Anti-Palmer law had nothing to do with Queensland, WA says

Extraordinary cuts to Clive Palmer’s legal rights were due to his ‘staggering’ WA legal claim, not because of his Queensland residency.

Clive Palmer. Picture: Getty Images

The extraordinary legislation Western Australia introduced to kill off a $30 billion legal claim from Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer had nothing to do with the former MP’s state of origin, the state will argue.

WA solicitor-general Joshua Thomson has filed the state’s defence to Mr Palmer’s High Court challenge against the legislation, attacking Mr Palmer’s assertion that the state chose to legislate against him because he was a resident of Queensland.

The WA government last year successfully passed a law killing off Mr Palmer’s rights to sue the state over the state agreement governing his undeveloped Balmoral South iron ore project in the Pilbara. The two parties had been locked in legal arbitration over a claim from Mr Palmer that he was entitled to tens of billions in compensation due to WA’s rejection of two of his development proposals.

Mr Palmer has launched legal action in the High Court seeking to have the legislation overturned.

In written submissions filed by Mr Palmer last month, the billionaire described the new law as being “repugnant to justice”.

“The Amending Act is not only an attack on me personally, but also a frontal assault on the rule of law,” Mr Palmer wrote. “The defendant has made clear, repeatedly, that it chose to legislate, personally, against me, because I am a resident of Queensland.”

But WA’s High Court submission argues that the state of Mr Palmer’s residence had nothing to do with the legislation.

“There is no such discrimination. The operation and effect of the Amending Act, including upon the plaintiff, would not be any different if the plaintiff were a resident of Western Australia,” the state’s written submissions reads.

Instead, it states that the legislation was aimed at a damages claim from Mr Palmer that was of “a staggering magnitude”.

The state noted that the damages claim was close to $30 billion, an “extraordinary mischief” that was roughly equivalent to the ­entire WA budget.

“The contention that the legislature would have taken a different approach to the threat of a liability in the order of $30 billion if the individual standing behind the companies resided in Western Aus­tralia is baseless,” it said. “Given the context, even if discriminatory treatment were discerned, it would be of a kind that was appropriate and adapted to the attainment of a proper objective.”

The lawyers for WA also hit back at Mr Palmer’s citing of parliamentary debates as proof of the intentions behind the legislation, noting that some of the comments cited about the magnate – including that he was a “barbarian” and a “cane toad” – were made not by the government but by Shooters Farmers and Fishers MP Rick Mazza in his critique of the bill.

The extraordinary nature of the legal changes rushed through last year has drawn a mixed response from legal experts.

The Law Society of WA last year described the new law as ­“unprecedented and extreme” and in need of close scrutiny.

“Extinguishing a potentially crippling liability is in the interests of the state. Damaging the state’s reputation for negligible sovereign risk is not,” the legal group said at the time.