Comeback candidate Clive Palmer's fresh plans for a tilt at the Senate won't affect his legal bid to change electoral rules to help his party's lower house challengers.
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The Queensland businessmen is asking the High Court to ban the Australian Electoral Commission publishing data, including two-candidate preferred counts, until booths close countrywide.
The billionaire is running a team of candidates under the United Australia Party banner and claims the data favours major parties and is misleading to voters still to complete their ballots.
The two candidates listed are almost inevitably Liberal-Nationals or Labor and not candidates from minor parties or independents.
Mr Palmer wants the full court at a hearing on May 6 to prevent the AEC publishing data until 9pm (AEST), after polls in Western Australia and the Northern Territory have also closed.
But Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue, acting for the AEC, tried to get the hearing scrapped on Tuesday, arguing that Mr Palmer's shift to the Senate, rather than re-contesting the lower house, meant there was no longer a factual basis for the case.
It had been accepted by the AEC that the publication of theoretical results relating to a seat where Mr Palmer was a candidate could have the "capacity to affect electoral choice" of voters in other seats.
But Mr Donaghue said Mr Palmer's legal team had failed to establish how the same could be said for other candidates representing the minor party.
Mr Palmer's barrister Luke Livingston said they'd always put their case on the basis of counts relating to Mr Palmer as well as other party candidates more generally.
He said if it was accepted publication of theoretical data relating to Mr Palmer's previously anticipated lower house seat had the capacity to affect electoral choice, the same should be agreed in relation to less prominent candidates.
That was disputed by the AEC on Tuesday morning, but appears to have resolved following a demand from High Court Justice Michelle Gordon that the parties continue negotiating.
She's under pressure to have the matter dealt with before the May 18 federal election.
"I find myself in a very unusual position - we don't have a statement of agreed facts and I'm being asked to make a decision in a vacuum and we're under time constraints," she said.
It's understood agreement has been reached on the matter and the May 6 hearing will go ahead.
Mr Livingston was ordered to file new submissions for his case, with Mr Donaghue to respond by Friday.
Justice Gordon warned "blunt" alternative options include that she determine the matter alone before the election and it later becomes subject to appeal.
Australian Associated Press