KATHRYNE and John Edmunds have a short message they're prepared to share for free in response to Clive Palmer's $60 million advertising blitz leading up to Saturday's federal election.
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"I'd hate to think of him holding the balance of power. I don't want him treating the whole of Australia the way he's treated us," said the Nelson Bay couple who are just two of a number of Hunter people in a long-running legal dispute with Mr Palmer over a Coolum resort time share.
They have not stayed at the former five-star resort since it was bought by Mr Palmer in 2011, changed from being the Hyatt Regency Coolum to the Palmer Coolum Resort, and the time-share benefits that came with initial outlays of $13,000 to $60,000 or more for some people disappeared.
But they have had to keep paying annual maintenance fees at the resort of shattered dreams until a legal case between Mr Palmer and a company representing up to 200 people, including the Edmunds, reaches a conclusion.
Mr and Mrs Edmunds's original investment bought them 18 days per year at the Queensland Sunshine Coast resort and golf course which hosted the Australian PGA Championship 11 times from 2002 until 2012 until Mr Palmer took over from the Hyatt.
"It was just a wonderful place to have a family holiday. We stayed there on at least four occasions," Mrs Edmunds said.
Time share owners paid a discounted daily fee to stay at the resort and received a percentage of money paid if they were unable to use their allotted days and units were used by tourists or for overnight visitors.
It all changed after Mr Palmer bought the resort and "ran the old Hyatt Coolum into the ground", as Queensland Infrastructure Minister Cameron Dick said in parliament on April 30.
He lashed Mr Palmer as the man who responded to angry time share owners who camped out in a "dilapidated villa" by "cutting off water and power to them".
"Six hundred staff lost their jobs when Clive Palmer ran the old Hyatt Coolum into the ground," Mr Dick said.
In April, 2018 the Australian Securities and Investments Commission charged Mr Palmer and Palmer Leisure Coolum Pty Ltd with breaching takeover law over a bid to take over all time share interests at Coolum in April, 2012.
In January the Queensland Supreme Court set aside Mr Palmer's application for a permanent stay against the ASIC and Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions charges. Mr Palmer appealed the decision which will be heard on June 4.
The criminal proceedings against Mr Palmer and his company will return to Brisbane Magistrates Court for mention on June 28.
Mr Edmunds said the deterioration of the Coolum Resort since it became the Palmer Coolum, including the opening of a dinosaur theme park with replica dinosaurs along the golf course, was "a crying shame".
"You see Clive comes up on TV in those ads (saying 'Let's get something done for a change') but locals in Coolum hate what he's done. That resort used to have 80 per cent occupation of 300 villas. That's all gone," Mr Edmunds said.
Mr Palmer's United Australia Party is fielding candidates in all Australian lower house seats and in the Senate under a slogan to "Make Australia Great".
Prime Minister Scott Morrison defended a preference deal with Mr Palmer in early May, and said Labor and the Greens were a bigger risk to the economy than the United Australia Party.
The party's number one NSW Senate candidate, Hunter-based Brian Burston, joined the United Australia Party in 2018 after leaving the One Nation party following a fall-out with leader Pauline Hanson.
Mr Burston did not respond to questions about Mr Palmer's legal cases flowing from the Coolum resort time share. The United Australia Party did not respond to questions.
