‘Enemy of the state’ Clive Palmer, WA premier face off in court

Mark McGowan viciously labelled Clive Palmer ‘an enemy of the state’, a defamation trial has heard.

WA premier Mark McGowan, left, and billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer.

Mark McGowan was “vicious” when he labelled Clive Palmer “an enemy of the state”, according to the mining magnate’s lawyer.

The West Australian Premier and Mr Palmer are suing each other for defamation in the Federal Court of Australia in a trial that began in Sydney on Monday.

Justice Michael Lee will decide if Mr McGowan defamed Mr Palmer in six public statements and if Mr Palmer defamed Mr McGowan in nine public statements as their bitter dispute ratcheted up in winter 2020.

At the time Mr Palmer was locked out of WA and challenging the McGowan government’s hard border in the High Court. He was also trying to sue the WA government for an estimated $30bn over an historic decision he claimed wrongly prevented him from developing the Balmoral South iron ore project in the Pilbara.

Mr Palmer’s lawyer Peter Gray SC told the court on Monday there was nothing figurative about Mr McGowan’s statements at a press conference on July 31, 2020, when he said: “Mr Palmer is an enemy of the state, he is the enemy of Western Australia, I think he is the enemy of Australia”.

Mr Gray said the term “enemy of the state” was a highly florid expression used in a military context. He said it was used to describe someone who was “so much of a threat they should be transformed into a non person”.

Mr Palmer is claiming Mr McGowan painted him as a traitor.

“It is vicious,” Mr Gray said.

Justice Lee, however, said the expression needed to be understood in the context of the conflict the men were having.

“I think basically what he’s talking about is they are both opponents in a battle, in a fight,” Justice Lee said.

One of Mr McGowan’s lawyers, Clarissa Amato, urged Justice Lee not to accept the term traitor.

“Traitor is pitched way too high,” she said.

Mining Billionaire Clive Palmer, on his superyacht in Sydney Harbour on Sunday ahead of the court case. Picture: Jane Dempster

The court was shown excerpts from Mr McGowan’s press conferences, including one from August 3, 2020, when he described Mr Palmer as grossly irresponsible. Justice Lee also watched an interview Mr Palmer granted to Sky News in which he accused Mr McGowan of trying to run a totalitarian government. Describing Mr McGowan’s decision to extend WA’s state of emergency during the global pandemic, Mr Palmer said: “There’s no reason why you’d extend the state of emergency by 18 months unless you wanted to establish that form of government”.

“Because that’s the same form of government that we have in China where we don’t have the rule of law or an independent system.”

In the same interview, Mr Palmer likened Mr McGowan and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to dictators.

“I think Andrews and McGowan are in the same mould, they are in the Stalinist, communist mould of this totalitarian government,” Mr Palmer said.

Mr McGowan has been ordered to cross Western Australia’s hard border to give evidence in person at the trial on February 26.