If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news over the past day or so, you’ve probably noticed a fair bit of chatter about Australia’s own moneybags parliamentarian Clive Palmer. He’s in deep shit over his crumbling Queensland Nickel business, and now people are throwing around the possibility that he could be chucked in the slammer over it.
What? Huh? Why is Clive going to jail? What the? Is this related to that guy calling him a turd on Four Corners?
Yes, it absolutely is. Here’s a primer on Clive’s current sitch, for those who are a bit lost.
What’s the deal with Queensland Nickel?
As you likely know, before entering Federal Parliament, Palmer made his dosh in property and resources. One of his businesses was Queensland Nickel – a refinery in Yabulu, Queensland which provided work to many people in the town. World nickel prices fell, and the company collapsed. It ended up owing employees and contractors over $100 million, which is a hefty chunk of change for a failed business.
But that’s not really the end of the story. Though Clive had ostensibly stepped away from the company prior to his tenure in Parliament, that doesn’t look like it was strictly true.
Four Corners’ great report on Monday night, which fronted a lot of the great reportage The Australian has done in the past on this matter, found that he was essentially a shadow director: sending emails around under the alias Terry Smith, approving spending, micromanaging, etc. A big no-no.
He obviously strenuously denies the charge that he was acting as a shadow director, as does fellow director and nephew Clive Mensink.
Is that why people say he could go to jail?
That’s part of it, but Clive was also allegedly siphoning cash out of the collapsing business in the form of $224 million in loans, of which only $22 million was ever repaid. The cash was apparently going to ‘related parties’.
What was that bulk cash being spent on? The Sydney Morning Herald suggests it was going to fund [Clive’s] cash-thirsty ambitions in property, tourism and politics”. So, you know, that includes his run for Parliament as well as his fellow Palmer United Party Senators, of whom only Dio Wang remains in the party.
How dodgy was some of this spending?
Well, considering these were loans… quite dodgy. For example $5 million was spent on 60 vintage cars, who went into an exhibit at Palmer’s Coolum Resort. This was recorded as a loan to his flagship company Mineralogy and never repaid. ’60 vintage cars’ feels like a stereotypical thing to buy after a enormous corporate rort, so points on that front.
$5.5 million in costs was also allegedly extracted to pay for Palmer’s infamous Titanic II project, which feels like it’s heading for a similar fate as the original Titanic but hopefully without the thousands of iceberg deaths.
But possibly dirtiest of all was the $26 million Queensland Nickel paid in political donations – mostly to the Palmer United Party, obviously. It’s a fairly dire vision of how easy it is to insert yourself into the halls of power in this country if you just put a little dosh behind your effort.
The journos and commentators who got onboard with the original ‘populist uprising’ that Clive’s election represented back in 2013 probably feel mighty silly. Or maybe they don’t.
Give us the goods, PEDESTRIAN.TV. Is the bloke actually headed for the SLAMMER?
Hey, maybe. Clive doesn’t think a court could convict him and that the charges are ‘fantasy’. Which he would say, obviously. He reckons that the administrators fudged the numbers, and that – obviously – there’s a vast conspiracy against him which goes right up to Rupert Murdoch. Huge. If. True.
We will later today release documents proving the allegations made by the administrators are false
— Clive Palmer (@CliveFPalmer) April 13, 2016
But what is basically certain is that Clive’s political career doesn’t have much steam left in it. Only 2 percent of Fairfax, Palmer’s Queensland electorate, said that they would give him their first preference. I’m not sure who those 2 percent are, but perhaps he gave them a fun ride in his vintage car.
And Senate reform will make it a whole lot harder for his lone friend in the Senate, Dio Wang, to slide back in if there is a double dissolution. Even if there isn’t, Clive’s parliamentary ambitions are all but dead.
Twerk on, mate. Twerk on.
Image: Getty Images / Stefan Postles.
