Family ties Clive Mensink’s gold handcuff

Clive Mensink, the nephew of Clive Palmer.

It was an uneven fight. Clive Mensink, yes-man, puppet director and nephew of Clive Palmer, versus Walter Sofronoff QC, a former solicitor-general who cracks witnesses for breakfast.

Why would Mensink have stepped into such a carve-up?

The answer is simple. Mensink does what he’s told. Always has.

When Clive Palmer tells his nephew on the board of Queensland Nickel and various other entities to sack people without cause, or drive to the Gold Coast to fetch beer and doughnuts late at night, that’s what happens.

When Palmer told his nephew to get into the witness box of the Supreme Court in Brisbane and run a self-serving defence of Uncle Clive’s conduct in fleecing Queensland Nickel of a couple of hundred million dollars, hitting taxpayers with the bill for staff entitlements and the environmental clean-up and leaving creditors with nothing, Mensink had little choice.

The familial ties, the salary he would not earn anywhere else, and the property assets, including a Gold Coast mansion on Sovereign Island with which he has been provided, make it impossible to say no.

Mensink and the federal member for Fairfax have a volatile relationship. Close associates and former staff of the two Clives say some of Palmer’s loudest and most severe abuse has been directed at Mensink.

The younger Clive, says a close source, “hates it when he’s being blamed in front of others (which happens a fair bit)”.

But he cops it regularly. As the alternative would be to give up all the spoils, Mensink stays.

It won’t happen in this proceeding, but Sofronoff will be itching to question Palmer under oath. It almost happened once before, during litigation in 2011 after Palmer’s sinister public claims that likened the Hyatt group to a Mafia operation, supposedly ripping him off while managing his Coolum resort. Back then, the case was narrow.

But the damning material relating to Queensland Nickel and unearthed by the voluntary administrators, FTI Consulting, gives Sofronoff a lot to work with in possible future proceedings. That would be a showdown to look forward to.