$60 million with zero seats: Australia's Trumpet of Patriots
Hello and welcome to the first proper blog post on the exerinity.com newswire. Amazing stuff! In this post, I'll be reflecting on, ranting about, and basically laughing at a right-wing Australian political party who splurged over $60,000,000 on ads but failed to win a single seat in parliament.
Preemptively: this post is not me making any political statements nor me going on a crazed left-wing blitz, I just found this shit so funny I need some blog content. It is a mere rewind on a major event mixed with my bizarre viewpoint.
Intro
In a nutshell, and in my opinion, ToP was a classic Clive Palmer all-bark-no-bite speciale. From bombarding random people with text messages, trying to impose absurd policies, and basically trying to mirror Donald Trump, it's no wonder they didn't win any seats.
Who is Palmer? Great question! Clive Palmer is an Australian mining magnate worth an estimated $19.56 billion, which as of 2026 puts him as the 5th richest person in Australia. So no, this isn't some scrappy underdog story - this is a billionaire with a habit of bankrolling his own political vehicles. ToP wasn't even his first attempt. Before Trumpet of Patriots, Palmer ran the United Australia Party (UAP), which had similarly loud, high-spending campaigns in 2019 and 2022 with similarly underwhelming results at the ballot box. When he failed to re-register the UAP in early 2025, he pivoted - merging with an already-registered minor party (the Australian Federation Party) and rebranding the whole thing as Trumpet of Patriots in time for the 2025 federal election.
What did he rebrand it to? Well, these two things should make it abundantly clear: (Trump)et of Patriots, and...
The official logo for the party - AI generated. Yes, really, this is the logo they used everywhere.
Turns out Palmer wasn't even legally in charge of his own rebrand. After the election flop, he tried to deregister the whole party in May 2025 - but the AEC ruled that the original party executives were the ones who actually controlled it, not him. They reverted the name back to Australian Federation Party, officially confirmed in March 2026.
Intro sufficient enough? Now, onto the stupid shit they did! 
penguinz0 on YouTube: "Nobody Cares But I'm Talking About This Anyway"
Advertising
In advertising and at launch, Palmer (and the party as a whole) was adamant about two things: there are only two genders, and Australia needs Trump policies. Like, actually said it, out loud, on camera, and in TV advertising. I think also in social media ads. Whatever. Palmer stood up in front of a room full of journalists and went
"We think Donald Trump's been very effective in reducing public expenditure" (via Reuters)
and
"Australia needs Trump policies, Australia wants them" (via Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (no we dont)
with a straight face. The party also confirmed it would only recognise two genders, male and female, and Palmer took a jab at trans people working in schools while he was at it. What I think this goober is trying to say is that there are only two sexes. Subtle it was not...
Texts
Now, the texts. Oh my god, the texts.
If you had an Australian phone number in early 2025, chances are you got hit with these. Millions of people started getting unsolicited political texts, signed off with "Auth by H Fong, Trumpet of Patriots" - no opt-out, no way to unsubscribe, nothing. Just vibes and grammar-optional policy slogans like:
"solve housing fast trains 20 min CBD cheaper land"
"cut immigration by 80 per cent"
"double fees for foreign students"
I got every daily text from them. And I tweeted about it: 
exerinity 
on Twitter: "Fuck off, @TrumpetPatriots. Sending people unsolicited messages won't win them over, it'll turn them against you."
Some people got two or three a day. One Hunter Valley resident said the volume would "give gaming ads a run for their money." Reddit was flooded with people asking how to make it stop, because political parties are exempt from the Spam Act and the Privacy Act in Australia. These texts aren't legally "commercial" so parties can blast you without an opt-out and without ever telling you how they got your number. Fun system!
All up, over 17 million of these went out. And yeah, again from my tweet, bombarding people with texts will make them hate your guts. Not make them vote for you. Who the fuck has ever gone "oh yeah, I remember this party who spammed my phone. I'm gonna vote for them!" at the voting venue?
Budget
Now let's talk money, because this is the part that makes it truly special.
In the final month of the campaign alone, ToP spent $4.27 million on Google ads (YouTube included) - nearly 30% of all political and social-issue ad spend across the entire country on that platform, from every party, combined. They also dropped $624,000 on Facebook and Instagram in the same 30 days.
For context: Labor, the actual governing party of the entire country, spent $3.9 million on Google over the same period. The Coalition spent $3.4 million. ToP - a party that didn't exist a few months earlier - outspent both of them on Google alone. And what did that buy them? At the time this reporting came out, YouGov had them polling at 2%. Not 2% of seats. 2% of first-preference votes, nationally.
This isn't even Palmer's first time setting money on fire for nothing - he spent over $110 million in 2022 under the United Australia Party banner to get exactly one Senate seat. Yeah... one. Just one. So really, ToP finishing at zero seats after "only" ~$60 million was almost an improvement, efficiency-wise. Almost. And they wanted to tackle wasting money, what a knee-slapper!!
The results
Election night, May 3, 2025. All that money, all those texts, all that Trump cosplay - and Trumpet of Patriots walked away with 1.85% of the national vote and zero seats. Not a single one. Out of 150 lower house seats and a whole Senate on top of that.
Meanwhile Anthony Albanese won re-election, becoming the first Australian PM to win consecutive terms since John Howard. Peter Dutton, the actual opposition leader, became the first federal opposition leader in Australian history to lose his own seat. It was a genuinely wild night for Australia - and ToP still somehow made it look worse for themselves than either of those headline stories.
Then there's Suellen Wrightson, who Palmer had literally dubbed "Australia's next prime minister" before a single vote was counted. She ran in Hunter, the seat ToP treated as its flagship battleground - the one that got hit hardest with the text spam. Her result? 3.3% of the vote. In the seat where they tried hardest. She congratulated Albanese and gave her commiserations to Dutton, then said the party would "reevaluate our position, listen, learn"... whatever that means.
Reevaluate they did - right into deregistration threats, a boardroom power struggle, and eventually losing the Trumpet of Patriots name altogether.
So yeah, that's Trumpet of Patriots. Dogshit party, dogshit name, dogshit across the board. The name alone is very weird because A) clearly by the prefix... and B) it's kinda implying patriotism here is the same as American patriotism, or at least... massive. It's NOT. Nobody is a fierce patriot with an Australia-flagged Holden Commodore ute, an Australia-flag-covered house, full-body Australian tattoos, and throwing Chiko rolls and Four'n Twenty meat pies at police officers. So, even if they had a good party with good policies, I think they would've lost with that name & logo regardless.
Clive Palmer giving a double thumbs up
Sources
Background
Advertising / launch
Texts
Budget
Results / aftermath