Clive Palmer is a busy little cockroach these days.
He’s currently interfering in not one but two upcoming state elections and mounting a High Court challenge to force open state borders, all while having just been charged with fraud by the corporate regulator.
Oh and he gave an interview last weekend dismissing the whole coronavirus thing as just a “media beat-up”.
It seems nothing can keep a bad man down.
Not when his Queensland Nickel company went bust in 2016 owing up to $200 million.
Only last month he won a victory over the liquidators trying to claw back the money after a marathon civil suit, even though the judge found that he was trading while insolvent.
Nor is he even slightly daunted by the eye-watering amounts he spends on fruitless election campaigns.
In the 2019 federal election it was estimated he spent as much as $60 million on a record advertising campaign. The Australian Electoral Commission revealed earlier this year the amount was actually $83 million. And he didn’t gain a single seat.
But Labor believes his anti-Shorten blitz helped contribute to the Morrison victory.
He’s going to try that strategy again with campaigns from one coast to the other. He is currently gearing up to try and unseat two Labor premiers in Queensland and WA, who have both put in election spending caps to try and thwart him.
(He had a trial run in the Townsville mayoral election in March when he threw half a million dollars at former footy player Greg Dowling, setting a new donation record for the state. As is usual with Palmer candidates, he ran third.)
On Monday Palmer called for candidates for his United Australia Party for Queensland’s state election in October. Though he doesn’t really need to field them given he has plenty of mates running the state Liberal National Party.
The president of the Queensland LNP, one David Hutchinson, was an employee of Palmer when he was reportedly helping plan a coup against the current Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington only last month.
Hutchinson eventually gave up his day job with Palmer. Not a problem though, as three other senior LNP executives still have links with the mining magnate.
Meanwhile in the west, where the election is only eight months away, Palmer’s feud with Labor Premier Mark McGowan is going all the way to the High Court after he was refused entry to the state for “business and political” meetings.
The federal government is intervening in support of Palmer’s claim that the WA border closure contravenes section 92 of the constitution which should allow “intercourse” of people and goods across state lines.
The fact that Palmer’s intercourse involved literally screwing the state Labor government politically surely has nothing to do with it, as the attorney-general and other federal MPs from WA insist they are not supporting the man, only the principle.
Which is a good job given it was less than two weeks ago that Palmer was charged by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) with fraud and dishonest use of his position as a company director.
The fact that the charges directly relate to him allegedly illegally funneling more than $12 million into his party’s political campaign would give his opponents hope, you might think.
Unfortunately the ASIC charges relate to the 2013 campaign. He has fought two more federal campaigns and spent over a hundred million dollars since then.
So even though the case is scheduled for August and carries a five-year jail term, he’s unlikely to be stomped out any time soon.
He’s more virulent than the virus he thinks is harmless.
And with planned federal tax cuts on the way the likes of Clive will have even more money to fuel the Great Australian Plutocracy.
As it has always been Janine ( I was around at the beginning when Charlie Court closed the East and West with the impenetrable Nullabor sea).
Thanks for a great piece.
Palmer seems to be something of an enigma Janine. On the one hand, Palmer (following Mill’s illustration of harm) does starve his workers if, by more or less, legal means. On the other hand, the manifesto (i.e. his first 2013 manifesto) did have something to commend it and a number of candidates (for the Palmer party) were elected. Agreed : many (all?) were opportunists but such is the nature of the game. Agreed : the apparent opportunists in subsequent campaigns didn’t have the appeal of the fist group and neither did (larger than life) Clive.
As an aside, on any topic (and I include Crikey), it is not in the media’s interest to “solve” any given problem. Revenue is generated by keeping the issue “in the air” as it were. Analytic solutions exist to problems such as energy use and source to climate change to corona-viruses in general and because (lucky for the broad media) the education of the electorate isn’t equal to the solutions endless
chasing of tails exits. On this matter Palmer is not far from the mark. I’d be surprised to learn that he considers the current virus harmless, although the recovery rate is about 98%, but he is not alone in regarding any media as not having the competence to address the matter comprehensively.
As to meddling in any (State or Federal) politics : who does refrain these days?
Palmer makes Alan Bond look like an innocent abroad…how he has evaded the law thus far is a mystery to me, but the fact that he is not in prison already says very clearly that the current laws are not adequate for dealing with his type.
Probably lucky for him that he chooses to fight hard against China and not Russia, or he most likely would already have been mysteriously liquidated.
Re the recovery rate of 98 per cent: the more I read about so-called “recovery”, the more I suspect the category should be re-titled “not dead”.
Yeah; kinda. The recovery seems to be correlated (i.e. yet to be explained) against APOE and blood group ‘A’. Those with group O+ seem to recover well; everything else being equal but not those with ‘A’. Therefore complete recovery is by no means uniformly distributed through the population.
Those with an existing medical (particularly an organ) condition are further compromised and hence the bias of non complete recovery (indeed death) towards the age 65+ group. Even with about 3.5+ hours reading a day I can barely keep up with it.
Yet Palmer has a point. The damned thing is going to be around for a while so why not take it in one’s stride. Alternatively, alter the constitution by a referendum and seal every State up for renewed intervals of six months until some criteria (e.g. 90 days free) is met.
Without Palmer’s unnecessary lawsuit the assumption was that the states could close their borders for such an emergency. One way or another Palmer’s legal activity is likely to cost us.
I withdraw the word “unnecessary” subject to the court’s decision. If the court rules in his favour I can’t say it was unnecessary. If the court rules against him I don’t need to say it.
On the one hand Palmer has the right to test the law but on the other hand, as you convey, the decision could expose the very fallacies with the decision-making that has occurred within the States (and Territories) to date.
Isolating the public will (as a matter of course) suppress the effects of the virus; by reducing the community Ro; no Ro => no transmission – but it doesn’t solve the problem (because the Ro of the virus remains [high] and the virus, having attached itself to host (again), is “up and running once more”). The isolation merely shifts the matter to one side (out of the way – as it were) for an interval of time.
The effects of USA-style individualism, with its implications, have (inter alia) displayed themselves in VIC. The isolation approach requires 100% discipline from the community and anything less will compromise the approach.
Policies that have been adopted are those of a “fingers crossed” mentality. I think it was Keane who pointed out in an article, not so long ago, that there is not a trace of a plan C, D, E etc for subsequent lock-down, C, D, or E or, for that matter, a recovery after a lock-down.
If I were sitting at ScoMo’s desk I’d ask the Premiers for a “hands up” to emulate the Swedish model but without interstate or international travel by humans (i.e. freight only) and run that model until May 2022 and compare it. The isolation policy is postponing the inevitable. Perhaps, Clive, if he wins his case, will prove to be a blessing in disguise.
I dunno, Janine, that sounds like a bit of an insult……to cockroaches.
I am surprised the High Court is entertaining the challenge – he was refused entry into WA for health regulation reasons there was no interference with business activity as most enlightened interstate businesses conduct themselves with modern electronic activity – email, zoom conferences , drop box etc, etc – so they are much more effective ways of conducting business normal environment yet alone in a pandemic
Yeah but. Someone as imposing as the Clivosaurus cannot impress those he is meeting unless they’re in the same room with his sheer physical heft and bluster. On line, his lack of intellectual heft sells him short.