If Clive Palmer had been ruing the amount he spent on the recent federal election, surely he felt a bit more justified after surveying Scomolition’s performance last week.
Palmer retweeted a rant by Craig Kelly – former Liberal MP and United Australia Party aspirant – at his former boss: “Scott Morrison, the member for Cook, should be ashamed of himself and resign in disgrace.”
United Australia Party leader Clive Palmer (left) with would-be prime minister Craig Kelly.Credit:James Brickwood
It makes you wonder what could have been if Palmer had sent Kelly to contest Morrison’s seat of Cook.
Palmer splashed something like $100 million and yielded just one Senate seat, in Victoria, but as the financial accounts of his private group Mineralogy show, he could have afforded a lot more.
Mineralogy doled out dividends totalling $700 million between October last year and May 19 this year when Palmer received a $200 million payout from Mineralogy’s flood of mining royalties.
That last payment came just two days before the big election date, but he also received $400 million in February. That’s another four Senate seats that went begging, surely.
Ralph Babet won Victoria’s final Senate seat for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party.Credit:Joe Benke
Alternatively, he could have picked up Kerry Stokes’ Seven Network for less – its total market capitalisation is $795 million.
We can’t wait to hear what other plans he has for his cash. Maybe he’s planning to revive his Titanic plans?
Clive deals
Anyone worried that Clive might be milking Mineralogy’s cash reserves a little too heavily with the big payouts might get reassurance from the fact that our irrepressible billionaire does not share these concerns. In fact, he has big deals afoot.
Mineralogy’s financial accounts also revealed that, in January last year, Mineralogy entered into a “payment swap” agreement with a group of entities known as the QN Group.
Mineralogy has agreed to pay QN a whopping $3.675 billion in exchange for 90 per cent of the group’s free cash flow until June 30, 2045.
That will give Clive a nice little pension until the ripe old age of 91.
But who owns this QN Group, what is the QN Group, and how do we know that it will not end in the bitter feuding and legal battles Palmer is so well known for?
According to its website, the group operates the Palmer Nickel and Cobalt Refinery outside of Townsville, which is wholly owned by one Clive Palmer. Or, should we say, it would operate, had the refinery not gone into “care and maintenance” in 2016.
Queensland Nickel collapsed under Palmer in 2016 and left hundreds without a job.
In June, a Queensland court ordered Mineralogy to repay more than $100 million in loans to the liquidators in charge of Queensland Nickel.
Mineralogy has not got back to CBD about how this deal will work exactly, given the state of its operation. And more importantly, how Clive will benefit. We can’t wait for the answer.
Turning over a new leaf
Minor parties are queuing up for the Victorian election this November, and with some odd names vying for your vote, it can be hard to weed out exactly who’s who.
Enter Legalise Marijuana, which has applied to register with the Victorian Electoral Commission. Sounds pretty self-explanatory. The problem is, Legalise Cannabis has also put its hand up.
The Legalise Cannabis Party faces a turf war at the Victorian election.Credit:Brendan Beirne
Turns out it’s not a joint effort. Legalise Cannabis has never heard of Legalise Marijuana or the people behind it, and CBD’s attempts to contact the latter group were unsuccessful. It has no party website or list of public policies, though one would assume legalising marijuana was among them.
Legalise Cannabis secretary Craig Ellis was not so sure. He questioned the legitimacy of the group and whether it existed as a Trojan horse to hoover up preference votes in the upper house group voting system to direct those votes elsewhere.
Could it all be a smoke screen?
“It shines a light on the farcical electoral system in Victoria, frankly,” said Ellis, whose Legalise Cannabis is registered nationally and has two members of state parliament in Western Australia.
He said he was considering all options, including whether to make a complaint to the Victorian Electoral Commission.
“I’m not going to lose any sleep on it,” Ellis said. “It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious.”
Dining out with Mrs Amy
The 11,000-odd who follow Melbourne restaurateur Chris Lucas on Instagram were met with some interesting investment advice while scrolling through the app this weekend.
Lucas, the owner of hip venues such as Chin Chin and a loud critic of Melbourne’s many lockdowns and Premier Daniel Andrews, appeared to post about a $150,000 windfall he raked in from investing with “Mrs Amy”.
Restaurateur Chris Lucas’ Instagram was hacked.Credit:Joe Armao
“Ya’ll go start investing with her now,” the post said.
Where do we sign up? Well, not so fast.
Lucas confirmed his page was hacked after he responded to a message from a verified account purporting to be Instagram. The hackers, it seemed, have also locked his account to new followers.
“My view is everyone needs to be super careful when responding to false messages from Instagram,” Lucas said.
Words to live by.
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