Clive Palmer

Clive Palmer has ramped up his campaign to challenge Wayne Swan at the next election, unveiling a cheesy billboard.

At the same time, he’s refusing to pay a $333 speeding ticket. Most people would just cop the fine. Wonder if speeding fines will be a campaign issue…

It’s Wednesday. What’s on your mind today? 

I’m not sold on Clive Palmer’s political instincts. The mining magnate, who controls a variety of resources companies like Queensland Nickel, has a tough challenge ahead of him winning LNP preselection in the seat of Lilley which is currently held by Deputy PM Wayne Swan. Particularly since Opposition Leader Tony Abbott hit a reluctant note talking about it yesterday.

But I am sold on Palmer’s idea to build a second Titanic. Reason one: it’s an example of a billionaire actually doing something grand with their ginormous reserves of cash for once. “I don’t want to die wondering, you know, I always wondered if we could build another Titanic,” he told ABC Brisbane this morning.

Reason two: it’s an exciting and potentially viable business opportunity.

Continue reading "A Titanic replica? Clive, that’s a great business idea" »

Australian politics at the moment is a strange sort of Wonderland. It’s filled with odd characters – some weird, some slightly sinister – and it’s all more than a little bit nonsensical. Some voters are stamping their feet in frustration at the stupidest tea party they’ve ever been to, while the more violently inclined are calling for decapitation.

In the most recent chapter, Greens Leader Bob Brown disappeared back up the rabbithole, sidelined Labor MP Craig Thomson’s alleged adventures have shrunk his stature significantly, while Liberal-turned-Independent Speaker Peter Slipper’s problems seem to be experiencing unstoppable growth.

Yesterday mining magnate Clive Palmer announced he wants to join the party. He wants to challenge Treasurer Wayne Swan in a battle that seems to have just a whiff of the personal about it – Swan and he have been engaged in a war of words over the mining tax and the role of billionaires in public life.

Continue reading "Australian politics gets curiouser and curiouser" »

It says a lot about the current climate that a mining magnate can simultaneously announce he’s commissioned a replica of the Titanic and that he’s going to run against the Treasurer at the next election and it seems like just another day in the circus that is Australian politics.

Clive Palmer’s press conference this morning might shift the focus from Julia Gillard’s diabolical situation for, oh, about seven minutes. But as much as the ALP might want to jump all over it like a life-raft, anyone who thinks mocking Clive Palmer is going to clear the “dark cloud” hanging over parliament is deluded.

While it might be great fun, it’s not going to work. But you can almost hear the list of talking points pinging around the ALP front-bench this morning, as the people running the Government’s dysfunctional communications cling to the idea that at least going after Clive is better than the “what she said” strategy.

Continue reading "Iceberg or life raft? Clive’s bid not enough to rescue PM" »

So Julie Bishop has a Huawei-donated iPad. Dangerous. Dangerous for her and dangerous for Australia if she ever aspires to become Foreign Minister. The iPad alone is but one of the micro details to emerge from Ms Bishop’s visit to China as a guest of the Chinese telco.

Some Liberals led by Julie Bishop together with vested mining interests questioned the Gillard Government’ accepting ASIO’s advice against letting Huawei bid for the National Broadband Network. But the bar on Huawei has wider significance because the controversy it has sparked illuminates the most vexing issue of Australian foreign policy - our relationship with China.

This foreign policy challenge was again in sharp relief at the recent Boao Forum, on the luxury resort on Hainan Island, China’s version of Hawaii (they also have their most advanced naval base there).

Continue reading "These people want our foreign policy made in China" »

It was at the bottom of the ocean that James Cameron felt alone, distant from humanity. But it was there that he was, perhaps, closer to us than he had ever been.

Earlier this week, the acclaimed director became the first person to solo-dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench - one of the darkest, quietest places on the planet.

As the world applauded Cameron, billionaire Clive Palmer was holding court at a press conference in Brisbane, speaking about spooks and conspiracy theories and strange political follies. There were no submarines, blueprints or audacious concept drawings behind him. Just a man who had made enough money to say whatever he liked whenever the mood struck.

Continue reading "Billions of reasons for rich people to dream big" »

This time a month ago the debate around the Gillard Government’s mining tax was still largely centred on the economic wisdom of using the tax system to target the one industry sector which was keeping the Australian economy humming along.

Most Australians are smart enough to know that the chief reason we have weathered the global economic storm is because every time you lift up a rock in Western Australia someone in China wants to give you half a million dollars. Despite the role of mining in our own little economic miracle the Gillard Government had set out to demonise the mining sector, or more accurately the biggest players in the mining sector, as being driven by a lust for profit off the back of natural riches belonging to all Australians.

There is a logical flaw at the centre of this argument, namely that while all these natural riches might belong to all Australians, most Australians have neither the resources nor the know-how to get them out of the ground. The companies that take the economic risks, tackle massively complex and dangerous issues of occupational safety, employ thousands of people in the process and return millions of dollars to shareholders – I’d say they have every right to be a bit peeved that they are suddenly being treated as self-interested villains.

Continue reading "Nutty miner makes a crazy tax more popular" »

The massive sums and the wealthy characters in the bitter debate over the mining profits tax have swamped discussion of a plan to help the lowest paid Australians. This measure would address the painful worry of hundreds of thousands of working women that they will not be able to save money for retirement.

It is a move designed to avoid the unhappy destiny of many unskilled women - there are just over two million in the workforce - who at the end of their working lives face a struggle to survive.

It has bipartisan support to the extent that if the Government proceeds with it the Coalition, should it win government, would not wind it back. But it is rarely mentioned because the debate is anchored in the fate of billions of dollars, not in the futures of millions of the low paid.

Continue reading "You’d think the mining tax was all about billionaires" »

Writer and activist Susan Sontag said: “I envy paranoids. They actually feel people are paying attention to them”.

People were quick to call mining giant Clive Palmer a ‘crackpot’ and a ‘nutjob’ for his bizarre claim that the Greens are a tool of the CIA being used to undermine mining. And they are wacky claims. But the human mind is an amazing thing and comes up with sophisticated ways to protect itself from the real world. He’s not simply ‘wacky’.

Conspiracy theories are a protective mechanism.

Continue reading "Clive Palmer’s truth is really out there" »

It looks like Wayne Swan was onto something after all when he started his bad-tempered battering of mining billionaires. Maybe they aren’t like the rest of us. But if Mr Swan was right in theory, it took Clive Palmer to prove it by claiming the President of the United States was using spies to recruit Greens to wreck Australian coal mining.

Mr Palmer, one of the three billionaires the Treasurer has been taking swipes at, has started something that others might find extremely difficult to finish.

If the mining industry was worried the newly-passed Minerals Resources Rental Tax would deter investors, what sort of disincentive would come from an influential magnate claiming undercover agents in the open-cut mines?

Continue reading "CIA conspiracy undermines Clive Palmer’s credibility" »

I can’t find one Coalition MP or fellow traveller who came to the defence of Cate Blanchett when last May she took part in a TV advertisement supporting a price on carbon.

There were plenty who shredded the internationally successful Australian actress, making the point that among those disqualified from speaking on climate change were internationally successful Australian actresses.

None of these shredders were accused by others of instigating class warfare against Blanchett, said to be worth from $53 million to $55 million. None were dismissed as being driven by envy.

Continue reading "Classy targets cop it hardest in phony class wars" »

Wayne Swan has discovered his voice. After telling us in no uncertain terms what he really thought of Kevin Rudd the week before last. Now Swannie has set his sights on our mining magnates.

In an essay in The Monthly, and in a speech due at lunch time today to the National Press Club, the Treasurer makes the argument that democracy is under threat from vested interests - and takes aim in particular at Clive Palmer, Twiggy Forrest and Gina Rinehart.

But his argument is not just limited to those who make their millions by digging things out of the ground. Swan is worried about our middle-class society being under “mortal threat”, essentially since the “Reagan-Thatcher revolutions”.

Continue reading "Where do we stand on the rich? For or against…" »

The FFA has just terminated the A-League license of struggling Gold Coast United. This comes after a massive war of words between Franky Lowy and Gold Coast owner Clive Palmer, the latest instalment of which came today when Palmer tweeted: We intend to fight this ludicrous decision by incompetent FFA in the courts. Frank Lowy is an institution who now belongs in an institution.

As the battle rages on, here’s a nice wider perspective on the battle of the billionaires from first time Puncher and soccer nut Stewart Prins.

A-League football had one of its more mysterious moments on the weekend when colourful franchise owner Clive Palmer sent his Gold Coast United (GCU) team out onto the field with the message “Freedom of Speech” plastered across the front of their playing strip.

Neither Mr Palmer nor his Gold Coast United CEO Clive Messink offered an explanation for the late change to the playing strip, or for the advertising billboards quoting the same slogan.

Continue reading "While the billionaires battle, the code becomes poorer" »

You couldn’t invent Clive Palmer. Well that’s not quite true, you could invent Clive Palmer, but you’d be told to go back and come up with something that was less of a caricature for a mining boss.

The Queensland mining magnate billionaire is quickly becoming the chief vioce of industry opposition to the Government’s Resource Super Profits Tax, and the Government love it. 

Palmer is an easy target for the Government, epitomising every stereotype of a self-interested fat cat capitalist, a mere monocle and waistcoat away from being a cartoon character. As one Labor strategist said of Palmer “he’s our Joe McDonald.”

Continue reading "Why the Government just loves Clive Palmer" »