Clive looks forward to new appearance with his ABC hero

Clive Palmer will renew his acquaintance with one of his “greatest heroes’’ when he appears on the ABC’s Q&A on Monday.

Clive Palmer is set to renew his acquaintance with one of his “greatest heroes’’ after being invited to appear on Tony Jones’s Q&A program on the ABC on Monday.

The announcement came after Mr Palmer wrote to ABC managing director Mark Scott to personally plead his case in relation to last night’s Four Corners program on the collapse of his Queensland Nickel enterprise.

The federal MP for Fairfax had received lenient treatment on the national broadcaster in the past three years before the Four Corners program last night.

Mr Palmer used an appearance on the ABC’s Lateline last night to deny playing a key role in Queensland Nickel’s day-to-day operations before the company went into administ­ration. He said there was a “mis­under­standing” and Queensland Nickel had been a manager of a joint venture with two other companies, QNI Resources and Queensland Metals.

“They have a joint-venture agreement … I’m on the board of the joint-venture management committee,” Mr Palmer told host Emma Alberici.

Mr Palmer said Queensland Nickel did not have assets and that Queensland Metals and QNI Resources eventually would reopen the refinery, with “an announcement in the next few months’’.

Earlier, the ABC rejected claims it had interviewed Mr Palmer on Lateline to make amends after he was incensed at the national broadcaster for not allowing him to feature “live” on Four Corners.

In a string of angry tweets, Mr Palmer wrote: “Why does #4Corners refuse to allow me to appear live on Monday for their story on me?”

A spokeswoman for Lateline said Mr Palmer had been contacted independently to be interviewed by Alberici.

“We contacted him independently today ... we saw the quotes that he would like a place to do an interview tonight.

“We’re very glad to have him on Lateline tonight and we believe it’s newsworthy.”

The spokeswoman said Four Corners could not break the investigative journalism show’s format to meet Mr Palmer’s request to be interviewed live.

Mr Palmer has previously appeared as a guest on Q&A and affectionately told Jones in 2012 that he was one of his “greatest heroes when it comes to the journalisms (sic) in this world’’.