Media Watch watch: Baiting Clive Palmer has become a national sport

As Clive Palmer receives more scrutiny you can be assured his inquisitors will have been reading Hedley Thomas.

It has become the regular date night of the nation’s political debate, Clive Palmer joining Tony Jones on Lateline. “Well we don’t want to give you all the headlines in one night, Tony,” said Palmer in April, 2013. “We want to come back — even though you’re the best journalist in Australia.”

And he did come back, the dating continued again and again. “Thanks, Tony,” said Palmer, now an MP, after the election later that year. “You’re a great journalist, all the best.”

Most characters in the media, as we know, are strangely devoid of the trait we call ego, yet even still there was some consternation to be heard about Palmer’s comparative assessment of journalistic merit. “Tony Jones is not even the best journalist in his own household,” someone quipped at The Australian’s daily editorial meeting, which was wryly amusing and deliberately no slight at all given Jones is married to Sarah Ferguson of Four Corners, 7.30, Killing Season and Hitting Home fame.

Truth was that Palmer got an easy ride from the ABC. He was an irritant on the conservative side of politics, a breakaway whose barbs were indulged rather than questioned. And the self-declared billionaire portrayed himself as a victim of the evil Murdoch empire. He even claimed green credentials by staging a photo op with Al Gore. So by hurting Tony Abbott, attacking Rupert Murdoch and pretending to save the planet, Palmer endeared himself to Auntie, even though he was a former National Party operative and would-be coal magnate who had fallen out with the Queensland LNP because it wouldn’t do his commercial bidding.

Late in 2013 The Australian’s Gold Walkley-winning journalist Hedley Thomas became frustrated. He was reporting on holes in Palmer’s claims and problems in his business empire, yet watched the Palmer United Party founder and leader sail through ABC interviews where he wasn’t pressed. “While spruiking his madcap plans to stimulate the economy, he was not asked to explain anything of his own apparent failure to currently operate any profitable business in Queensland (his nickel refinery in Townsville and resort at Coolum seem to be sinking like the Titanic),” wrote a prescient Thomas, detailing his annoyance. It was as though the ABC interviewers hadn’t even read Thomas’s reports. Instead, Palmer sat, like Lord Muck, at Mark Scott’s table at the Parliamentary Press Gallery’s Midwinter Ball. We only need to ask how we think the ABC might have reported all these revelations if Palmer had remained with the LNP and turned up at parliament in a Rolls Royce to serve as a billionaire government backbencher.

Still, slowly the ABC, and 7.30’s Conor Duffy in particular, began to follow up on some of Thomas’s revelations. A month after the ball, in July 2014, Palmer granted another ABC interview, this time to Ferguson on 7.30. When she pushed the Member for Fairfax on allegedly unauthorised use of one company’s funds for his political campaigning, he stormed out. “Well I’m not answering any more for you,” he snapped, perhaps regretting he’d agreed to an interview with the woman married to the man he considers Australia’s best journalist.

He did the same five months later on Lateline, with Emma Alberici. Baiting Clive has now become a national sport. His absurdities about Chinese spies and media conspiracies have been laid bare, and many journalists have started to realise that the proper management of his companies and questions about entitlements owed to workers axed from his Townsville nickel refinery are of more interest to the public than his silly political jibes.

And so Clive was back with Jones on Wednesday night’s Lateline with the host probing why the refinery had been able to funnel upwards of $10 million into Palmer’s political party while the business was descending into administration. Jones pushed Palmer on whether he had used a pseudonym when allocating company funds or whether he would personally guarantee the entitlements of workers, all to no avail. “You’re just reading Hedley Thomas,” was Palmer’s retort. And he was clearly on the money.

Lisa Wilkinson, too, sparred with Palmer on Nine’s Today last week. We look forward to more scrutiny as this political juggernaut runs out of control. And we feel we can give the PUP boss one assurance — all his interviewers will have been reading Hedley Thomas.