Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery cuts $275m from pollution fund

Clive Palmer has cut $275m from funds provided for environmental restoration of the polluted site of his nickel refinery.

Clive Palmer in parliament yesterday.

Clive Palmer has cut $275 million from funds provided for environmental restoration of the polluted site of his troubled Queensland nickel refinery on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

The refinery, which is being prosecuted over toxic sludge spills from tailings dams which store waste from nickel production, carries a heavy environmental burden because of its processes and proximity to Townsville residents, wetlands and the marine park.

Every year since the refinery was effectively given away by BHP Billiton to Mr Palmer in 2009, the provisioning for environmental restoration of the site has been one of the largest numbers in his financial accounts filed with corporate regulator the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.

More than $200m has been ­allocated yearly since 2010 for enviro­nmental restoration and that has ­risen each year with inflation and new estimates of the significance of the environmental clean-up. But the latest accounts filed in September for his two companies that control the financially stressed refinery show the amount has been slashed to $42m from $318m last year.

A note in the accounts of Mr Palmer’s QNI Resources discloses that the change occurred after the company’s obligations were ­reviewed “to contemplate the ­rehabilitation of the site to an ­‘industrial use’ standard”.

“Previously the provision had contemplated the rehabilitation of the site to an original undisturbed state,’’ say the accounts, signed by Mr Palmer’s nephew and company director Clive Mensink.

Mounting financial pressures are being felt most acutely at Mr Palmer’s nickel refinery, which employs more than 500 staff, as it faces being shut down due to a collapse in the price of nickel.

Mr Palmer blames the Chinese government-owned Citic Pacific, which is locked in legal battle with the tycoon over royalties he ­demands for iron ore mined from his West Australian tenements.

But the Townsville nickel ­refinery’s 2015 accounts show that the nickel business lent large sums to other companies controlled by Mr Palmer in the past three years, and $95m was “forgiven”.

Malcolm Turnbull yesterday mocked Mr Palmer in parliamentary question time over the end of his “love affair” with the Chinese after “halcyon days” of courting and close relations.

Queensland Minister for the ­Environment and Great Barrier Reef Steven Miles was asked yesterday about the change in the ­environmental provisioning. A ­departmental spokeswoman said the refinery’s specific conditions requiring rehabilitation of the site “have not changed”.

Mr Palmer’s refinery, which temporarily shut down because of the environmental concerns last year, was hit with six charges ­over toxic sludge spills. The prosecution will start in Townsville Magistrates Court on December 7.

A high-level federal government document disclosed under Freedom of Information laws last year revealed the refinery posed a serious environmental threat, with ­nitrogen concentrations in its ponds more than 150 times the maximum for sewage discharge in the marine park.

The threat of another major discharge from the ponds to the ecosystem of Halifax Bay in the World Heritage Area was described­ in internal documents as “similar to the daily discharge of treated sewage from a city of seven million people”.

The documents disclosed a lax approach by federal and state governments, despite repeated breaches by the refinery and discharges of hundreds of tonnes of contaminants at very high levels of concentration. Mr Palmer threatened a compensation claim of $6.4 billion “should the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority intend to exert authority over the company’s operations”.