The Clive Palmer circus is unlikely to be coming to State Parliament after Palmer United Party officials failed to register the party in time for the 2015 election.
Under NSW's comparatively strict electoral laws, parties have to be registered 12 months before the election. That deadline passed on March 28 without PUP having submitted the paperwork to prove it has 750 members in NSW.
Mr Palmer can still run candidates but the PUP name will not appear on the ballot paper.
Mr Palmer said the party will take part in the NSW election but conceded his candidates would be forced to run as endorsed independents. ''We will have candidates who want to run and we will be supporting them. I expect we will get a couple of members elected in NSW,'' he said.
But without the advantage of the PUP brand, success is anything but assured. PUP, which does not have the political machinery of established parties, also failed to register in time for the South Australian election. Mr Palmer instead endorsed two candidates on a ''group independent'' ticket for the upper house. They received less than 1.7 per cent of the vote.
''We're a small party, we've only been around for eight months and already we have the balance of power in Federal Parliament from July,'' Mr Palmer said.
The O'Farrell government's crackdown on political donations and campaign spending may also have persuaded Mr Palmer to concentrate on the Queensland state election, due to be held no later than June 20 next year.
In NSW, Mr Palmer, who bankrolls PUP with his mining fortune, would be restricted to making a political donation of no more than $5500 to his own party.
Parties running an upper house ticket with fewer than 10 lower house candidates - the category PUP is likely to fit within - are restricted to total campaign spending of $1.6 million.
Mr Palmer is spending many times that in Western Australia on a saturation media blitz before Saturday's Senate byelection.
He spent more than $1 million in the final week of the Tasmanian state election in March but failed to win a seat.
There are 19 parties registered to contest in NSW, including five new parties. They are Philip Nitschke's Voluntary Euthanasia Party, Animal Justice, Australian Cyclists Party, No Land Tax Campaign and Australian Motorists Party.
