Clive Palmer’s record slug for taxpayers

The $70m that Clive Palmer wants would be the single biggest payout for the Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme.

Clive Palmer owes $73m to the employees of Queensland Nickel.

A bill of at least $70 million that Clive Palmer wants taxpayers to pick up to help sacked employees of his nickel refinery would be the single biggest payout in the history of the Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme.

Mr Palmer will lay dubious claim to costing the public purse more than twice as much as any other business owner, according to a review yesterday of the payout history of the guarantee and its predecessors since the Howard government set up the safety net 16 years ago.

The sum of $73m owed by the federal parliamentarian to ­almost 800 employees, who have lost their jobs and been left empty-handed by the collapse of his Queensland Nickel, is double the total amount paid out for all business collapses by the scheme in 2013. The Australian yesterday asked the federal government to provide detailed figures for the five largest claims on the scheme, as well as the scheme’s total annual payments.

The $73m owed by Mr Palmer’s Queensland Nickel, and likely to be a cost transferred by him to the public purse, is more than double the single previous largest payout of about $33m for employees of the failed Hastie Group of companies in 2012.

The corporate failures with the next four biggest claims on the scheme were CMI Industrial ($20.5m in 2012); Forge Group ($19.8m in 2014); Geon Australia ($15.8m in 2013) and Penrice Soda Products ($13.9m in 2014), according to official data ­obtained yesterday.

The $73m which Mr Palmer owes to 787 employees from his Queensland Nickel refinery is more than the sum of the three biggest claimants on the entitlements scheme. The guarantee scheme does not provide for ­discretion to withhold taxpayers’ funds once a company goes into liquidation, even when the government is aware of alleged, or substantiated, acts by employers to restructure their businesses to avoid paying employee entitlements. The Corporations Act makes it unlawful to enter into an arrangement with the intention of avoiding employee entitlements, and can be used to prosecute directors. But by the time any such ­actions are taken the public funds have been paid, and prosecutions of employers for evading their ­responsibilities are costly and complex.

Bill Shorten, who helped ­design the latest FEG, has called on the Turnbull government to release funds early to the refinery workers. Senior government sources regard the Opposition Leader’s call as irresponsible as Mr Palmer should not be given an easy way out to the detriment of taxpayers. “Mr Shorten is calling on the taxpayer to fund Mr Palmer’s ­liabilities, and in doing so is absolving Mr Palmer of respon­sibility for his employees’ entitlements,’’ said a senior source.

“At this time, there is little known about the asset position of Queensland Nickel, and there is uncertainty as to whether the ­entity will in fact go into liquidation — as late as last week Mr Palmer was talking about entering into a deed of company ­arrangement which would avoid liquidation of the QN entity (and potentially cover through asset sales or otherwise, employee liabilities).”

The $73m for entitlements has been revised upwards by voluntary administrator FTI Consulting, which originally estimated the total outstanding sum for ­entitlements was $60m.

The creditors of Mr Palmer’s refinery are owed $100m, while clean-up costs are estimated at more than $100m and as much as $300m after spills of toxic sludge and widespread contamination of the land surrounding the major hazard facility near Townsville.

Mr Palmer, a self-proclaimed billionaire who stripped cash for himself and $21m in political ­donations from the refinery to his Palmer United Party, has rejected pleas from staff and from the Queensland government to pay the entitlements of families in Townsville.

Mr Palmer has denied any wrongdoing and blamed others for the demise.

Queensland Treasurer Curtis Pitt used state parliament yesterday to launch a fierce criticism of the federal member for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax.

Mr Pitt confirmed for the first time the attempts by Mr Palmer to wrest taxpayers’ funds from the Queensland government.

“In late September, Clive Palmer approached the government and asked us for $25m,’’ he said. “He then denied it to the media, stating: ‘As long as I am the owner of Queensland Nickel I will not allow the company to borrow funds from the Queensland government’.

But in November Clive Palmer came back to government, ­requesting money. First it was $25m, then $35m, then $40m.”