The member for Palmer: Clive avoids voters and voting

Voters on the Sunshine Coast say they never see their MP, and his attendance in Canberra isn’t much better.

Please Credit PICS MARC ROBERTSON. Clive Palmer arrives in Brisbane from Townsville. PICS Marc Robertson

It seemed a fitting challenge for Benny Pike, an Olympics boxer and events organiser on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, who had a reputation for getting things done. Pike was invited to work as a community liaison officer in the office of Clive Palmer after the wealthy businessman won the seat of Fairfax in the September 2013 federal election.

Pike figured he was on to a good thing. Palmer had defied the odds by snatching Fairfax from the Liberal National Party, albeit by just 53 votes after the longest recount in Australian electoral history. At the time, following its $26 million election campaign, the Palmer United Party looked like holding the balance of power in the Senate as well as a lower house seat.

NEWS: ‘Would the MP for Fairfax please show up’

The seat of Fairfax stretches westward from the bustling tourism centre of Maroochydore and the sparkling beaches of Coolum and Marcoola to dairy farms dotting the Mary River Valley and the lush rainforests of the Conondale Range. Fairfax was to be Palmer’s springboard for his plan to become prime minister.

At the behest of his new boss, Pike assiduously courted community groups and businesses across the electorate. Hundreds of contacts were logged and folk were lining up in expectation of meeting the big man, who had pledged to be an MP for the people. Then Pike noticed something odd. “It eventually was made clear to me that Clive didn’t actually want to meet these people face to face,” Pike says. “Clive was too busy to connect with them on a personal level. The office just wanted contact details.”

Pike says he was “given the flick” from the office after organising the community contacts and returned to his old job with the Palmer Coolum Resort, then the jewel in the crown of the electorate’s tourism sector. Pike had been associated with the resort since it opened in 1988; Palmer acquired the property from Lend Lease and Hyatt group in 2011. Pike says he was stunned by how radically management practices at the resort had changed under Palmer’s stewardship.

“We’d have a wedding organised and Clive’s people would just cancel it,” Pike says. “A dinner was cancelled because there was no money to fix the airconditioning. They were control freaks. If you said you needed 20 loaves of bread for a function and ended up with a couple more than you needed, you could be in trouble.” Senior staff with years of experience were sacked without explanation.

According to an unfair dismissal claim lodged with Fair Work Australia, food and beverage manager Peter Yates, with 16 years’ experience, was sacked after Palmer called him a “fat c. t”. Pike lost his job along with all but a handful of the 600-odd employees at the resort when it was effectively mothballed in March last year.

After the election, the people of Fairfax enthusiastically embraced their charismatic MP; about 40,000 turned up for Clive Palmer’s Fairfax Festival in July 2014 where they were offered free entry to the Palmersaurus Dinosaur Park. (Pike says T-shirts made in China for $2 each — emblazoned with Palmer’s name — were on sale at the festival for $65.) Since then, however, the mood in the electorate has soured due to a combination of public disquiet at Palmer’s handling of his business interests — especially the demise of the once thriving resort — and mounting community perceptions that Palmer has not lived up to expectations as the MP for Fairfax.

A NewsCorp Galaxy poll in January put his primary vote in Fairfax at just 2 per cent — down from 26.5 per cent in the 2013 election. It said 83 per cent of voters expressed disappointment at his performance. In an online Sunshine Coast Daily poll in February, 49 per cent of participants considered Palmer a “disaster” as their MP. Palmer has dismissed the Galaxy poll as a “beat-up”; he said last August that his polling put his primary vote at 35 per cent. Palmer insists he will recontest Fairfax at this year’s election, dismissing suggestions he may instead aim for a Senate spot.

With a double dissolution election likely in July, Palmer’s performance as the MP for Fairfax is under scrutiny. Palmer made much of his election pledge to give away his $195,000-a-year parliamentary salary to 200 community organisations in Fairfax. “It is a privilege to gift my salary back to (the community),” he said at the time. “I hope these donations encourage other politicians to stop making empty promises and support their electorates.” Palmer promised he would send cheques to community groups every six months.

Money was dispensed, though patchily, and not as generously as some groups expected and, with the passage of time, less frequently and in progressively smaller amounts in some cases. The Sunshine Coast Writers Group got a single payment of $150 in 2015. Coolum Beach Quilters was sent two payments each of $150 in 2015. Mapleton Men’s Shed was given $600 in 2014 and $150 in 2015. Yandina Community Gardens got “two small donations, the second smaller than the first”, says a member of the group.

None of several organisations contacted by Inquirer had received anything this year. Nor are they likely to, for Palmer appears to have reneged on this key electoral pledge. Under fire over the sacking of hundreds of workers from his Queensland Nickel refinery near Townsville earlier this year, Palmer says he is now receiving his parliamentary wage.

“All I’m doing is living off my parliamentary salary,” Palmer told The Courier Mail last month. “I retired from business over three years ago,” Palmer said in another interview.

Palmer’s election campaign was based on a five-point platform for Fairfax centred around upgrading the Sunshine Coast Airport, the Bruce Highway and rail transport. If government funds were not forthcoming, Palmer pledged a few days before the poll that he could “always write a cheque”. None of the promised infrastructure has materialised, and no cheques were written.

Palmer pledged $5 million a year in funding to the Sunshine Coast University to develop a “strong employment pathway” between the university and local businesses. A university spokesman said no funds were received and no approaches were made to discuss any such plan.

Palmer nonetheless wastes no opportunity to spruik the work he is doing for the folk of Fairfax. Palmer told the ABC’s Lateline last year that he gave $3000 to the Nambour Lions to help 15 children who had “broken up their homes” to finish their schooling. A source in Palmer’s Maroochydore electoral office says money in fact was given to Nambour State College (Kevin Rudd’s old school) through the Rotary Club for the purchase of “hygiene packs ... toothpaste, soap, that sort of thing” for a number of disadvantaged students.

Palmer tweeted last July that he was “working with” federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt to protect the Yandina Creek Wetlands, a nationally significant waterbird habitat in the heart of the electorate. Soon after, Hunt decided not to use commonwealth powers to intervene and prevent the wetland from being drained for farming development. According to Hunt’s spokesman, Palmer’s involvement did not extend beyond his office referring letters from constituents to the minister.

Palmer promised before he was elected that he would be a “fulltime politician”.

Data provided to Inquirer by the Chamber Research Office of the house of representatives and by the parliamentary monitoring group OpenAustralia raises doubts about the extent to which this promise has been met in relation to parliamentary duties.

For a total of 166 sitting days in the house of representatives between the 2013 election and the end of last year, Palmer had the worst attendance record of all 150 lower house MPs. He was present for just 99 days.

The MP with the second poorest attendance was the globetrotting trade minister, Andrew Robb, who was in the house for 106 days. During 2015, as Palmer’s business woes mounted, he was present for 41 of 75 sitting days — almost half the average; only West Australian MP Don Randall, who died in July, had a lower attendance record for the year.

Palmer has voted in just 6.2 per cent of 399 divisions in the house since the 2013 election, by far the lowest participation in division votes of any of the 226 lower house MPs and senators, many of whom voted in 100 per cent of divisions. Just five MPs attended fewer than 50 per cent of divisions. Palmer has not voted in any of the 34 divisions in the house of representatives this year. Issues that Palmer has failed to cast a vote for or against include some that he has expressed strong views about, including senate voting reforms and the deregulation of university fees. His most recent utterances in the house have pertained not to electoral matters but to his business interests.

Meanwhile, Palmer’s residency is a lively talking point in his electorate. The former Liberal National Party MP for Fairfax, Alex Somlyay, says that immediately prior to enrolling in Fairfax a month before the 2013 election, Palmer was enrolled in the Perth seat of Stirling. Palmer has said he left Queensland for Perth in protest at the sacking of public servants by the then LNP Queensland premier, Campbell Newman. Whether Palmer had entertained the prospects of pursuing a political career in Western Australia before settling on Fairfax is not known.

The LNP candidate for Fairfax in the forthcoming election, Ted O’Brien, says although Palmer claims to live in the electorate, it is well-known that his primary residence is his Sovereign Island mansion on the Gold Coast. “You don’t pretend to be a voice for the Sunshine Coast when you live on the Gold Coast,’’ O’Brien says. “It hasn’t gone down well around here.”

Somlyay and O’Brien both say Palmer’s appearances in the electorate are infrequent, and that they regularly field requests for help from Fairfax constituents frustrated by their inability to connect with him. “Clive doesn’t do interviews with constituents,” Somlyay says. “His office handles everything. Meeting constituents in your office should be a fundamental part of an MP’s job. Even John Howard found time to do that.” Somlyay says he refers people wanting help on federal government matters to Nambour-based LNP senator James McGrath.

Palmer describes the claims by Somlyay and O’Brien as “untrue” but declines to elaborate to Inquirer. He has repeatedly insisted that he lives in the electorate. “We really do live in the best place in the world #Sunshine Coast #Fairfax,” Palmer tweeted last month. Palmer’s Wikipedia entry says his residence is a large villa in the Palmer Coolum Resort.

He has not enhanced his prospects with a modus operandi that is unusual for an MP seeking re-election. Community and business leaders are generally courted assiduously by MPs, who value their views and suggestions. In Fairfax, however, disagreeing with your MP is risky. When Coolum Business and Tourism Committee president Noel Mooney expressed concerns about the community impact of the Coolum resort’s declining fortunes, he was promptly served with a letter from Palmer’s lawyers threatening defamation action.

Palmer has surprised organisers of electorate functions with special requests when invited to make an appearance.

He was asked to attend the annual show and rodeo as patron in the scenic hinterland town of Kenilworth. “He wanted to open the show and make a speech,” says rodeo organiser Clem Hassall. “He wanted us to organise media. He wouldn’t just turn up and be part of the crowd. We told him we didn’t want to be political. He didn’t come.”

On the streets of Fairfax, empathy for Palmer appears to be in short supply. “Clive has turned out to be an absolute joke,” says Marcoola pensioner Ralph Hallworth. “He’s never here. You never see him or hear about him doing anything for the electorate. Anyway, who would vote for him after what he did to the Coolum resort and the nickel refinery?”

Veteran Maroochydore Rotarian Terry Welch says Palmer is conspicuous by his absence. “I haven’t seen him at a single function in the electorate,” Welch says. “He’s not interested in us. People want their local member to take an interest in them. All the federal and state MPs do that.” Says the current edition of a newsletter published by North Shore Realty, one of the biggest real estate agencies in the electorate: “Everyone around here is holding on to the hope that maybe 2016 will finally be the year that he has to sell the resort and get out of our lives.”

Palmer declined to respond to questions submitted by Inquirer.