Remember when Clive Palmer was a national joke?
He twerked on the Kyle and Jackie O Show, and we laughed. He recorded a ridiculous theme song (“He’s got 12 boats and he needs your vote / He doesn’t like Liberal, Labor or the Greens / He likes pies and cream / He wants your vote / Tony Abbott is his rival / He likes jam with his trifle …”). Hilarious. He was building an absurd replica of the Titanic (which has hit its own metaphorical iceberg of red tape and bad planning), and his dinosaur park tickled our fancy.
And he was so rude! He told Tony Abbott to “commit suicide” (later clarified to be “political suicide”), and we shook our heads in shocked bemusement. He told Tony Jones to “shut up” and hung up on 2UE. He made “goodbye” videos (“Goodbye Bronwyn”, “Goodbye Tony”) and fell asleep in Parliament. What a cutup. What a card.
He was certainly generous with his money, at least when it came to holding onto political influence. Palmer spent nearly half a million dollars on TV ad buys during the Western Australian Senate do-over in 2014. The Liberals spent $53,000 and Labor $63,000 in WA during the same time period.
But while he was distracted making silly videos and songs, things were going very badly for his company, Queensland Nickel. The company went into voluntary administration, and 237 people lost their jobs. Another 550 will be terminated today unless some business miracle can save their jobs.
No one’s laughing anymore.
Palmer’s ‘business miracle’ is a clear example of immoral, possibly illegal, phoenix activity. His ‘replacement’ vehicle Queensland Nickel Sales Pty Ltd should be wound up on just and equitable grounds. It would be unconscionable for him to get away with pulling up stumps on the asset-free QNI, ditch the employees with no hope of getting paid out, and re-employing them on new contracts, if he feels like it, in Queensland Nickel Sales.
One hopes he does end up getting done for insolvent trading. Palmer is a shrewd and clever man, but in this case he may well have been too clever for his own good.
I’d still like to see him prosecuted for the damage he did to football in this country with his Gold Coast United A-League club vanity project.
Not sure about that. My mother always taught me not to laugh at the afflicted and I always consider Palmer to have serious afflictions. Raised a slight smile at his Goodbye Bronwyn effort but that was more to do with her than his performance. Other than that I though he was a laughing stock rather than a humorist.
Don’t forget that Palmer’s purchase of QNI from BHP in 2009 was intended to remove from BHP the environmental liability of the 40 year old plant. As we can see, this has worked spectacularly well for BHP. All the while, anyone with half an interest could see that ‘in due course shortly’ the plant would reach its use-by date. That is, without a huge (probably dumb) investment in upgrades and renovation, the plant would simply be worn out, the tailings dams full, the whole show run out of time. It was always going to close down about this time. Anybody who actually worked there, who operated the systems, who recycled the water and pushed spoil around in the dams could see with their own eyes that the dinosaur was about to die. So why all the shock and horror? The plant has been shut down for a few days for what is said to be ‘maintenance’ while awaiting the arrival of a new ship load of ore from New Caledonia or the Philippines or wherever. Well don’t hold your breath. The ship hasn’t arrived at Townsville – is one even being loaded somewhere? Shortly we will hear that liability for the entire site at Yabulu will fall onto Queensland tax payers and the whinge will start again about what a bastard Palmer is. But we all knew this from the start. BHP offloaded the thing so that they wouldn’t tarnish their reputation. Clive doesn’t have to worry about reputation. In fact he’s likely manoeuvring to make sure he makes money out of the closure.
Oh for the good old daze, when he was just another good ol’ boy Limited News Party patron and lobbyist; when his money was all they cared about – and his demands, in return, were “reasonable”.