Clive Palmer’s sacked workers cost taxpayers $64 million

Taxpayers have shelled out $64 million to pay entitlements for workers sacked at Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery.

Federal taxpayers have shelled out $64 million to pay redundancy ­entitlements for workers sacked at Clive Palmer’s Townsville nickel refinery after his business collapsed.

The Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme has paid out 742 of the 749 claims made to the federal safety net after Mr Palmer’s Queensland Nickel fell into liquidation under $300m in debts.

There are seven outstanding claims, four of which are waiting on more identity documents and three of which are likely to be paid within days.

Mr Palmer last week claimed he would reopen the mouldering nickel refinery next March, denying his announcement was political, shortly before an election at which his only Palmer United Party lower house candidate, ­Martin Brewster was running in Townsville-based ­Herbert.

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash said Mr Palmer had a “shameful history of letting down and abandoning workers”.

“Former Queensland Nickel workers can have little confidence in this latest announcement, two days before the election,” Senator Cash said.

“The government has already spent tens of millions of dollars to cover employee entitlements that Clive Palmer was responsible for but failed to pay.

“Regardless of the fate of Queensland Nickel the government will continue to vigorously pursue recovery of this money from Mr Palmer and his related entities.”

The Federal Court has appointed PPB Advisory and Stephen ­Parbery as special purpose liquidators to chase Mr Palmer and his web of companies to recoup the $64m in taxpayer funds.

A date has not been set for a public examination of Mr Palmer, his nephew and refinery director Clive Mensink and operations manager Ian Ferguson. A scheduled Federal Court examination for Mr Mensink was delayed ­because he was not served with a summons before he left the ­country.

In Herbert, government MP Ewen Jones is at risk of losing his seat to Labor challenger Cathy O’Toole.

As postal votes were counted last night, Mr Jones narrowed Ms O’Toole’s lead to just 726 votes. One source close to the counting said that on the current postal vote trend, Labor wouldn’t win ­Herbert.

Mr Brewster received just 312 votes at the election, a swing of 8.47 per cent against him compared to his showing at the 2013 election when PUP ran massive advertising campaigns.

Mr Jones said he did not think the federal government’s activation of the entitlements guarantee improved his electoral chances. “I don’t think us coming to the rescue of Queensland Nickel helped in Herbert,” he said.

He said he was incredulous that Mr Brewster had received hundreds of votes.

“That people actually put on their ballot votes for Clive’s nephew staggers me,” Mr Jones said.

The Glenn Lazarus Team candidate for Herbert was sacked QN worker Aaron Raffin. Mr Raffin secured 1662 first preference votes.