Heads or tailings? Clive Palmer on a coin

WORKERS at Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery received a very special gift from the boss yesterday.

The specially minted coin bearing the image of Clive Palmer.

AS crew members came on shift at Clive Palmer’s nickel refinery in north Queensland yesterday, they were let in on a cheerful little secret. Everyone was about to receive a special gift — a thoughtful token of appreciation from the larger-than-life owner.

But what could it be?

Before the gift was handed over, speculation ran riot.

A bottled keepsake-sample of toxic sludge from the Palmer Nickel and Cobalt refinery, which is being prosecuted for spilling tens of thousands of litres from its tailings dams on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, was out of the question. Perhaps a membership to the ailing Palmer United Party — with a DVD of walkout media interviews of its founder? Or tickets to visit the Palmer Coolum Resort to enjoy the life-size dinosaurs, car museum and a stegosaurus steak? It would be preferable to a field trip to Port Palmer (aka the remote port of Cape Preston) on the West Australian coast. Instead, the employees were presented with a specially minted commemorative coin. It was shiny, new and had a nice weight to it. “It feels like chromed ­copper,’’ one worker at the refinery, near Townsville, told The Australian yesterday.

The coin is unique for another very good reason. On one side, it bears the image of the refinery in all its structural glory. On the other, it bears an almost regal image of the boss. Clive Frederick Palmer, striving for immortality like Caesar and the kings of old, now has his likeness on a limited-edition currency.

It has been a tough couple of years at the refinery — a topsy-turvy nickel price, cuts to staff numbers and conditions, a slashing of the maintenance budget, and environmental lapses have all contributed to a lack of jollity.

Morale was very different four years ago when a surging nickel price and profitability coincided with Mr Palmer giving Mercedes-Benz sedans and Fiji holidays to some of the staff.

After the cutbacks in recent years, however, it takes a bundle of self-belief to commission the minting of coins to remind the staff of the boss.

The Clive coin was also marking a milestone — the production of one million tonnes of nickel over the past 40 years — but it is being lampooned.

Judging by the reaction at the refinery yesterday, however, the new currency of Clive faces depreciation risks. “It’s been a bit of a joke — they could have bought the blokes a ham for Christmas instead of wasting the money on this rubbish,’’ said one longtime worker. “Somebody suggested that we can skip the coin across the tailings dams — it will probably skip a long way.”

When BHP Billiton owned the environmentally challenged refinery, which was transferred to Mr Palmer in 2009, staff sometimes received belt buckles as ­mementos of production achievements.

But there may be some underlying value in the new Clive coin — at least one copy has already been sold on the online website, Gumtree.

Perhaps it will become a collector’s item.