ALP lying over preference plea deal, says Palmer

Clive Palmer has accused senior members of the ALP of lying over claims party powerbrokers had not secretly approached him.

Clive Palmer in Brisbane yesterday. Picture: AAP

Clive Palmer has accused senior members of Bill Shorten’s frontbench of lying over claims that ALP powerbrokers had not secretly approached him to seek a preference deal, and says Labor’s tax agenda could “destroy the country”.

Mr Palmer confirmed he would preference the Liberal and LNP parties to prevent Labor from forming government.

He also confirmed that he had been approached as recently as Wednesday — the same day the Opposition Leader accused him of ripping off his workers — by an ALP senator seeking a preference swap with his United Australia Party.

Labor frontbenchers Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke yesterday denied there had been any ­attempt to seek preferences from Mr Palmer’s UAP by anyone in the Labor movement.

The Australian this week ­revealed that Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union boss Michael O’Connor and Queensland Labor power­broker senator Anthony Chisholm had talked to Mr Palmer over the past month.

Speaking outside court in Brisbane yesterday, Mr Palmer said Mr Albanese’s claims on morning television that the Labor Party was “not talking to Clive Palmer about preferences” were “just not true”.

“I had Senator Chisholm ­approach me when I was down for the budget in parliament,” Mr Palmer said.

“He came over to see me. He called me on Wednesday, when he was with Bill Shorten; he said he’d been with Bill in central Queensland, and he said, ‘Is it too late to do preferences?’ ”

Senator Chisholm declined to comment when contacted by The Weekend Australian.

Mr Burke said his claims on the ABC that it was untrue the ALP had not commissioned anyone to approach Mr Palmer were confined to Mr O’Connor, who also sits on the ALP national executive.

Speaking on the Today show yesterday, Mr Albanese had said the Labor Party had “not once”­ ­approached Mr Palmer about preferences.

Mr Palmer yesterday lost his bid to have the government-­appointed special purpose liquidators of Queensland Nickel dismissed on the grounds of a ­Coalition conspiracy against him.

Asked why he would enter a preference deal with a party that had carried out a supposed vendetta against him, Mr Palmer said: “This (the court case) is for things about four or five years ago.”

Claiming that Labor had ­“destroyed the country” once before under the Rudd and Gillard governments, the former MP stuck by his decision to preference the Liberal and LNP parties.

He said his decision had also been made to stop the Labor Party from forming government.

“You have to think of the country — that’s the most important thing,” Mr Palmer said.

“What we do know, of course, is that the Labor Party destroyed Australia, with Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, got us a lot of debt and a lot of problems for us.

“We do have a balanced economy now and we’re in good economic shape.

“That doesn’t mean we are doing the things we should do.”

Mr Palmer said he was concerned about the impact on the economy of death taxes and changes to negative gearing and franking credits.

A Newspoll published in The Australian on Tuesday revealed his party had a primary vote of ­between five and 14 per cent in seats surveyed in Victoria, Western Australia, NSW and Queensland.

With a $50 million advertising campaign behind him, Mr Palmer is poised for a Senate spot in Queensland and potentially ­others in NSW and Western Australia. In a neck-and-neck race ­between the Coalition and Labor, Mr Palmer would be expected to become a potential kingmaker.