Love for China on the rocks but Clive Palmer’s lost his clout

Perhaps romance blossomed in the early 1960s, a time of free love, when Clive Palmer claims to have sat on Mao Zedong’s knee as a small child.

Sometime in the intervening half-century, things soured between­ Palmer and China.

The relationship went from inter­twined business interests to deriding his Chinese paramours as “bastards’’ and “mongrels’’.

Malcolm Turnbull, who once shared a Chinese food rendezvous with Palmer at the Wild Duck in Canberra, yesterday officially called time on the politician’s Far Eastern liaison.

Sadly, the Prime Minister said, “many love affairs come to an end and clearly the member for Fairfax’s love affair with China has also come to an end’’.

In truth, it has been on the rocks for ages. Palmer’s questions on the 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin by Chinese company the Landbridge Group merely snuffed out what embers of passion may have remained.

Importantly, it was not the only relationship to flounder yesterday. Turnbull’s frisson for Palmer has also faded; the flattery replaced with mockery.

At 8.19am, Palmer called a press conference for 11am to discuss the Darwin port.

Perhaps the notification was sent before Palmer had read The Australian and realised there would be questions about revelations that his lawyers had told a court his businesses were facing a “drop-dead date” within days and he was intensifying legal pressure to secure a quick cash injection from his estranged Chinese business partner, Citic.

Minutes before the event, it was cancelled due to “Palmer being unwell’’. Could it have been a dose of front-page-itis?

Three hours on Palmer was recovered enough for a rare question time appearance, sitting in the chamber as Turnbull praised him for his contribution to the tax debate. Then the wind changed.

Palmer, who was busting a gut to launch an interrogation over Darwin’s port, leapt to his feet three times.

Three times he was denied ­before eventually getting a chance to claim the “Chinese Community Party’’ was controlling Australian ports.

“If the Chinese government controls ports, they control our economy, they decide what’s exported and manipulate prices and port charges,’’ he said, demanding to know whether the government would take back these assets to ensure Australia’s national economic security. Turnbull’s troops, who have never shared any fondness for Palmer, erupted into howls of “the Titanic, the Titanic’’.

The Prime Minister saw an oppor­tunity and ran with it. “I remember the halcyon days when he was one of the leading friends of China. He was a Chin­ese prince,’’ he recalled. Palmer was once going to build “a sort of new version­ of the Titanic in China’’.

The Prime Minister then stressed that Australia’s foreign investment framework was always­ administered in the ­national interest and Defence had expressed no security or access concerns with the lease.

In palming Palmer off with ­derision, Turnbull appears to have realised this particular backbencher doesn’t carry nearly as much clout as he likes to make out.