He's a billionaire who may not have billions and a mining magnate that doesn't mine anything.
Now Clive Palmer is on the verge of becoming a politician with a questionable grasp of politics.
Palmer, whose electoral platform amounted to promising more money for everyone, has a real chance of winning the seat of Fairfax on the Queensland Sunshine Coast.
The man who a few days ago bizarrely declared Rupert Murdoch's estranged wife Wendi Deng to be a Chinese spy is not only tipping conventional thinking on its head in his own electorate, his Palmer United Party (PUP) is distorting the poll around the country.
Palmer tipped millions of his own dollars into a campaign in which he fielded candidates in every lower house seat as well as a full Senate team.
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Palmer, who has a dinosaur fetish and wants to build a replica of the Titanic that he plans to market as a cruise ship, is yet to give any indication of which party he will vote with.
Even if his vote was relevant in the new parliament, both major parties would probably have thought hard about courting the man who was introduced to politics by Joh Bjelke-Petersen and who bankrolled the Liberal National Party of Queensland's last state election campaign.
An indication of the havoc being wrought by the rogue PUP emerged in the Tasmanian seat of Braddon where the Palmer candidate out-polled the Greens by two-to-one.
Should he gain the preferences he needs to win his seat, Palmer will presumably push his curious policies including allowing asylum seekers to arrive in Australia without visas and with a return ticket and to be processed within a day of landing.
He also proposes a revolutionary change to company tax and the reduction of income tax to 15 per cent.
Palmer says his seat will be one of two in the lower house that will be won by his party.
"We think we'll win the seat of Fairfax without any problems," Mr Palmer said.
"We also think we'll win the seat of Fisher if you understand the way preferences flow."
If the same trend is reflected in the Senate, there is a possibility of at least one PUP member entering the upper house.
Should Palmer succeed, he will, through a wonderful quirk in the democratic process, join another silver-haired and similarly idiosyncratic Queenslander Bob Katter on the cross benches.
