Clive Palmer’s breathing apparatus: have we seen all this before?

Clive Palmer turned up to court today with breathing apparatus — he may be sick, but there are two reasons we may be sceptical: Skase and Bond.

Alan Bond, Clive Palmer and Christopher Skase.

Australia may have a new member of the Christopher Skase-Alan Bond club — Clive Palmer.

Palmer, who has left a trail of unpaid employees and creditors in his wake, turned up to court in Brisbane today armed with an oxygen mask or breathing apparatus.

So parlous was his health that today that he needed to lie down on a couch outside the courtroom using the equipment.

And his team is now saying that he is suffering from memory loss — which of course means that he may not remember so many things about his business affairs.

In doing so, Palmer draws a comparison with two other “colourful” businessmen — Christopher Skase and Alan Bond.

Of course both Skase and Bond went far further than Palmer ever has.

You know you’ve got a credibility problem — at least your family does — when people don’t believe that you’ve died, and you actually have.

That’s what happened to Christopher Skase.

The Courier Mail reported at the time: “Has Queensland ever played host to a bigger shonk that Christopher Skase? Even when he died a lonely and helpless wreck, many commentators thought it was just another of his elaborate cons.”

Beginning his working life as a stockbroker and then journalist, he built up a corporate empire, Qintex, to a value of more than $1 billion.

He used all sorts of accounting tricks, and spent the money of shareholders in obscene ways.

On one occasion, he is reported to have had his private jet fly from Port Douglas to Melbourne to collect a dress for his wife, Pixie.

But with shareholders’ funds disappearing, Australian authorities closed in on Skase.

He was forced to appear in court in 1991, but a naive magistrate agreed to give him his passport back.

That was the last time he appeared in Australia — Skase fled overseas and set himself up in a life of luxury on the Spanish island of Majorca.

He chose Spain because it had no extradition treaty with Australia.

Nonetheless, Australian officials pursued Skase, who appeared in a Spanish court with an oxygen cylinder attached to a wheelchair.

Australia sent to Spain a respiratory specialist, Dr Bill Oliver, to assess whether Skase’s sudden health crisis was real.

Dr Oliver told Four Corners in 1998 that he watched the way Skase’s oxygen cylinder was attached to tubing and a mask.

Dr Oliver said: “The mask was mainly held at right angles to the nose and mouth, and the flow rate was low at two-three litres. This angle of the mask and the flow rate would be giving him no supplementary oxygen that would be worthwhile … no functional use of the oxygen.”

The Spanish court deciding whether Skase was fit to fly back to Australia to face his charges, the Palma Palace of Justice, accepted Skase’s health argument and he never faced justice in Australia.

Alan Bond was just as much a shonk at Skase — but at least he didn’t do a runner and did do time in an Australian jail.

Bond, like Skase and now Palmer, suffered memory loss at a crucial time of a court case.

Journalist Paul Barry, who authored The Rise and Fall of Alan Bond, watched Bond closely during one of his court hearings in May, 1994.

Lawyers for the creditors were at the time asking Bond about the $50 million that he was believed to have hidden offshore.

“They’re asking Bond about bank accounts in Switzerland and Jersey, companies in Liechtenstein and properties in London, but he can’t remember a thing,” Barry wrote at the time in The Sydney Morning Herald.

“On occasion he pops a pill into his mouth or pauses for a minute and asks for the question to be repeated. He’s doing his best, he says, but there were so many deals, it’s too long ago, and he has not been well.

“At the end of the day, he shuffles out of court, a sad figure in a crumpled raincoat, bent and pale. But round the corner, out of sight of the cameras, he straightens up and tosses the bag away.

“That evening he’s back at the Sheraton Wentworth working the phones, calling Switzerland, the USA and Singapore, doing deals, just like the old days.”

Perhaps Clive Palmer’s health is genuinely bad. Perhaps he does need an oxygen mask.

But Australians have long memories — they’ve have been bitten twice before.

Clive Palmer has left a long trail of financial wreckage and human misery among his former employees, investors and political supporters.

The lives of many families were wrecked because they thought he would pay them their entitlements and were left in a bad position when he did not.

So he must excuse the reaction of many Australians when he brings out a breathing apparatus: at this stage we’re going to be sceptical.