ALP boss offered me union help on port: Palmer

Clive Palmer says union boss offered to help him access Townsville Port for a refinery.

Queensland mining magnate Clive Palmer. Picture: AAP

Clive Palmer has claimed that a senior union boss and member of Labor’s national executive, ­Michael O’Connor, offered to help him regain access to Townsville Port in order to reopen a nickel ­refinery that once employed ­almost 1000 workers at the same time Labor ­officials were lobbying him for a preference deal.

The Queensland mining magnate, running for parliament under his recently formed United Australia Party, also says he was pressured and physically intimidated by another union ­official earlier this year who demanded he direct preferences to Labor in exchange for solving a problem he was having with the West Aus­tralian Labor government.

After denials by Labor that it had been seeking a preference deal with the former MP, Mr Palmer has responded with a series of claims including that he had first been approached in February this year by senior Labor figures seeking formal preference discussions ahead of the election.

He said a key figure in trying to negotiate a deal was Queensland Labor senator Anthony Chisholm, who first approached him ahead of the 2013 election as the Queensland ALP secretary and again in 2015 ahead of the Queensland state election.

In an exclusive interview with The Australian, Mr Palmer said Mr O’Connor met with him several weeks ago and offered union help in getting the Queensland government to reopen access to a berth at Townsville Port, which Mr Palmer has said was needed if the refinery were ever to reopen.

“He said to me, ‘Well you should know we are in a good position to help you with that … even if it is an AWU matter … we are well placed to help’,” Mr Palmer said.

He said the offer was not made as part of a preference deal by Mr O’Connor, who is national secretary of the Construction Forestry Mining Maritime and Energy Union and a member of the ALP national executive.

At the same time, he said, he was being approached again by Senator Chisholm for a preference deal. “Michael O’Connor didn’t say anything wrong … as a union person, you’d be expect him to want to help,” Mr Palmer said.

“He asked how the campaign is going …. we discussed things of a political nature.”

A spokesman for the CFMEU said Mr O’Connor’s meetings with Mr Palmer had been restricted to discussing workers.

The spokesman said: “Any discussion on this matter was only about advancing and protecting the interests of union workers and had nothing to do with the ALP.”

Mr Palmer said Mr O’Connor had told him he was part of an “eight-man” campaign team for the election.

He said the meetings with Mr O’Connor occurred around the same time Senator Chisholm was pressing him for a preference deal.

“I was at the Tattersalls club in Brisbane with a former Labor state minister in March this year,” he said. “I had known them for many years and he asked, ‘What will you do with preferences?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’

“He says if you don’t mind, could you have a discussion with Chisholm again? He said, ‘I’ll get Anthony to give you a call.’

“On budget day, I had gone to see Brian Burston, I was on the Senate floor in one of the adviser boxes … the UAP had a seat in there, Simon Birmingham came up and shook my hand, Cori Bernardi came over and Penny Wong, leaving the Senate, said, ‘Hello, Mr Palmer.’

“Anthony Chisholm came across and sat down next to me and said, ‘What are we going to do about preferences? When are we getting together?’ ”

Senator Chisholm would not comment on Mr Palmer’s claims. Labor sources said Senator Chisholm was not seeking a deal but seeking to know what Mr Palmer was doing with preferences.

Mr Palmer will today formally announce a preference arrangement with the Coalition after confirming that the advertising spend he had put into his campaign would top $50 million.

He said he believed Labor’s tax agenda would damage the economy and for that reason he could not enter into any arrangement that would get them elected.

He said he would also put the right-wing senator Fraser Anning last on the UAP ticket while putting One Nation behind Labor.

Polling suggests Mr Palmer is likely to repeat or even exceed the result at the 2013 election that saw him elected to the lower house with three senators under his then Palmer United Party.

Scott Morrison has deflected criticism of a deal with Mr Palmer while workers from the closed QNI refinery are still owed money and the courts are seeking to recover $66m in payments to the workers by the commonwealth. The Prime Minister said that was a matter for Mr Palmer to ­explain.

Mr Palmer told The Australian he will today announce that he has put $7m of the outstanding money owed to sacked workers into a trust to “lock in” the entitlements before the election.

He said the courts would decide whether ultimately he would have to repay the money being sought by the federal government.

Mr Palmer also cited an incident on February 12 when he was in parliament meeting the UAP’s Senator Burston and he was confronted by a union official who “put me up against a wall” and ­demanded he preference Labor.

He said the official said he could help smooth things over with WA Premier Mark McGowan, who had threatened to tear up a state agreement with Mr Palmer’s company Minerology, which at the time was locked in a dispute with Mr Palmer’s former Chinese business partners over royalties.

The story has been corroborated by a witness but the union ­official involved could not be ­contacted.

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese at the weekend called Mr Palmer a “tosser” after Mr Shorten was forced to concede that discussions may have taken place with Mr Palmer but no preference deal would ever have been considered before all the workers from QNI had been paid in full.

Mr Albanese said the Prime Minister “had a choice between standing up for ripped-off workers or sucking up to a tosser who ripped them off … and he chose the tosser — he chose Clive Palmer”.

Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek yesterday played down the meetings with Mr Palmer and any impact he might have on an election result. “I don’t think a couple of SMSs is what you’d call a formal negotiation and Bill’s made it very clear that we would never have had a formal arrangement with Clive Palmer while he owes his workers $70m,” she said.

Pressed on whether exchanges between ALP powerbrokers and Mr Palmer focused on preferences, Ms Plibersek said that “parties talk to parties all through election campaigns constantly” to find out “just what your opponents are planning to do”.

She also questioned whether the deal would give the government an edge in Queensland, saying that it was “yet to be seen”.

“I think Clive Palmer will come under increasing scrutiny during this campaign, and people will ask themselves why they would vote for a man who dudded his own workers,” she said.