Palmer, whose previous attempts to reinvent himself as a politician disintegrated into disunity, failure and farce, could take a lesson from his own experience and the original UAP.

That United Australia Party won office in a landslide at the height of the Depression in 1931. It's great asset was an ability to chart the middle course, avoiding the radical responses to the economic and social challenges of the day being urged by the far left and right.

Palmer's party, which contested the last two federal elections as the Palmer United Party, is anything but that.

Its often self-contradictory policies are a curious blend of both extreme left and right wing demagoguery and unadulterated populism. They range from the creation of a new state in Queensland, increasing the aged pension by 20 per cent and health spending by $80 billion to cutting income taxes and abolishing the fringe benefits tax.

Abolishing university fees, promoting the mining industry and closing down detention centres are also on the menu.

Given Palmer's record as one of the most absent MPs in memory; he celebrated his 53 vote win in Fairfax in 2013 by only turning up for 64 per cent of the parliamentary sitting days in 2014 and 54 per cent in 2015, a PUP/UAP Redux should be laughable.

That is not the case given the massive resources he has vowed to throw at the cause.

With plans well advanced for a multimillion dollar television, print and advertising blitz and a text messaging campaign that has already garnered more than 3000 complaints in full swing, he may outspend the cash-strapped Liberals who can't count on a donation from the Turnbulls this time around.

Given one of his texts, headlined "Make Australia Great", promises: "One hour [by rail] to [the Sydney CBD] from up to 300km away" it is apparent Palmer hasn't just borrowed his campaign slogan from Donald Trump. He has lifted the U.S. president's idiosyncratic social media style as well.

On the plus side, every dollar Palmer spends will remind voters of his less than glorious commercial and political record.

Who could forget, for example, the 2013 announcement he would be building a "Titanic II", modelled on the famous liner that sank on its maiden voyage in 1912, at an undisclosed cost? Construction has not yet begun.

Then there is the ongoing legal stoush over the costly, and for many workers and investors, devastating collapse of Palmer's Queensland Nickel business in 2016 that is still moving through the courts.

He will also find it hard to live down the implosion of the Palmer United Party, with the resignations of Alex Douglas, Francis Xavier Kurrupuwu, Carl Judge, Jacqui Lambie, Alison Anderson, Larisa Lee and Glenn Lazarus, in 2014 and 2015.

The real downside of Palmer's re-emergence is it does nothing to restore dignity and credibility to the democratic process at a time when politicians are already held in low regard by the many voters who consider them to be self-interested chancers and narcissists.

He and his party for one should be dismissed as background noise.