By Peter Wicks

Craig Kelly’s claim of 30,000 new members has many wondering if his counting ability is any more reliable than his Covid treatments.

The fastest growing political party on earth.

That’s what Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly would like us to think the United Australia Party has achieved. This however, appears to be smoke and mirrors.

Some of you may have seen the full page advert in the press over the weekend bragging about achieving 30,000 new members in 10 days.

I thought I’d reach out to some of them to see what was attracting them to the party of Covid denial and crackpot theories.

Fortunately I was able to reach several of them on the same number. I spoke to a lovely lady whose UAP membership recognises as Usad Dickface. So impressed with the sound policies and professional medical opinions of Craig Kelly was young Ms Dickface that she thought she’d sign up a few memberships for some of her imaginary friends as well.

It’s not just the expert advice on Covid treatments attracting members like Dickface however, Mr Kelly is known to have active members of staff such as Frank Zumbo, who is widely regarded as one of the most ‘hands-on’ staffers around. For all the wrong reasons.

Another new member of UAP that I spoke with was surprised when his membership details including his membership number appeared in his inbox. It was a surprise to him as he would rather inject bleach into his own head than join the party that likely thinks this is a legitimate Covid treatment.

Given there is no cost involved in joining, Grant assumed that someone was having a bit of a joke at his expense.

Craig Kelly and Frank Zumbo (Image from the ABC)

The United Australia Party seems more intent on creating an impression rather than building a legitimate party. It is a plan as pathetic as a Senator buying Twitter followers, but arguably even less convincing.

The UAP membership page has such a low standard of authentication checking that many would assume that it has been designed to allow people to sign up anyone or anything they like. I sure as hell do.

Here’s how it all works.

I was fortunate to have an IT expert, Michelle Stevens, helping me out. Her speciality is search algorithms, and how government and private enterprise use algorithms for personalisation.

The authentication system used by Palmer on the UAP site, a Zoho Webform site is substandard. It will allow you to put anything in and will still accept your membership.

For example, here’s one we did for the Hulk, Mr Louis Ferrigno. His federal electorate is Cork in Ireland but he lives in Queensland with a postcode that doesn’t exist.

Here’s UAP’s membership form accepting the data.

Here’s Australia Post confirming the postcode doesn’t exist.

Here is the confirmation of UAP accepting the application.

Note that the email address matches the one on the membership form

It is important to note that the major parties have a proper authentication system that would never allow this to happen. They want real members, not fake members.

Even if you scrape the bottom of the barrel, you’ll find One Nation have better authentication.

It is also important to note that most parties have a membership fee. Most people are less inclined to set up 100 fake memberships for Ronald McDonald etc if there’s a cost involved. Clive and Craig don’t care.

Recently there has been an increase in burst blood vessels in peoples temples as phone owners nationwide are bombarded by unwanted texts from Mr 5G himself, Craig Kelly.

People have been understandably furious that he has obtained their phone number without their permission. Well I’ll let you in on a little secret. He hasn’t.

UAP will have been using a random number generator which will take the first two numbers as 04 and then just pump out texts to randomly generated numbers. This is why texts have been received on different days, it’s the cycle of the generator rather than an uploaded list of numbers. Unfortunately however, Clive and Craig may know yours is a legitimate number if you respond with warm wishes, as I’m sure many have.

Screenshot from a random number generator

Some minor parties have been doing membership drives in a struggle to reach the new minimum membership threshold. Many have been vocal about having to find 1500 members in a country of over 25 Million.

A few things to remember, we all struggle with the road-map sized Senate ballot, those complaining are seeking to make it bigger still. Taxpayers foot the bill for this enormous ballot paper, the smaller the ballot, the lower the cost to the taxpayer. If a party can’t rally 1500 members then it’s time to form a knitting circle or something.

I have had many people contact me recently about the process of resigning from a minor party.

If you have joined a party and wish to leave you just need to cancel your membership in writing to the Party’s head office. The AEC will be doing random checks from membership lists provided by the parties, if they contact you, simply say you are no longer a member.

If a party claims a member that has left or doesn’t exist here’s what the AEC confirmed with me today;

“…from an electoral law perspective is that the AEC being advised that people on the membership have never been, or are no longer, a member could result in a party being deregistered.”

With 30,000 new members of the calibre of our big green friend Louis Ferrigno, I reckon someone in Craig Kelly’s office has a big job in front of them.

Don’t call me a fake member