Stop wasting time on joker and deal with rest of pack

CLIVE Palmer is driven by revenge and his personal interests.

TONY Abbott shed no tears yesterday for the carbon tax (2012-2014). On the way to the grave, the Prime Minister described it as useless and destructive, noting it was an “international oddity”. So naturally our mind turns to Clive Palmer, our own Silvio Berlusconi, with a twist. Mr Palmer is less bunga bunga and more bungle bungle, in business and Canberra. Like the Italian populist, the Palmer United Party leader has the capacity to greatly improve his personal interests by manipulating political circumstances. Mr Palmer — a disciple of two-decade Queensland premier and maverick Joh Bjelke-Petersen — is experimenting with roles in the capital: party founder, tyro MP, father figure to PUP senators, ringmaster, stunt man, wrecker and deal-maker. Such colour and quackery has allowed Mr Palmer, a vote rival to the Coalition, a dream run in the distracted and incurious Fairfax press and on ABC platforms. Yet, as we have found through our reporting and relentless scrutiny of Mr Palmer, beneath all those chins is a glass jaw.

Dealing with the mercurial PUP leader has been difficult for the Abbott government. Mr Palmer is a slippery fish, with a mish-mash of policies, alliances and interests at play. He is consistently inconsistent. Thus, the Coalition’s approach has lacked unity; some ministers want to try to work with Mr Palmer, others believe they should fight him and destroy his influence. As PUP’s carbon tax shenanigans show, any accommodation is temporary and fraught. It may be impossible for Mr Abbott to work with a man who has no clear philosophy or a leader who models his party on a wacky cult.

But as former Coalition senator Ron Boswell showed in defeating Pauline Hanson many years ago, a clear strategy is needed. The moral danger in elevating Mr Palmer should be obvious to a Coalition that watched Labor — to its utter damnation — embrace the Greens and their loopy ways. So, who is running the show? Mr Abbott must avoid at all costs a transactional relationship with Mr Palmer and seek the higher policy ground. The Prime Minister needs to make a big picture appeal to voters on key policies. He should speak directly and openly to the nation about our problems and his proposed solutions. Like a strong border regime, some policies must be presented as sacrosanct. Budget repair, for instance, is not a far-off, aspirational goal. It is fundamental to the economic safety and financial sustainability of the current and future generations. Mr Abbott has to establish, right across the community, that precious things are at stake and some key policies are not negotiable. He should also shine a light on Mr Palmer’s self-interest. That, in the end, would put electoral pressure on obstructionist Labor, Greens and other players. Instead, like Kevin Rudd, Mr Abbott has been dedicated to short-term concerns, trying to win the daily skirmishes of retail politicking. If Mr Abbott showed leadership and strength, and convinced voters of the need for his plan, minority players would follow.

With a big-hearted approach and ambitious story, Mr Abbott can win support from the crossbench senators. He should speak to them, one by one, about the government’s budget fix, highlighting the strong support for fiscal action by the nation’s best economists. We believe that senators, who early in their six-year terms are under the control of Mr Palmer, can be part of national renewal. First, because they have voters’ interests at heart. Second, because they will inevitably be repulsed by Mr Palmer’s bullying, bluster, control-freakery and Clive-first tunnel vision. Third, the entire Palmer sideshow will crash and burn and new senators, drawn from various walks of life, will display rugged individuality.

Aside from his aggressive and litigious business practices, it is worth recalling why Mr Palmer, after funding the Liberal National Party for years, entered the political arena. It’s simply a spectacular hissy fit. When his grand desire to develop coal in the lucrative Galilee Basin was blocked, he turned on Campbell Newman and the LNP. Mr Palmer’s tender bid to run a rail line, based on scant documentation, was trumped by his out-of-state rival Gina Rinehart, whose environmental impact statement was detailed and vastly superior. Now, the PUP leader is trying to orchestrate a wide-ranging Senate inquiry into the Newman government.

As usual that’s a distraction and an abuse of parliamentary resources. More telling would be probes by Canberra, Queensland and Western Australia into Mr Palmer’s corporate history. WA Premier Colin Barnett claims that the businessman’s poor behaviour in the Sino Iron project has damaged our economic interests and reputation in China; Mr Palmer’s Chinese business partner Citic Pacific alleges his Mineralogy wrongly siphoned more than $12 million from an account set aside to run a port connected with the project, with some of the funds used to cover PUP’s election costs. Mr Palmer’s nickel refinery has pumped toxic waste into the Great Barrier Reef marine park. Shouldn’t that be of interest to the Greens? Given his form, inside and out of Parliament, it is Mr Palmer who has some very big questions to answer.