Following the handing down of the budget, chairman of the United Australia Party and the party's treasury spokesman Clive Palmer appeared at the National Press Club to present the party's economic plan ahead of the election.
But Mr Palmer did not stay only on the topic of the economy, veering into claims about COVID-19, lockdowns, superannuation, a federal integrity commission and even his party's membership.
With so many claims flying in one speech, it's difficult to sort the fact from the spin. Here's your cheat sheet on how to understand some of the key claims from Mr Palmer's address.
Largest political party? It's apples and oranges
In support of his party's credentials, Mr Palmer told the Press Club the United Australia Party was "now Australia's largest political party".
It's not the first time the UAP has made such a claim. In an October 2021 press release, Mr Palmer gave further context, explaining the claim was made on the basis of party membership.
"The United Australia Party's membership base has surged past 70,000, making it the largest political party in Australia," he said.
A month later, Mr Palmer said UAP membership had reached 80,000.
The Australian Electoral Commission told Fact Check it was unable to verify Mr Palmer's claim as "electoral legislation as it stands does not empower the AEC to audit the membership of Parliamentary parties."
But whatever the number, Graeme Orr, who specialises in electoral law at the University of Queensland, told Fact Check that memberships of the UAP membership and other mainstream political parties were simply not comparable.
"Mr Palmer would say that in the past year, on the back of [vaccine] and lockdown scepticism and the 'freedom' slogan, he has now attracted lots of members," Professor Orr said.
"That is more a post-modern model of a party with lots of registered supporters, paying $0 'membership', forming an email list around a contemporary issue (rather than an ideology or social class)."
In order to join the UAP, members are only required to fill out an online form providing their details.
In contrast, to join the ranks of the Labor Party, members must join via their local state branch and pay an annual fee. In Victoria, for example, this can cost up to $225 a year.
Similarly, membership in the NSW division of the Liberal Party for a single adult costs $100. "VIP" party patron members are charged up to $990 a year.
Minor parties such as the Greens and One Nation also charge a membership fee.
A federal first?
To bolster his party's credentials on frontrunning policy, Mr Palmer claimed his party was the first to raise the idea of a federal integrity commission.
He said that former Palmer United Party senator Dio Wang "in 2013 was the first person to introduce the idea of a federal ICAC".
But that flies in the face of history.
The Greens had already introduced legislation to establish an integrity commission three times before the senator even joined the parliament in mid-2014, with former Greens leader Bob Brown having also called on the government to establish such a body in 2009.
The first parliamentary reference Fact Check has been able to find of former senator Wang promoting the idea of a federal anti-corruption commission was in early 2016.
As he himself declared in the first line of that address: "Proposals for a national integrity or anti-corruption agency in Australia date back to the 1980s."
"The government itself has also spent the past few years talking about the need for a corruption watchdog and I acknowledge members of all political parties who have advocated publicly or privately for such an agency," then Senator Wang added.
A super claim
Mr Palmer is a longstanding critic of Australia's compulsory superannuation regime.
At the Press Club, he repeated a familiar claim.
In 2014 Mr Palmer — who then served as the federal MP for the Queensland seat of Fairfax — said it was "a statistical fact that over 50 per cent of Australians will be dead by the time they get access to their super."
In 2016, he told parliament: "A large percentage of Australians will be dead before they are eligible to use [their super]."
Fact Check has repeatedly found that claim to be wrong.
Superannuation can normally be withdrawn once someone reaches their so-called preservation age. Depending on a person's year of birth this can range from 55 to 60.
When you can access your super
| Date of birth | Preservation age |
|---|---|
Before 1 July 1960 |
55 |
1 July 1960 – 30 June 1961 |
56 |
1 July 1961 – 30 June 1962 |
57 |
1 July 1962 – 30 June 1963 |
58 |
1 July 1963 – 30 June 1964 |
59 |
After 30 June 1964 |
60 |
| Source: Australian Tax Office | |
In 2014, Fact Check published data produced by the Actuaries Institute showing that more than 89 per cent of people were expected to live beyond the age of 65, well above the age when superannuation can be accessed.
At the time, two of Australia's largest super funds told Fact Check that less than 5 per cent of funds were paid directly to beneficiaries because the member had died.
'Unprecedented' debt?
The UAP chairman was keen to note that the principal purpose of his address was the economy — and his plan to pay down Australia's debt.
He railed against the Coalition government's spending, claiming Australia as a result faced debt "unprecedented in the nation's history" and calling Treasurer Josh Frydenberg a "record debt breaking treasurer".
Mr Palmer is the UAP's treasury spokesman — and he's using a trick that both Mr Frydenberg and Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers have both deployed to make economic arguments around the budget. That trick is time, or conversely, the lack of accounting for things that change over time.
In this instance, it's inflation and the size of the economy.
In 2015, Fact Check tested a claim made by then deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop, who said that her government had inherited "the worst set of financial accounts" in Australia's history.
But as University of Sydney economist Michael Rafferty told Fact Check at the time: "The value of money in different time periods is different and a dollar today may be worth less than a dollar ten or twenty years ago."
At the time, on the basis of debt and deficit in proportion to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Fact Check found Ms Bishop to be wrong, concluding:
"Large borrowings to finance Australia's participation in World War I and World War II and the impact of the Great Depression led to much higher deficits and levels of debt than any government has experienced since."
That's still the case with the level of debt today.
According to the budget papers, as of the last full financial year (2020-21), Australia's net debt stood at 28.6 per cent and gross debt at 39.5 per cent as a proportion of GDP.
Estimates for the 2021-22 financial year put those figures at 27.6 per cent and 39.5 per cent respectively.
While the nominal debt figures are the largest since modern records began in 1970, looking back to federation shows they are not the worst in Australia's history.
Back in 2015, experts told Fact Check that during WWI, gross debt reached more than 50 per cent of GDP, while following WWII it ballooned to more than 120 per cent of GDP.
Controversy on COVID
While the purpose of the address was, ostensibly, to outline the party's economic plan, the mining magnate still made a slew of claims regarding COVID-19, repeating and expanding on previous controversial statements made about the pandemic.
Take, for example, his claim that over 1,222 deaths in Australia were attributable to COVID-19 vaccines, as supposedly evidenced by data from the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
Back in June 2021, Mr Palmer authorised a radio ad in which it was claimed that 210 Australians had died after COVID-19 vaccination.
As Fact Check explained at the time, a TGA weekly vaccine safety report from May of 2021 did indeed say that to May 23, 210 deaths had been reported to have "occurred following immunisation", but only one of those deaths could actually be attributed to a COVID-19 vaccine.
Fact Check was unable to find a source for Mr Palmer's latest claim of 1,222 deaths linked to COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the latest version of the weekly TGA report, published on the day of Mr Palmer's speech, 814 reports of death following immunisation had been reviewed by the administration, 11 of which could be conclusively linked to the vaccine.
Another claim made by Mr Palmer during his speech — that for a COVID-19 vaccine-related death to be officially counted, it must occur in a person who had received at least two doses — is also put to bed by the TGA report.
"The deaths linked to vaccination occurred after the first dose of Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) — 8 were thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) cases, 2 were linked to Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) and one was a case of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP)," the report notes.
Mr Palmer also suggested that "there are over 100 doctors in Australia that have been struck off and not been able to practise medicine in this country because they advised their patients not to get vaccinated".
He made a similar claim in January, that time saying over 200 Australian doctors had been struck off because "they objected to what was happening" in response to COVID-19.
Fact checkers at AAP examined that claim and found that since July 2019, 61 medical practitioners had been disqualified by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) for any reason — not just related to COVID-19 vaccination.
CHO misrepresented
Mr Palmer used his speech to tout the benefits of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, as he has done since early in the pandemic when he donated over 30 million doses to the federal government.
As evidence of the drug's effectiveness, he cited a recent decision by Queensland Chief Health Officer John Gerrard to revoke a ban on prescribing the drug outside specified purposes, in place since April 2020.
"The Queensland Government's Chief Medical Officer, in his direction on the 12th of March [2022], has said he needs hydroxychloroquine to stop the spread of COVID," Mr Palmer claimed, arguing that the decision to overturn the ban "was a recognition that the real data overseas in a number of countries had been significant for treatments".
That misrepresents the evidence, and the decision.
In a statement provided to Fact Check, Dr Gerrard said the reason for the original ban was high demand and stockpiling of the drug early in the pandemic, raising concerns over shortages for patients who rely on it for chronic conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis.
The ban was revoked "because there are no longer any supply concerns", Dr Gerrard said, adding: "It would be unethical to prescribe hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 because there is conclusive evidence that it is not an effective treatment."
"To suggest the direction was revoked to allow the use of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment is false."
It's worth noting that while the public health direction referenced by Mr Palmer states that the decision was made "pursuant to the powers under … the Public Health Act 2005 to assist in containing, or to respond to, the spread of COVID-19 within the community", this is a standard preamble in Queensland health orders, including the original ban.
Importantly, hydroxychloroquine is not currently recommended as a COVID-19 treatment by the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, whose clinical guidelines state that, based on the available evidence, "hydroxychloroquine is potentially harmful and no more effective than standard care in treating patients with COVID-19".
What about that lockdown claim?
And finally, Mr Palmer echoed a claim which has been often repeated by the media and politicians since 2021:
"[There's] also the situation with Labor, where we had [Victorian Premier Daniel] Andrews having the biggest lockdown in the world's history".
But that claim falls apart even without surveying the entire span of human civilisation.
Notably, "biggest" could refer to several different measures, such as the severity of restrictions (either individually or collectively) or the number of days spent locked down (consecutively or in total over a period of time).
Compared with Melbourne, Fact Check has previously found, Buenos Aires in Argentina spent more consecutive days in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, while a city in northern Chile spent more individual days under stay-at-home orders.
Certain residents of Manila — such as those aged under 15 or over 65 — were locked down for longer still.
There are also many other places around Australia and the world that have tried pandemic restrictions at least as severe as those in Melbourne.
Principal researchers: Sonam Thomas, David Campbell and Ellen McCutchan
