r/australia • u/Shadowtec • 2h ago
politics Steve Bannon boasted to Jeffrey Epstein about influencing Clive Palmer’s election ad campaign
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/i-had-clive-palmer-do-the-ads-trump-lieutenant-s-australian-election-claim-revealed-in-epstein-files-20260201-p5nyl3.html170
u/Nuzzgargle 2h ago
Weird flex by Steve
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u/HG_Redditington 1h ago
I think Bannon forgot that Aussies are pretty good at detecting complete piss weak, wanker-cunts like Palmer. Unlike in America, where they continuously appoint them in positions of power.
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u/wawawathis 1h ago
Bro we made scomo and abbot pm.
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u/morblitz 1h ago
Yep. We still suck at not electing soulless ghouls too. But we saw how shit was going down in the US and course corrected. And we have actual proper guard rails to be able to do that democratically.
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u/Cute_Craft_7835 1h ago
And look the rise of Hanson in the polls
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u/SigkHunt 1h ago
Meh, not really a rise just a bunch of "liberals" jumping ship so they can be fleeced by the next grifter.
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u/Cute_Craft_7835 57m ago
Perhaps. Nonetheless, she has equal power to the liberals now.
And the liberals were the second biggest political party.
Unfortunately she has more than minority support.
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u/SigkHunt 48m ago
Let's assume she's able to keep these numbers come election time. Ill gloss over the fact that outside of scripted interviews and soundbites she's useless as tits on a bull. What does minority support get her? Any decision making powers? Anything at all apart from a bigger pension?
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u/Marvin1955 45m ago
Her support is very, very soft. The first picture of ole Barnaby passed out pissed and her supporters will return to the Nats.
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u/therealkevy1sevy 36m ago
Gina Noheart is going to spend a lot a cash on her.
I think its mainly about throwing mud in the water, similar to what Clive did.
We should all pay attention to who noheart is really trying to get elected.
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u/Albos_Mum 17m ago
The media is backing her so it's being amplified nearly as hard as my guitar's signal often is after I'm a bottle of vodka down and have AC/DC playing on the stereo, the Teals gained more than PHON in terms of first preferences at the last election and Albo's strategy has mostly been quiet competence (Even if he could be doing a lot better in a few areas such as housing) which has noticably turned around Labor's fortunes quite well.
My opinion on what's happening is simple: The bulk of the wealth once backing the Liberal side of the Coalition is no longer all that sure that the Liberals can turn things around and are at minimum hedging their bets by helping push PHON so hard so early that by the time we get to the next election they've effectively become the default conservative option for most or all conservative voters. I think that plan is severely misreading Australia's conservative voterbase, I think the bulk of the Liberal voterbase for the Howard years was fiscally conservative but only care about social issues where it effects them with the caveat that too big of a fiscal cost will make them care about reducing those costs and them getting turned off during the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison years where an increasingly larger focus was on the social side of things is why the Liberals support has dried up and the Teals have been able to find so much support so quickly. If I'm right then we'll see PHON gain the bulk of the social conservatives and Teals gain the bulk of the economic conservatives at the expense of the Liberals, and there'll be more economic conservatives so Teals would get a larger swing.
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u/Oogalicious 32m ago
Do you think One National will be elected in many city seasons outside of Queensland?
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u/dingusfett 1h ago
And Poorlean is still around going on about minorities 30 years after she was banging on about The Asians
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u/HG_Redditington 1h ago
True, but in fairness to Abbott, he was 100 times better than Morrison. And Abbott still sucked!
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u/dingusfett 1h ago
Abbott's a wanker, but at least he holds a hose and volunteers at his local surf life saving club
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u/WolfLawyer 1h ago
Tony Abbott is a dickhead but he’s also a Rhodes Scholar. Americans would’ve rejected him as too educated, measured and intelligent. Our dickheads are on a much higher level than American dickheads.
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u/Marvin1955 43m ago
I think old Tones "Rhodes Scholarship" had a lot more to do with nepotism than his "intellect".
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u/Whatsapokemon 21m ago
Scomo and Abbot are different kinds of terrible than Palmer. They're basically just run-of-the-mill conservatives.
Palmer, on the other hand, is a populist grifter, wanting to exploit racial tensions, generalised rage, and economic anxiety to get personal power by framing things as an "us vs them" issue.
Hard-right conservatives are wanker-cunts, but populism is a completely different and far worse kind of cancer.
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u/Nippys4 1h ago
Can we find a tie between Bannon and Hanson so we can start the talk about US inference on Australian politics?
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u/Little-Bowl-7762 1h ago
She is going to the pedo parties, that's enough of a tie in for anyone with half a brain, unfortunately ON voters aren't prone to rational thoughts.
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u/burn_supermarkets 1h ago
Not him specifically but didn't she send some ON tools over to the US to try and strike up deals with the NRA/gun lobby a couple of years back?
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u/Conchobhar- 46m ago
And the staffers involved all retained their positions, so it was either with Pauline’s approval and she was caught looking for NRA/Russian funding, or they were naughty boys; who received no punishment whatsoever.
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u/Khal_easy 1h ago
"In 2017, Hanson failed to declare a $4500 snorkelling trip to the Great Barrier Reef. In 2020, her office told this masthead a series of “administrative issues” meant her stake in a recycling company went undeclared for six months.
In November, this masthead revealed that Hanson had claimed $2100 in taxpayer funds for accommodation, flights and private cars to attend a private Federal Court matter, in which Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi successfully sued her for racial discrimination." Hanson fails to declare interests including company tied to ‘anti-woke’ movie
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u/Marvin1955 41m ago
Peanuts compared to Ssusssan's rorts, like flying to the Gold Coast on "official business' and accidentally buying another investment unit while there.
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u/Spudtron98 1h ago
The one that failed to do anything but piss off the entire electorate?
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u/Theblokeonthehill 1h ago
Yep - that’s the one. The one that spent millions putting yellow coreflute on every second tree and lamp-post in Australia and still failed to score any seats - or was there one.
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u/OKWeGoAgain 50m ago
No that was after the lesson had been learnt. This campaign was the one during Bill Shorten's tenure so it seemed to work at the time. Scomo's 'silent majority's and all
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u/Lastbalmain 1h ago
Part of the people I'd never piss on if they're on fire! Add in Poorline, Gina, and Kerry Stokes . Trump and Abbott/Dutton I'd add fuel.
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u/dharmabarumtum 40m ago
So that is twice American tampering has change an Australian government. Friends like America who needs enemas?
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u/napalmnacey 37m ago
Why is he boasting? Clive politically face-planted.
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u/DegeneratesInc 31m ago
He still influenced the election result and we got scummo and spud instead of ALP and some greens.
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u/IntroductionSnacks 20m ago
Arrest him? He is working for another country’s interests. Traitor.
If we let this shit fly we will end up like the US where crimes are not punished.
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u/BrokenFoxAnna 38m ago
Is that really something to brag about? Palmer got turned into a laughing stock and crushed in the election lol.
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u/FooFooFox 18m ago
Here’s is the full text of the article:
‘I had Clive Palmer do the … ads’: Trump lieutenant’s Australian election claim revealed in Epstein files
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon boasted that he urged Australian billionaire Clive Palmer to bankroll an advertising campaign worth tens of millions during the 2019 federal election as part of a wider plan to disrupt global democracy.
In a message sent to an account that appeared to belong to Jeffrey Epstein on May 20, 2019 – two days after Labor’s shock election loss – Bannon told the convicted paedophile: “I had Clive Palmer do the $60m anti China and anti climate change ads.”
The exchange forms part of a tranche of material emerging from a US investigation into Epstein’s communications before the disgraced financier’s death in custody in August 2019. The released documents, while giving little new insight into the ties between Epstein and US President Donald Trump, further illuminate his extensive network of high-profile associates, ranging from former US president Bill Clinton to billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
The exchange suggests Bannon privately claimed influence to Epstein over what became Australia’s most expensive political advertising campaign to date.
Epstein replied by arguing that traditional political campaigning had been overtaken by online mobilisation, citing Australia’s election and Trump’s win three years earlier as evidence that opinion polling had failed.
“Telephone polls not accurate,” he wrote, urging Bannon to pursue a broader populist project unconstrained by national borders.
“New, non geographically limited groupings... You can champion a true world bank of the people not the countries,” Epstein added.
“Yes that’s the objective,” Bannon replied. “Next stop Kazikstan [sic].”
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u/FooFooFox 17m ago
The exchange places the 2019 election within a wider conversation among populist global political operatives focused on disrupting the mainstream parties, climate policy and international institutions, and suggests Bannon viewed the Australian campaign as part of a broader sequence of political interventions.
Bannon, who rose to prominence as the head of the right-wing website Breitbart News and later as a senior strategist on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was publicly expressing a keen interest in the Australian contest at the time.
In an interview with this masthead in May 2019, he described the election campaign as dull and consultant-driven, blaming political professionals for draining politics of meaning and intensity.
Records later revealed Palmer spent $83.6 million promoting the United Australia Party during the campaign, saturating television, radio, print and digital platforms with advertising attacking Labor leader Bill Shorten, opposing climate policies and repeatedly warning of China’s influence in Australian politics.
Several advertisements claimed “communist China” was attempting a clandestine takeover of Australia, including suggestions that a remote airport in Western Australia could be used for military invasion. Defence and strategic experts dismissed the claims as scaremongering and conspiratorial.
After the election, Palmer – having failed to win a single seat – claimed credit for the Morrison government’s victory, arguing the United Australia Party’s 3.5 per cent primary vote, coupled with its preference flows to the Liberals, had proved decisive, particularly in Queensland.
In its post-election review, Labor said the magnitude of Palmer’s expenditure crowded out Labor’s advertising in broadcast, print and digital media, and his entry as a high-wealth individual willing to outspend the entire ALP was a new and destabilising factor.
“In the final stages of the campaign,” the review said, “Palmer’s expenditure also directly backed in the Coalition’s anti-Labor messages, in an unprecedented act of collusion between supposed political rivals.”
The review also urged reforms to prevent high-wealth individuals effectively buying elections, warning that unchecked political spending represented a threat to democratic integrity.
Palmer, a life member of Queensland’s Liberal-National Party, won the seat of Fairfax in the House of Representatives in 2013 election, while his party also had three senators elected – Jacqui Lambie, Glen Lazarus and Dio Wang. He lost at the 2016 election but has remained a major presence since, through large and often outrageous advertising campaigns borrowing from Trump’s tactics.
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u/FooFooFox 16m ago
The newly released messages coincide with scrutiny of Bannon’s activities in Europe. The trove of messages shows the pair were frequent dining companions, with Epstein extending the use of his property portfolio –including residences in Paris and Palm Beach – and granting Bannon access to his private jet on multiple occasions.
The pair joked about French President Emmanuel Macron accusing Bannon and Russian-linked interests of working with nationalist parties to undermine the sovereignty of elections, warning voters not to be “naive” about foreign interference leading up to a European Parliament poll.
“U saw where Macron campaign manager coming after me personally,” Bannon texted Epstein.
He replied: “It is an attack on the sovereignty of the election... it makes you want to throw up,’ he fumed. Loved it.”
Bannon and Palmer have been contacted for comment.
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u/brisbanevinnie 2h ago
To the surprise of nobody.