Palmer trademarked ‘United Nation’ days before Hanson meeting

Clive Palmer registered a new party trademark – an apparent amalgam of United Australia Party and fellow right-wing populists One Nation – just two days before a well-publicised meeting with Pauline Hanson in her Brisbane office.

Palmer registered “United Nation” with IP Australia on May 25, ahead of their May 27 meeting, at which he brought Hanson, the One Nation leader, a cake to celebrate her 72nd birthday.

Comment was sought from Palmer, who has applied to have United Nation registered in several categories, including the “services of a political party”.

Hanson’s chief of staff, James Ashby, hosed down any suggestion of a party merger – particularly under the United Nation banner.

“One Nation has no time for the United Nations – why would we have anything to do with that brand,” he said.

“As a party, we’ve made it clear we want out of the UN.”

But University of Queensland trademark expert Professor John Swinson, an arbitrator for the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva, said it was clear Palmer was at least doing the groundwork for a new or rebranded political party.

“[In this case] it looks like marketing services and data services for a political party, which suggests he would be setting up a political party called United Nation,” he said.

But Swinson noted Palmer had a history of often frivolous trademark applications.

Early last year, he applied to trademark the “Clive and Pauline Party” – along with “teal”, “teals”, “the teal party” and “AusTeal” – in an apparent spoiler against the centrist movement.

None of the teal-related trademarks were accepted, while the Clive and Pauline Party remained under examination.

Swinson compared Palmer’s trademark prolificacy to US President Donald Trump’s use of social media throughout the night.

“One thing you could say about Clive Palmer is he’s proactive in predicting trademarks and filing for trademarks,” he said.

“A lot of them he lets lapse, so he must have an idea in the middle of the night, files the trademark, then sees if it has legs.

“It’s a good strategy – you should file before it becomes famous, not after, because someone else could jump in.

“So, as a business, I always say, ‘file before you launch’, and he’s adopting that business strategy here.”

Palmer spent more than $116 million at the 2022 federal election, which netted the UAP just a single senator – Ralph Babet in Victoria.

For the 2025 election, Palmer backed the ill-fated Trumpet of Patriots campaign, which aimed to replicate Trump’s populist success in the 2024 US presidential election.

Palmer announced in March that he planned to run in the LNP-held Gold Coast electorate of Fadden at the next federal election under the UAP banner.

If successful, he would return to Canberra after an absence of more than a decade, having served as the member for Fairfax on the Sunshine Coast from 2013 to 2016.

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