Palmer was set to be elected to the House of Representatives and unseat the conservative incumbent in a shock result after a deep-pocketed populist campaign in the Sunshine Coast district of Fairfax, with 51.9 percent of the vote and 67.8 percent of ballots counted.[break]
His self-titled Palmer United Party won more than 11 percent of the vote in Queensland and 5.7 percent nation-wide, prompting him to claim he could "win the whole country in the next three years".
"Governments may come and go, but ideas go on forever. What we´ll contribute of course is ideas -- ideas stimulate debate in the country which has been sorely lacking in this campaign, and that we can do something positive for the country that we all love."
Analysts said Palmer had attracted a large protest vote against the major parties, and helped soften the blow against Labor by taking seats from the conservatives.
"There is an anti-party feeling I think in this," said Monash University senior lecturer in politics Nick Economou.
"It´s picked up people who might have voted for the coalition. So I think there´s a sense that the Palmer Party has actually mitigated the anti-Labor swing," he added.
Economou said Palmer had "probably achieved what he set out to achieve which is to be a real pain in the side of the conservative side of politics".
The billionaire best known for building a replica of the Titanic and filling his northern Queensland golf resort with giant animatronic dinosaurs, Palmer batted away questions about his intentions as an MP and potential conflicts of interest between his political obligations and business empire.
"I´ve got more money than you could ever dream of, what´s the conflict of interest? How much money do you think I can get out of the government?" said Palmer in trademark combative style.
"You don´t need to judge a person by how much money they´ve got, it´s the content of their character that matters."
Palmer said his Titanic project and mining business would "continue of course".
"The constitution of this country never envisaged that we´ve have public servants that lived from the cradle to grave in Parliament House in Canberra, removed from the people," he said.
"They envisaged that people would come in and serve in parliament for one or two terms, contribute to the nation and the ideas to get the country moving and move on, and that´s what we´ll do."
He said he was standing "because I can serve the Australian people and provide more ideas on where this nation should go" in a bizarre interview inviting the political analysts to come to his resort and try a "brontosaurus burger or a titanic burger" and meet his dinosaur robots.
"We´ve got 160 dinosaurs and if you come up I´m sure one would be glad to eat you," he said.
Palmer repeated his threats to sue Rupert Murdoch over unflattering allegations in his newspapers and also threatened to sue the Australian Electoral Commission for what he described as attempts to influence results by publishing ballot counts on the east coast while voting was still underway in the west.
"I think we´ll take them to court, I´ve got enough money to spend on the AEC to give them a shakeup to make it a bit more accountable," he said.
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