Clive Palmer has resumed his war of words with Attorney General John Quigley after he detailed the measures taken to keep plans to amend a state agreement quiet.
Clive Palmer has resumed his war of words with Attorney General John Quigley after he detailed the measures taken to keep plans to amend a state agreement hidden from the Queensland billionaire at a Business News event.
The United Australia Party backer and Mineralogy founder labelled Attorney General John Quigley a disgrace over his handling of legislation to protect WA taxpayers from Mr Palmer’s $30 billion compensation claim in 2020.
In a fiery press release on Wednesday morning from the UAP, Mr Palmer lashed the outgoing attorney general for rushing through amendments to the state agreement covering his Pilbara iron ore project “to cause personal damage”.
Mr Palmer’s comments came after Attorney General John Quigley on Tuesday morning detailed the extreme measures he took to keep the amendments secret at a Business News breakfast.
“This had to be done very confidentially because I thought if Mr Palmer got wind of it, then he would litigate and take steps,” he said.
“I didn't take any of that advice from anyone apart from the solicitor general of the day, the inimitable Joshua Thompson.
“The state solicitor withdrew from the office and worked at home so that very few people would know what we were doing and prepared the legislation.
“I had this image in my mind that Clive [Palmer] would be well into the spare ribs and the juice by then,”Mr Quigley said of introducing the legislation to parliament at 5pm WA time.
Responding to those comments, Mr Palmer said Mr Quigley and former premier Mark McGowan had lost “billions of dollars” in wealth for WA and were responsible for his decision to take a $300 billion compensation case against the federal government to the Hague.
“Mr Quigley’s legacy will be that he is the worst attorney general in the country since Federation,” he said.
“He and former Premier Mark McGowan will go down in history as causing the largest damages by any government.
“He had to apologise and ask to re-do his evidence to the Federal Court of Australia because he contradicted Mark McGowan – who we now know works for his true master BHP.”
Mr Palmer has long pressed the case amendments to the Mineralogy deal were draconian, restricted legal action against politicians, chilled freedom of information access, and excluded natural justice.
With his case against the state government knocked down by the High Court, Mr Palmer has now turned to international arbitration against the federal government.
