of Patriots website, Wrightson is a “respected chronic disease management expert” with a long history of political campaigning.

In 2013, she unsuccessfully ran as a Senate candidate for the Palmer United Party (the previous name of the United Australia Party) and served as a UAP-backed independent councillor on NSW’s Cessnock City Council from 2012 until 2016. She ran twice more for federal politics, garnering minimal support both times. As for her status as a chronic disease management expert, no evidence of medical qualifications can be found, with only high school education being documented online. This doesn’t necessarily mean she lacks qualifications, but given that politicians often highlight their academic and career backgrounds while campaigning, it’s notable that such evidence is difficult to find.

On a policy level, Wrightson has vocally supported Trump-style plans to improve government efficiency, promised to protect free speech, slash immigration, and exit the WHO, UN, and WEF. She has proposed solving the housing crisis by allowing Australians to access their superannuation for home deposits, along with building high-speed rail.

The platforming of all this is made possible thanks to the financial support of Clive Palmer. 

Born in Victoria but raised on the Gold Coast, Palmer made his fortune through real estate and by buying mining rights in Western Australia for his company,. Initially lacking the resources to extract the minerals, Palmer waited until demand soared, then struck a deal with Chinese mining company CITIC Pacific during the minerals boom of the 2000s, making him a billionaire.

Palmer also bought the struggling Queensland Nickel in 2009 for just one dollar, saving between one and three thousand jobs and briefly seeing stocks boom. He loaned about $189 million to his other ventures, including multiple $20 million donations to his own political party. However, he later forgave the debts owed to Queensland Nickel, contributing to the company’s liquidation in 2016 and over 700 job losses.

Outside mining, Palmer briefly owned the soccer team Gold Coast United, until a dispute with Football Federation Australia ended his involvement. He also purchased a resort and a golf course — with the resort, Coolum Resort, briefly hosting a dinosaur-themed amusement park called Palmersaurus.

Politically, Palmer started with the National Party, becoming campaign director for the notoriously corrupt former Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Palmer’s campaign was so effective that, despite the Liberal-National coalition splitting before the election, Bjelke-Petersen managed to retain government.

Four years later, in 1987, Bjelke-Petersen announced his run for prime minister, with Palmer again as campaign director. This ultimately collapsed after Bob Hawke called a snap election and won comfortably. Nevertheless, Palmer claimed the campaign had “shaken up the system in Canberra”.

This desire to shake up the system remained a constant for Palmer, who in 2013 launched the Palmer United Party. It contested the 2013 federal election, winning three Senate seats, and Palmer himself was elected MP for Fairfax over Liberal candidate Ted O’Brien on preferences. The PUP continued as a minor party throughout the 2010s, often latching onto hot-topic issues.

In 2018, rebranded as the United Australia Party, Palmer launched a massive advertising campaign centred on right-wing populism, Australian nationalism, and conservatism. Despite spending $60 million, the campaign failed to secure seats. He tried again in 2022, this time campaigning against Australia’s COVID response and restrictions on personal freedoms. Palmer’s war chest helped elect real estate agent Ralph Babet to the Senate.

As stated earlier, Palmer deregistered the party after the election and joined the Trumpet of Patriots in 2025. His campaign launch included explicit praise for Donald Trump and a promise to “Make Australia Great.” This three-month advertising blitz is expected to cost between $30 and $50 million, according to The Australian Financial Review.

With Palmer at the helm, the Trumpet of Patriots are taking an aggressive, far-right, populist approach to the federal election, aiming to improve on Palmer’s previous best of a single House of Representatives seat. Whether this strategy succeeds remains to be seen — but if recent elections worldwide have taught us anything, it’s to discount such movements at your peril.

If Palmer can get even a few candidates elected, he looks poised to remain a key disruptor in Australian politics for another term.