Queensland Nickel: operations manager paid to look into resorts

Cash-strapped Queensland Nickel paid operations manager to investigate property developments such as golf courses.

Queensland Nickel's Managing Director of operations Ian Ferguson leaves the Federal Court in Brisbane. Picture: AAP.

Clive Palmer used his cash-strapped Queensland Nickel to pay his first boss and the refinery’s operations manager to investigate property developments such as golf courses and cattle stations.

Ian Ferguson, who employed a young Mr Palmer in his Gold Coast real estate firm in the 1970s, has told the Federal Court that he didn’t know how the Townsville refinery’s operations worked for an entire year after Mr Palmer employed him as operations manager of the refinery in 2012.

“I did not know how the refinery operated,” Mr Ferguson told the public examination into QN’s collapse.

Mr Ferguson said while he primarily focused on the running of the refinery, he was also paid by Queensland Nickel to investigate property developments for the Palmer Group. In late 2013, he flew to Port Douglas at Mr Palmer’s request to look at the Sea Temple golf course that was later bought by the Palmer empire. Mr Ferguson said he was not paid for that trip.

Last year, when QN began experiencing severe financial difficulty, Mr Ferguson said he had a “good idea” to turn an ex-Japanese wedding reception venue on the Gold Coast that Mr Palmer owned into a golf course and residential development.

The court was shown an invoice from a consultancy firm to QN for $8250 for work on the Green Heart Gardens Merrimac proposed development in 2015.

Mr Ferguson said he did not know how the invoice came to be directed to QN.

When he first started working for Queensland Nickel in 2013, Mr Ferguson said Mr Palmer made him swear a “blood oath” that he would only concentrate on the refinery and not on real estate.

However, just months later, Mr Ferguson said Mr Palmer started to contact him to “bounce things off me” about property development.

Mr Ferguson said he had an “oral agreement” with Mr Palmer to do that work.

“I was at the refinery but there were times when I would have had to be absent to carry out this work,” Mr Ferguson said.

He had a private consultancy company, Primeland Australia Pty Ltd, that sent invoices to Queensland Nickel for the work. He said his salary as managing director of the refinery was adjusted as a result.

In his unauthorised biography of Mr Palmer Clive: The Story of Clive Palmer, The Australian’s Sean Parnell said Mr Ferguson hired a 21-year-old Mr Palmer as a real estate salesman at his N & K Projects company on the Gold Coast, after Mr Palmer suggested he was actually 29 years old.

Mr Ferguson told the court he had left school at 14 and went to work in shearing sheds before starting a career in property development.

He stayed in touch with Mr Palmer after two or three years working together, before having lunch in August 2011.

“He asked if I would join his companies,” Mr Ferguson said.

But he said he didn’t accept the offer. In January 2012, Mr Palmer asked him again to look at the Townsville refinery.

Mr Ferguson started work at the Yabulu refinery as a commercial director in March 2012, but was promoted to general manager within weeks, despite not having any experience in the resources industry.

The hearing continues.