CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT

Even after spending close to $60 million on advertising, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party is set to miss out on a Senate seat, even in Queensland where he has plastered even more billboards in comparison to the rest of the country.

In the lower house, his candidates won 3.4 per cent of the vote nationally. In Queensland, his party was easily outvoted by One Nation, which received 8.4 per cent of the vote compared to Mr Palmer’s 3.5 per cent. It’s a notable dip since the 2013 election, where they polled 5.49 per cent nationally and 9.89 per cent in Queensland.

This election, he has won 389,888 votes across Australia, at basically $150 per vote.

What Clive gets out of this expensive affair is yet to be seen.

Some say he has gifted the Coalition their landslide win by splitting the vote and smearing Bill Shorten’s name across the country, in an effort to secure coal-mining related special treatment down the track.

Others say he’s effectively just pulled $60 million dollars out of an ATM and thrown it at passing traffic.

However, one very real result is the fact that Australia is now facing a nationwide shortage of yellow ink.

Prominent signage franchises, Officeworks, Bannerama, Snap Printing and outdoor advertisers APN have all reported a critically low supply of yellow ink.

“It’s making it very hard for us to service our other fatboy clients like Maccas and Hungrys” said one corflute manufacturer.

“We’ve got much more long-term clients who actually advertise successfully complaining about why their logos are orange!”

“And he didn’t even win us a seat.”

“All he’s done is send our entire industry broke. Like he will do to the tourism operators on the reef when ScoMo gives him that mine he just paid for”