Clive Palmer’s $300bn claim ‘absurd’, says solicitor-general

The solicitor-general has pilloried Clive Palmer’s $300bn legal claim against Australia as weak, absurd and demonstrably in­adequate.

Clive Palmer. Picture: NewsWire / Rohan Kelly

The solicitor-general has pilloried Clive Palmer’s $300bn legal claim against Australia as weak, absurd and demonstrably in­adequate.

A three-day hearing on the matter began in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in Geneva on Monday. Mr Palmer is seeking the compensation – the largest investor-state dispute settlement claim in history – over Western Australia’s decision to pass legislation blocking him from seeking compensation over the state’s failure to progress his Balmoral South iron ore project.

Opening Australia’s case, the Solicitor-General, Stephen Donaghue KC, described Mr Palmer’s claim as “incredible”.

“The sheer size of the claim makes this proceeding one of great significance to Australia. It meant Australia had no choice but to divert very significant public resources to defending the claim,” he said. “That was necessary, because any claim for $300bn must be taken seriously, even if … it is a claim with weak jurisdictional foundations.”

Mr Donaghue revealed that Mr Palmer had pulled half of his witnesses within two days of learning that Australia planned to cross-examine them and had not filed any contemporaneous evidence to support his key claims. That, he said, meant the case relied almost solely on nothing more than Mr Palmer’s version of events.

Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue.

Despite his longstanding ties to and presence in Australia, Mr Palmer has launched his action under international trade laws by virtue of a corporate restructure that shifted many of his assets to a Singapore-headquartered entity Zeph Investments.

Mr Donaghue told the tribunal Mr Palmer had chosen not to cross-examine any of the five expert witnesses called by Australia to support its case, meaning Australia’s evidential case was essentially unchallenged.

“The decision to proceed in that way cannot reasonably be attributed to a lack of resources on the claimant or Mr Palmer’s part, such that the very clear inference is the claimant had no answer to that evidentiary case and indeed feared its position would go ­backwards if it sought to cross-­examine Australia’s witnesses,” Mr Donaghue said.

Mr Palmer had failed to give any plausible explanation for the “remarkable” eleventh hour withdrawal of several of his witnesses. “It leaves large parts of [Zeph Investments] written pleadings, which refer to the now withdrawn witness statements, unsupported,” he said. “Indeed, it leaves the claimant in this proceeding almost entirely reliant on the uncorroborated evidence of Mr Palmer himself.”

He said there was a complete absence of contemporaneous documents to support the contentions put forward by Zeph, such as any evidence to support that it was incorporated in Singapore to access finance or deliver tax benefits. “In our submission, the claimant has left the tribunal with a purposefully incomplete and unverified narrative of key steps, including the reasons those steps were taken. In a claim said to be worth $300bn, that is demonstrably inadequate.’

The trial is expected to last three days.