Billionaire Clive Palmer donated an eye-watering $83.6 million to his United Australia Party – but it still wasn't enough to win him a seat
- Mining billionaire Clive Palmer donated $83.7 million to United Australia Party
- Revelation was in the Australian Electoral Commission's annual financial returns
- The funds came from Mr Palmer's mining company Mineralogy
Mining billionaire Clive Palmer in July
Mining billionaire Clive Palmer donated $83.7 million to his United Australia Party in the run up to the federal election last year, a new report has revealed.
But the massive figure, spent largely on TV adverts, was not enough to win him a single seat in either house of parliament.
The amount was disclosed in the Australian Electoral Commission's annual financial returns which were released on Monday morning.
Before today it was estimated that Mr Palmer spent around $60million on his campaign.
The funds came from Mr Palmer's Mineralogy, which was the biggest fossil fuel donor during the election.
The UAP has an $8.2 million debt to Google and owes a further $600,000 to IPG Marketing Solutions.
Mr Palmer drew criticism from outgoing Greens leader Richard Di Natale, who said his spending showed all that was wrong with politics.
'That's not a democracy, that's actually somebody buying influence,' he told reporters in Canberra.
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'That's one of the biggest problems we face in our politics, we've got to clean it up.
'If you want to have people's voices represented in this place, we've got to get donations reform - we haven't made enough progress on that.'
Gas company Woodside donated $135,400 to Labor, $136,750 to the Liberal Party and $11,190 to the National Party.
Excluding donations to the UAP, fossil fuel industry donations totalled $1.9 million.
The top three fossil fuel industry donors, excluding Clive Palmer-linked companies, were Woodside, Adani and the gas industry lobby group Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association.
These donated a total of $692,299 to various parties.
