Surely, Clive Palmer is trolling us. Surely.

Here we are, just a few months out from a federal election, and Palmer – in my view the graspingest of all our home-grown billionaires – has applied to the relevant authority, IP Australia, to trademark the word “teal”. Also, heaven help me, the phrase “The Clive and Pauline Party”, “Teals”, “The Teal Party” and “AusTeal”.

Illustration: Joe Benke.Credit:

Avoiding the sheer horror of a party co-chaired by Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer, neither of whom has once contributed one iota of goodness to our nation, let me reassure you of this. Palmer is not colour-blind. He’s a stuntman. He knows the difference between the shrieking canary yellow of his multiple political campaigns and the bluey-green of the group of politicians known as community independents. He just thinks the rest of us don’t understand the difference between black and white.

But this move by Palmer is entirely on-brand. He’s lied about a lot in his life – about death taxes, about vaccines, in political ads, about resuscitating his nickel refinery. He’s threatened employees of his failed businesses. And let’s not forget his general enthusiasm for misinformation and disinformation. Remember when he told us there were many more deaths from COVID-19 vaccines than there were from COVID-19? I asked Andrew Hughes, an ANU expert in political marketing, what he thought was going on in Palmer’s head.

“The objective would be to damage the teals so they lose enough primary vote share that they can’t influence the outcome in marginals, but to also give Clive more influence in his........

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