If you felt a cacophonous vibration beneath your feet today, don’t panic. It’s not an earthquake, it’s the Queensland Government dropping bombshells alleging that everyone’s favourite lunatic Clive Palmer is just a wee bit corrupt. You may take a moment to collect your jaws from the floor.
The Queensland government, headed by LNP premier Campbell Newman, will hand over documents to the Crime and Misconduct Commission that allege Palmer engaged in morally suspect behaviour that could potentially amount to out-and-out corruption.
The incidents in question stem from the 2012 dispute between Palmer and the LNP which resulted in Palmer breaking away from the party to form the Palmer United Party. The alleged documents contain claims that Palmer approached the LNP with offers to drop all litigation that he and his company had pending against the Newman Government, in exchange for extremely preferential treatment for Palmer and his Waratah Coal company in regards to a major coal and rail project running through both central and coastal Queensland. Effectively, the demands involved a rubber stamp of approval and would have bypassed usual environmental and economic assessment phases; action tantamount to straight-up corruption.
In response, Palmer has launched a defamation lawsuit against Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, though he has yet to comment directly on these allegations. Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney claims it was these refusals from the LNP that became the catalyst for Palmer’s political secession: “The reason we have the Palmer United Party is because I rejected the terms in that document.” “PUP exists because we said no to him when it would have amounted to corruption if we had accepted his terms.“
The Queensland ALP has made some enfeebled attempts at querying the timing of the Government’s handing over of the documents, given that Queensland is 12 months out from a State Election, and recent polling suggests that the PUP would collect as much as 13 percent of the primary vote.
The documents allege that Palmer felt entitled to the preferential treatment for the project tender – which ultimately was split between a Chinese consortium and Gina Reinhart‘s Hancock Coal operation – because, at the time, he was a major donor to the LNP.
Clive pls.
Photo: Stefan Postles via Getty Images.
via The Australian.
