Clive Palmer blames donation failure on Chinese giant Citic

Clive Palmer has pointed to a long legal battle to explain why he hasn’t delivered a $100m donation.

United Australia Party leader Clive Palmer. Picture: AAP

Billionaire election candidate Clive Palmer has blamed his 11-year failure to deliver on a pledge to donate $100 million to Aboriginal communities on his long legal battle with Chinese state-owned giant Citic.

The Australian revealed last month that the charit­able fund Mr Palmer created to make the donations has a cash balance of just $109.

According to filings with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, the Palmer Care Foundation is inactive and has no employees.

The West Australian government has since launched an investigation into whether it can compel Mr Palmer to donate the money towards medical research and indigenous communities in the state.

Speaking in Perth today, Mr Palmer denied he had broken his promise by not following through on the 2008 commitment, which was hailed at the time as the greatest single act of philan­thropy in Australian history.

He said the delay was tied to Citic’s alleged failure to pay him all of the royalties he is owed from the Sino Iron project in the Pilbara.

“Everybody knows that the Chinese government failed to pay $1 billion to our company and that particular provision was included to assist the Chinese government in gaining access to develop further projects in Western Australia,” he said.

“Once they’ve paid us and once they’re meeting their full obligations, we’ll meet those obligations.”

Mr Palmer’s company Mineralogy began receiving hundreds of millions­ of dollars in royalties from Sino Iron last year after winning a protract­ed legal battle with Citic, which is the operator of the project. That decision is being appealed.

Mr Palmer, who was flanked by candidates from his United Australia Party, also accused Citic of “directly interfering in the Australian election campaign” by running newspaper advertisements extolling Sino Iron in recent weeks.

Asked how this amounted to interference, Mr Palmer said Citic’s ads were a direct response to allegations he had levelled at the state-owned company.

“They have entered into the debate if you like,” he said.

“A government-owned company should not be spending Chinese government money in opposing an Australian political party’s view during an election period. I find that very disturbing as an Australian.”

Mr Palmer promised to return 100 per cent of WA’s GST to the state, but said this did not necessarily mean weaker states such as South Australia would receive less in GST revenue

“Western Australians are every bit as good as people living in the eastern states,” he said.

“Why should Western Australia have to go on supporting other states in Australia in the eastern states? It’s because the Liberal and Labor parties get all their votes in eastern states and they don’t hear what happens here.”