Clive Palmer to hold fire on $790m sale of refinery

Clive Palmer could offload his Queensland nickel refinery for $790m, but has agreed not to sell in the next month.

Businessman and former federal MP Clive Palmer in Brisbane.

Clive Palmer could offload his north Queensland nickel refinery for $790 million, but has agreed not to sell it in the next month until a judge decides whether all of his assets should be frozen.

In 2015, the refinery was given a replacement value of $5.27 billion, but this was recently reduced to $790m. The former federal MP represented himself in court yesterday­, slamming a bid by taxpayer­-funded liquidators PPB Advisory to freeze more than $200m of his personal assets.

“Their case lacks merit completely, and is just being done for a political purpose, to keep me out of politics, to keep me busy,” Mr Palmer said. “It’s easy to do that with taxpayers’ money.”

The liquidators were forced to ask Queensland Supreme Court judge John Bond to delay their freezing application until next month, after Mr Palmer and his lawyers filed more than 3800 pages of legal documents in the past two days.

Among the fresh documents is a recent valuation of the refinery — which shut last year, causing 800 workers to lose their jobs — commissioned by Mr Palmer and carried out by James Notaras, the managing director of Indian Ocean Capital.

Mr Notaras found Mr Palmer would need to spend at least $50m to get the refinery up and running again. If he put it on the market, it could pull in $790m — much less than the gross replacement value of $5.27bn, according to another expert in 2015 — but could take up to 200 days to sell.

Shane Doyle QC, for Queensland Nickel special-purpose liquidators PPB Advisory, said the liquidators would send their own valuer to the Townsville business within weeks.

A lawyer for Mr Palmer’s companies, Dominic O’Sullivan QC, had argued for the freezing applic­ation to be heard as soon as possible, because it was damaging to the reputations of Mr Palmer and his businesses to have it un­resolved. Mr O’Sullivan said it was unfair for the liquidators to make serious allegations against Mr Palmer, such as suggesting he had falsified evidence, without being ready to substantiate them.

Justice Bond said “the smell (of the allegations) might be justified” but he would decide that at the substantive hearing next month.

Late yesterday, Justice Bond agreed to adjourn the case, after Mr Palmer promised his companies would not sell the refinery or its assets and the commonwealth undertook to pay “reasonable compensation” if the companies suffered damage as a result of Mr Palmer’s promise.

Outside court, Mr Palmer ­insisted he would not flee Queensland and Australia, as his fugitive nephew Clive Mensink did. Mr Mensink was the sole registered director of Queensland Nickel when it collapsed.

The Palmer United Party founder then denied paying for at least two of Mr Mensink’s overseas cruises, despite admitting under oath in the Federal Court witness box that he had done so.

PPB Advisory is suing Mr Palmer, Mr Mensink, and a swag of Mr Palmer’s companies for nearly $500m to ­recoup more than $300m owed to Queensland Nickel’s creditors.

It has also accused Mr Palmer of being a shadow director, shirking­ director’s duties, and allowin­g Queensland Nickel to trade while insolvent.

Mr Palmer has claimed the freezing order could lead to his four golf courses — two on the Gold Coast, one on the Sunshine Coast, and one in Port Douglas in far north Queensland — to shut down, with the loss of 50 jobs across the state.

However, liquidators have ­argued that Mr Palmer needs to be stopped from shifting his wealth offshore, or offloading his assets to keep the money from creditors.