Clive Palmer white knight’s ALP history exposed

The man leading a bid to buy Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery has spent years trying to repair his relationship with Labor.

The self-anointed white knight leading an audacious and unlikely bid to buy Clive Palmer’s stricken nickel refinery has spent years ­trying to repair his relationship with Labor after being forced from the party over electoral rort allegations.

Ministerial diaries show Sister City Partners founder Warwick Powell has met senior Palaszczuk government ministers and officials at least three times in the past year, including twice with Treasurer Curtis Pitt, about various projects. He is now lobbying for hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal loans for his proposed community buyback of the refinery.

The Australian can reveal Mr Pitt and Mr Powell shared a Brisbane house in 1995 when the Treasurer was a student at the University of Queensland.

In the early 2000s, Labor operative Mr Powell was forced from the ALP after he admitted to the Shepherdson inquiry he was involved in electoral fraud in Brisbane council ward plebiscites in 1993 and 1996. While Mr Powell and Labor staffer Lee Bermingham were the key targets of the ­inquiry, MP Mike Kaiser and deputy premier Jim Elder were forced to resign.

There is no suggestion Mr Pitt knew of, or was involved, in any wrongdoing.

A spokesman for Mr Pitt confirmed the pair briefly lived ­together. “In 1995, when he came to Brisbane to study at UQ, the Treasurer rented a room for a few months in a house where Mr Powell was also living,” the spokesman said. “It was one of three houses he shared with others in 12 months.”

The future of the refinery was not raised at either of the recent meetings between Mr Pitt and Mr Powell, the spokesman said.

Mr Powell, who told The Australian on Monday that the Shepherdson allegations were “ancient history”, said his “past ­relationships with people aren’t important”.

“We deal with people on their merits and without prejudice,” Mr Powell said. “I expect no less from others.”

A senior Labor source told The Australian state and federal governments should be wary of financially backing the Sister City Partners’ proposal, which the source said gave “false hope” to workers. “Anyone who deals with Warwick Powell has got to be off their cotton-picking mind,” the source said.

The state government opened new fronts in its war of words against Mr Palmer yesterday, with Mr Pitt using parliamentary privilege to accuse the “self-professed richest man in Queensland” of causing “enormous uncertainty and upheaval”.

“We found that the biggest thing holding Queensland Nickel back was Clive Palmer: his decision to strip millions of dollars out of the business and lend it to himself; his decision to gift more than $15 million to the Palmer United Party; his decision to pay himself a shareholder dividend of $28m just months before asking for $35m from Queensland taxpayers,” Mr Pitt said.

Environment Minister Steven Miles introduced legislation into parliament yesterday aimed at preventing Mr Palmer and his corporate empire from forcing Queensland taxpayers to pay for the environmental clean-up of the Yabulu site, should the refinery operation collapse. “Any possibility — however ­remote — that this site might be simply abandoned without any ­financial provision being made for its rehabilitation must not be tolerated,” Dr Miles said.

Mr Palmer yesterday continued to blame voluntary administrators and the government for the refinery’s problems.