Clive Palmer in court battle for nickel refinery assets

Clive Palmer is continuing to fight for millions of dollars of assets from his liquidated Queensland Nickel company.

Clive Palmer is continuing to fight for millions of dollars’ worth of assets from his liquidated Queensland Nickel company.

In a hearing yesterday at the Queensland Supreme Court, the former federal MP’s lawyers said they wanted “to get the property back if we can” in an appeal to a decision last year blocking a legal bid for the assets.

Mr Palmer’s companies QNI Metals and QNI Resources, ­parent companies of the Townsville nickel refinery, are seeking to reverse a decision in September preventing them from suing Queensland Nickel. In that ­decision, judge John Bond refused permission to the companies to sue Queensland Nickel, saying to do so would be a “startling ­affront to justice”.

In the face of massive debt and falling nickel prices, Queensland Nickel went into voluntary administration in January last year. Global advisory firm FTI Consulting was appointed as the administrator. Mr Palmer removed Queensland Nickel as manager of the refinery last year after he clashed with the administrators in March, and demanded all its assets be handed over. The ­refinery went into liquidation in April last year $300 million in debt, which resulted in about 800 workers losing their jobs.

This would have left FTI ­Consulting to pay for the debts it had incurred while running the nickel refinery for months, and would have allowed liquidators to use the refinery’s assets to pay off the company’s $300m debt.

Mr Palmer is embroiled in a number of court cases concerning the liquidated refinery.