Clive Palmer plans to resuscitate his political party, vowing to contest every upper and lower house seat at the next federal election.
But the former federal MP will let his wife decide if he should seek to re-enter parliament.
Mr Palmer is confident there is enduring support for the Palmer United Party despite two high-level probes into his business conduct.
He says he should never have deregistered the party after he opted not to recontest his Queensland seat of Fairfax in 2016, and PUP is bigger than him.
"I made a mistake. I thought that the Palmer party needed to have Palmer in parliament," he told AAP on Friday.
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"In actual fact, we had a very large number of people that wanted to continue to be engaged."
Mr Palmer does not believe voters will be turned off by the gradual implosion of his party after the 2013 election, when defections reduced its three senators to one, Dio Wang, who went on to lose his seat in 2016.
Neither is he worried about the party's rebirth being damaged by an ongoing legal case about the collapse of his Queensland Nickel business and a probe by the corporate regulator.
But Acting Queensland Premier Jackie Trad said voters would remember Mr Palmer's past actions.
"If Clive Palmer wants to run in any election, I think that Queenslanders will walk into the ballot box, see Clive Palmer's name on the ballot paper and remember what he did to hundreds of workers in Townsville," Ms Trad told reporters on Friday.
Current member for Fairfax Ted O'Brien was incredulous when told of Mr Palmer's intentions.
"The Palmer Coolum Resort is still in disrepair, Clive Palmer stripped this community of its identity, it's taken a couple of years for Coolum in particular to rid itself of the ridicule that the Clive Palmer brand inflicted, I don't think you'd find too many keen to go back to that," Mr O'Brien said in a statement.
The businessman has faced grillings in the Federal Court about how Queensland Nickel was run before it went belly-up with debts of about $300 million, and the loss of hundreds of jobs at his Townsville refinery.
Mr Palmer's nephew Clive Mensink was the sole registered director of the company before it failed and remains overseas despite arrest warrants against him for failing to return to answer questions in court.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is also investigating Mr Palmer's companies. The regulator's boss John Price said last week the probe was well advanced.
Mr Palmer denies wrongdoing and claims "the full weight of the federal government has been improperly mobilised" against him and his workers.
In an earlier statement, Mr Palmer said PUP's executive committee had made the decision to revive the party, not just him.
