Clive Palmer urged to return $15m gift as 237 refinery jobs go

Clive Palmer is under renewed pressure to return a $15m donation from his nickel operations to his political party.

Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel company yesterday sacked 237 staff.

Clive Palmer is under renewed pressure to return a $15 million political donation from his Queensland Nickel operations to his political party, after the company yesterday sacked 237 staff, leaving the Townsville economy reeling.

Seven years after Mr Palmer bought Queensland Nickel from BHP Billiton, almost a third of its staff were laid off in a desperate bid to cut costs and in the hope that nickel prices will improve.

Townsville-based federal MP Ewen Jones made a public plea for Mr Palmer to return the $15m that Queensland Nickel donated to the Palmer United Party before the 2013 election, saying it went to the issue of “his own personal integri­ty”.

Australian Workers Union Queensland secretary Ben Swan made a similar call, saying Mr Palmer had to “stop ripping money out of the business to fund his political fantasies”.

The post-Christmas blow for workers came five years after Mr Palmer hosted an elaborate Christmas giveaway in which 55 refinery workers received new Mercedes-Benz cars and 750 holidays were handed out.

The normally outspoken Mr Palmer, the federal member for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax, left his nephew and Queensland Nickel managing director Clive Mensink to make yesterday’s announcement.

Mr Mensink again blamed the Palaszczuk government for rejecting Mr Palmer’s demand for a taxpayer-backed $35m bank loan guarantee, saying that Labor should “not put politics above people and their livelihoods”.

“The Queensland government has made it clear despite the nickel price being the lowest in 15 years it has no interest in assisting Queensland Nickle (sic) in providing continued employment for over 800 families in Townsville,’’ Mr Mensink said in a statement.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad expressed “sorrow” at the job losses and said the government, which had not been forewarned of the announcement and had asked Queensland Nickel for a briefing, would do all it could it could to assist­ those affected.

“The government did try and work with Queensland Nickel to secure these jobs,” Ms Trad said. “Unfortunately the government’s request for access to the full financial statements of Mr Palmer’s businesses was not responded to and we could not, in all good conscience, hand over money to a priv­ate company without full finan­cial due diligence.”

The decision to lay off staff at the Yabulu refinery comes as Mr Palmer’s empire faces cashflow problems in other areas.

The Palmer Coolum Resort on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast — home to his collection of vintage cars and animatronic dinosaurs — is closed indefinitely for reno­vations, two planes from his fleet are for sale, his various mining leases may never be developed and his hopes of another windfall from a Chinese mining operation in the Pilbara have been dashed.

Asked whether the proclaimed billionaire should put more money into Queensland Nickel, Ms Trad said: “It is up to Mr Palmer to make a determination about how he spends his money.”

Townsville Mayor Jenny Hill expressed “deep concern” that the city’s largest private employer had sacked so many people, warning that the impact would be felt throughout the community.

“In the current economic envir­onment, with unemployment high, these job losses will make conditions even more difficult,” Ms Hill said. “I hope that this step is a genuine attempt to ensure the long-term viability of the refinery and that this will secur­e the remaining 550 jobs.”

Queensland Resources Council chief Michael Roche undermined Mr Mensink’s claim that government was responsible, saying the lobby group had “not asked for government bailouts in the face of thousands of job losses in the coal, gas and metals sectors and we are not going to start now”.

Mr Roche said the cutbacks underlined the “extremely difficult market conditions facing most sections of the resources sector in Queensland and nationally” and the role of government was to provide a business-friendly environment for companies.

Steve Lovell, who has been a fitter at the refinery for 20 years, was one of those made redundant.

The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union delegate said staff were herded into two crowded and hot rooms before being taken one by one into interview rooms to learn their fate. “It was quite humiliating, actually,” the 55-year-old said. “They wouldn’t even let us go out and say goodbye but I wouldn’t cop that.”

While workers had long feared the worst — Mr Lovell said The Weekend Australian had kept them more informed than the company itself — there was little they could do to prepare for redun­dancy because of the lack of jobs. “I want to stay in Townsville: my children and my grand­children are here and I have a dying mother here,” he said.

“I need to be around but I can see myself having to go out of the state, or at least out of Townsville.”

In a letter to staff, Mr Mensink said some of the remaining staff would be required to do shift work or “broaden their capacity to pick up other duties”.

Yabulu’s future has been in doubt since November, when Mr Palmer’s lawyers told a West Australian court that the business was in a “worse than perilous” position without an immediate injection of capital.

The Queensland government refused the bank loan guarantee and the West Australian judge refused to order Mr Palmer’s estranged Chinese business partners (in a separate matter) to hand over funds to prop up the refinery­.

A team of four insolvency experts­ from accountancy firm Hall Chadwick were at Yabulu last week for high-level meetings with Queensland Nickel’s chief financi­al officer Daren Wolfe.

It is understood the job cuts were made on their advice.