Clive Palmer blames financial woes on China

Clive Palmer has blamed financial woes on the Chinese government during a round of fiery television interviews.

Clive Palmer before appearing on Sky News at Parliament House in Canberra.

Clive Palmer has pinned his re-election hopes on appealing to Australians’ fears about Asian investment, blaming his financial woes on the Chinese government ahead of a critical report into the collapse of his north Queensland nickel refinery.

Queensland Nickel made “significant” uncommercial transactions and for the benefit of its directors before it collapsed, administrators have revealed in the report.

In the long-awaited report released by voluntary administrators FTI Consulting this morning, creditors are urged to liquidate the cash-strapped company at a meeting next Friday.

The report, by administrator FTI Consulting, is understood to confirm The Australian’s revelation that Mr Palmer secretly ran the troubled refinery near Townsville, north Queensland, for years under the alias Terry Smith.

The report will recommend that creditors — owed more than $100 million, including $73m in entitlements for nearly 800 redundant workers — vote to liquidate the company at a creditors’ meeting on Friday.

Clive Palmer Answers Allegations

Things got heated between Kochie and Clive Palmer this morning... Great to see such vehement debate! #sun7

Posted by Sunrise on Monday, April 11, 2016

In a series of TV interviews, including this heated debate with David Koch on Sunrise, the businessman MP has denied acting as a shadow director of the refinery company, but admitted he was one of a six-member committee that decided how to spend Queensland Nickel’s funds.

In the fiery exchange, Mr Palmer ridiculed Seven Network interviewer David Koch’s questions about political donations from the Queensland Nickel venture to the Palmer United Party, insisting it was his money to spend.

“I don’t know how you spend your money that you get paid by Channel Seven, but that’s my money. That’s what we live, in a free society, and people have the right to spend their money as they see fit,” the Fairfax MP said.

Palmer’s Terry Smith claim

There was nothing suspicious about his use of an alias “Terry Smith” to issue instructions by email, he told the ABC, claiming he used the name to book restaurants to avoid drawing attention.

“We’re talking about buying things over $500. We’re not talking about the running of the company, the yearly budgets, the corporate accounts, which are normally approved by directors. These functions were functions by employees, not functions by directors,” he told the ABC.

Mr Palmer, who campaigned in 2013 as a successful businessman and champion of Australian-Chinese relations, today staked his re-election on claims that “foreign powers” were “trying to control our country”.

Mr Palmer, asked if he would again campaign on his business record, argued he was “the only person who stood in the breach” against encroaching Chinese influence in Australia.

“As you know, over the last three to four years, the biggest projects that the Chinese government’s ever developed – a $12bn project, one of my projects in Western Australia, we’ve been locked in battles in the courts because they’ve refused to pay us and pay Australia the revenue we’ve been entitled to. If they’d done that there would have been plenty of funds available for people in north Queensland,” he told Sky News.

“The West Australian Court of Appeal on 24 March made the comment that their case was like pushing it uphill, they didn’t have a leg to stand on, and it was extremely weak, so I’ll be expecting that I will be vindicated within the next couple of months, that funds will be available to further invest in this country.”

“I am the only person who stood in the breach. We’ve had foreign powers trying to control our country. Nearly 8 per cent of this nation, other than crown land, is controlled by companies associated with the Chinese government and others, but the government won’t give you the figure, they won’t tell you the answer, because every bit, inch by inch, our sovereignty is slipping away.”

Mr Palmer’s claim about the scale of Chinese government ownership could not be verified.

About 12.4 per cent of Australian agricultural land was wholly or partly owned by foreign investors in 2013, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. China accounts for about 4.4 per cent of Australia’s total stock of foreign direct investment in 2014, compared with 23.7 per cent for the United States, according to the Foreign Investment Review Board.