United Australia Party chairman Clive Palmer says Victoria’s political donation laws “have rigged things” and he intends to donate just over $4000 for the party’s state campaign – the legal limit – despite spending an estimated $100 million at the federal election.

The UAP named controversial former Liberal MP Geoff Shaw as the party’s Victorian leader on Wednesday.

Clive Palmer, Geoff Shaw and Senator Ralph Babet at the UAP announcement on Wednesday. Credit:Scott McNaughton

Shaw, the former member for Frankston, will stand for the Legislative Council in the Northern Victoria region and will announce the party’s candidates for all upper house seats next week.

Palmer’s massive expenditure during the federal election campaign resulted in just one UAP candidate being elected – Victorian senator Ralph Babet.

But Palmer said the millions he spent on advertising was “worth it” but that a similar amount would not be able to be spent in Victoria because of electoral laws limiting donations to $4320.

The UAP’s campaign would rely on voters being concerned that Premier Daniel Andrews and the Labor government were acting excessively, he said.

“Dan Andrews has rigged things by saying that, really, only the unions can donate to his party,” Palmer said.

Shaw said the Andrews government was “destroying people’s lives”, taking aim at the state’s debt levels and the government’s management of the pandemic. He also criticised the Liberal Party as having “become more like Labor”.

“They’ve left a big gap behind, a big wake behind, as they’ve left, and that’s the gap that we’re filling. We want the people who are disillusioned with the Liberal Party,” Shaw said.

Shaw’s time on Spring Street between 2010 and 2014 was mired in controversy after he was investigated by the ombudsman and police for allegedly using his taxpayer-funded parliamentary car and petrol cards for interstate deliveries for his hardware supplies business. Police later dropped 23 charges against him.

Geoff Shaw was the Liberal MP for Frankston.Credit:Wayne Taylor WMT

Shaw blamed his “enemies” from the Labor and Liberal parties for a parliamentary privileges committee report that ordered him to repay $6800 over the incident.

“The ones that picked up saying, ‘No, naughty boy, you need to fix this up’, was a parliamentary committee made up of my enemies, of course, Liberal Party and Labor Party, so you work that out,” he said.

Palmer said the party had looked at the allegations and believed “there was just nothing to them”.

He said the party was in the process of finalising its preferences and claimed it would not be involved with any “preference whispers” to help candidates get elected.

“We’ve got a policy, I can say, that the United Australia [Party] are not a party of whispers,” Palmer said.

“You don’t want backroom deals. You want straightforward politics with people going to exercise their democratic rights.”

However, Freedom Party deputy leader Aidan McLindon – who intends to act as a “preference blocker” and publicly release where “freedom” and family value parties are directing preferences ahead of the election – said he had been working closely with the UAP.

“I am a blocker. I don’t like the word ‘whisperer’ because I do my stuff transparently,” McLindon said.

“[People] will be fully informed of where that number one is actually going. We’ll also call on the other parties to do that.”

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