Every day above ground is a good day, says ‘three score and ten’ Clive Palmer

If you’re worth $21bn and it’s your 70th birthday do you: a) Throw a bash on your new $40m superyacht. b) Threaten to build yourself an even bigger boat. c) Do whatever you please. d) All of the above.

Clive Palmer celebrates his 70th birthday with wife Anna at the Stamford Hotel in Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

If you’re worth $21bn and your name is Clive Palmer and it’s your 70th birthday do you:

a. Throw a bash on your new $40m superyacht.

b. Threaten to build yourself an even bigger boat.

c. Do whatever you damn-well please.

d. All of the above.

No prizes for guessing what Australia’s eighth-richest person went for as he marked the three-score-and-ten milestone.

Like him or loathe him, there’s no ignoring Mr Palmer and he partied in his accustomed style on Brisbane River with wife Anna, the kids and other close family members aboard the gleaming 56m motor-cruiser he named Australia.

There’s a thing or two to celebrate: eldest son Michael, 32, and wife Georgia are due to make them first-time grandparents later in the year; daughter Emily, 29, is getting married in Italy in June; and the rivers of cash keep gushing thanks to the deal of a lifetime that Mr Palmer extracted from Chinese company CITIC on iron-ore mining royalties in Western Australia.

Not to mention the big Seven-O, a birthday not even he was certain he would make. “Every day above ground is a good day,” Mr Palmer said on Tuesday.

“A lot of people don’t make it to 70; some people were probably hoping I wouldn’t make it to 70.”

He’s typically coy about what the future holds, especially in ­politics – his other business. After pumping $116m into the Palmer United Party at the 2022 election for the meagre return of a lone Senate spot, he won’t say whether PUP will be a starter when voters in his home state of Queensland go to the polls in ­October.

Mr Palmer on his superyacht Australia. Picture: Liam Kidston

Mr Palmer insists that is a question for the PUP membership, even though he writes the cheques.

“I won’t be running for parliament again, so what happens with the state election or the next federal election beyond that is entirely up to the party’s members,” he told The Australian.

“I won’t be telling them what to do. At the moment we’re not even registered.”

Mr Palmer said one of the reasons he got involved in the 2020 Queensland election campaign was his wife’s decision to stand for the PUP in the Gold Coast seat of Currumbin, where they live with their youngest daughters, Mary, 16, and Lucy, 10. Ms Palmer, 49, won’t be lining up again.

“I realised I’m not the ­public speaker Clive is,” she said.

“It was quite nerve-racking for me.”

Mr Palmer said his massive investment in the last federal election was underpinned by his personal campaign against mandated Covid-19 vaccination – a position he still makes no apology for when it could have cost his life after he fell dangerously ill with complications from the virus in 2022.

“I’m not vaccinated,” he insisted. “I don’t need to be vaccinated.”

Asked if he would be willing to again spend lavishly on PUP, he said: “I’m retired from politics, right. Like a normal person, there’s other things in life I want to do … I’ve done my bit. History goes on and it’s up to other people to do it, isn’t it?”

For now, a reported $1.3bn deal with a Swiss consortium for his mothballed nickel refinery near Townsville – controversially shut down in 2016, costing nearly 800 jobs – was on hold due to a slump in the ore price. Mr Palmer said negotiations would resume when the market rebounded.

As for his much-mocked ambition to build that bigger boat – a replica of the doomed ocean liner Titanic – Mr Palmer was adamant his recent announcement that the project was back on track was entirely serious, and he was considering shipyards for the job. Hopefully, construction would start next February.

“It’s a terrible world out there,” the birthday boy said. “You’ve got Ukraine, Gaza and all the negative stories at the moment. Everybody’s got a dream of a love like Jack and Rose in the movie, and that’s what we want to give them. Something positive.”