‘Feels like a betrayal’: Palmer and Porter to sue government for $300 billion

Clive Palmer has enlisted the help of his previous political opponent and former attorney-general Christian Porter in a $296 billion case against the Commonwealth for its alleged role in blocking compensation of his rejected mining project.

The unlikely duo have heaped blame on the Australian government, claiming it was significantly involved in the execution of a WA law that prevented any payout to Palmer for a Pilbara iron ore project rejected by the state’s government.

In a post to Facebook, Palmer said any “windfall” from the case would be injected into the “public good”, namely “neglected WA hospitals” and a new independent state newspaper that “doesn’t rely on cartoons to sell copies”.

The law at the heart of the claim was introduced by the WA government in 2020 with a mandate to prevent bankrupting the state to the tune of $30 billion. It followed an arbitration claim for the Balmoral South mine, another of Palmer’s rejected iron ore projects. The legislation was rushed through Parliament with the backing of both opposition Liberal and National parties.

It was deemed “extraordinary and unprecedented” for a subject that WA Attorney-General John Quigley at the time said was “not normal”, while WA Premier Mark McGowan described Palmer as “an enemy of the state”.

Palmer took the matter to the High Court in 2021 and lost the challenge.

The Pilbara project is now subject to the same legislation. Palmer’s Singapore-based company Zeph Investments has raised the stakes with a $300 billion federal case that will argue a breach of the ASEAN free trade deal.  

Porter will lead a band of 10 lawyers (himself included) to take on the Commonwealth.

Geoffrey Watson SC, director of the Centre for Public Integrity and former counsel assisting the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), said it was appalling that a former Commonwealth attorney-general would appear to sue the Commonwealth.

“The role of an attorney-general has been the Commonwealth’s senior lawyer privy to all its secrets and its legal strategies. To then try and turn that into a market commodity appals me,” he told Crikey.

“It feels like a betrayal.”