Clive: The story of Clive Palmer

By Sean Parnell

Cliver Palmer, MP, leader of the Palmer United Party and big-spending billionaire: now here's the true story behind the larger-than-life Queenslander.
Read the real story behind the larger-than-life Queenslander: MP, leader of the PUP and big-spending billionaire.He's bought a football team, helped create a political party, added robot dinosaurs to a luxury golf resort and is set to recreate the 'titanic'. But are these just fanciful splurges or something more calculated? the reality is that Clive Palmer uses his immense mining wealth (which some estimates put at over $6 billion) in a proactive (if sometimes eccentric) global way. His personal story is just as colourful and intriguing: Clive spent time as a child in China and writes poetry. He is well-known for attention-grabbing statements that send the media into a spin. Shortly after Clive was named a National Living treasure, he claimed that the CIA was secretly backing green groups in a bid to kill the Australian coal-mining industry. In true Clive fashion, in May 2012 he announced that he was building a luxury cruise liner - the 'titanic II' - and his political feuds are legendary. In this part business book, part political-insider profile and all rollicking tale, journalist Sean Parnell reveals what makes Clive Palmer tick.'this brilliant debut biography goes a long way towards capturing the eccentric, enigmatic and downright hysterical character of Clive Palmer.' - the Australian

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Sep 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781743098165

Sean Parnell

Sean Parnell is a former U.S. Army airborne ranger who served in the legendary 10th Mountain Division for six years, retiring as a captain. He received two Bronze Stars (one for valor) and the Purple Heart. He is a passionate supporter of America's military and is currently serving as an ambassador for the Boot Campaign, a national veteran's charity. He lives with his three children in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Book preview

Prologue

Clive Palmer has held court with half a dozen journalists for more than two hours. Over breakfast at his Palmer Coolum Resort, he talks fast and freely as he grabs bacon and chipolatas with his bare hands and dispatches staff to collect various brochures and press releases. As the serious business writers from Sydney scrawl down his rushed project updates, and interrupt in hope of specific details, Clive rolls on, almost breathless. He praises John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela, laments how the poor Chinese farmer can’t invest in Australia but a CIA-linked gangster can, labels it a tragedy that the Fairfax media empire is sacking journalists, and shrugs off any doubts over his mining investments by saying they could all fail and he would still be at Coolum, drinking cappuccinos. He even puts on a high-pitched voice to mimic the absent reporter who once dared to question his wealth and call him a miner who had never mined anything. Towards the end of every answer, Clive tries to come up with that killer quote, an inspirational adage about life and his sense of fulfilment. No matter how rich he is, he can only sleep in one bed; the truth will set you free; it’s not his fault he is so rich; his projects do nothing for him but they can do a lot for Queensland; public life should be about ideas, not people.

‘That’s a good headline for you,’ he says repeatedly, as golfers begin to outnumber the kangaroos on the greens outside and a couple of hungover journalists emerge.

The media group had arrived in the early hours of the morning, having flown from Brisbane to Townsville, across to the Pilbara and back again on Clive’s jet the day before. It was a business-familiarisation tour that he was meant to lead but at the last minute abandoned, his loyal media adviser initially suggesting he would catch up in Western Australia but then conceding Clive simply could not spare the time. The big man was on the airstrip when the group landed back at the Sunshine Coast, however, almost glowing with his now naturally white hair and a white jacket, next to a fleet of Bentleys he had organised as transport to the resort. The colourful Queenslander has a love–hate relationship with the media — it is fair to say the feelings are mutual — but always leaves a lasting impression. Some might even say Clive’s eccentricity provides a refreshing break from predictable public relations puffery.

After the breakfast plates are cleared, Clive leads the journalists through the lobby of the former Hyatt — now filled with two of his vintage cars and numerous framed photographs and newspaper caricatures of the bulging billionaire — to a small meeting room in the back. He has a DVD he wants to show everyone, but no one can work the machine. Clive flicks between the channels, from a movie about a panda to an international soccer game, somehow avoiding the former in-house tourist channel that now screens his press conferences, interviews, documentaries and corporate videos on a loop. Finally, someone gets the DVD to play, and the journalists sit back to watch a computer animation of Clive’s plans for the once discreet five-star resort and golf course, which is separated from the beach by sand dunes and bush. The DVD reveals a redeveloped airport, a monorail, two eight-storey hotels on the beach, a 5000-person convention centre, a 2000-seat theatre, 250 residential units, a casino, restaurants, shops, ten-pin bowling alleys, infinity pools, a bird park, a marina and a ‘dinosaur park’. An A380 aircraft would circle Australia, bringing tourists to Coolum, while a 400-person hovercraft would be on hand to ferry tourists to and from Brisbane.

‘We’re leaving now from George Street, Brisbane, on our hovercraft — here we go!’ Clive says, pretending the animated fly-through is some kind of action simulator as he launches into his sales pitch. ‘I think it’s about forty minutes travelling, depending on the wave height. We’ve just arrived! See, you look at Hawaii, Fiji, Vanuatu, it’s all beachfront, that’s what people want, beach activity. If we don’t want to compete, let’s give up our tourist industry.’

Standing in the way of the two hotel towers is a largely undeveloped coastline, which would have to be cleared and levelled to realise Clive’s vision. No stranger to the wrath of environmentalists, Clive sees little problem.

‘You’d much rather go for a holiday there, hop out of your hotel room, onto the beach, have a surf,’ Clive tells the journalists. ‘At the moment it’s only the domain of sparrows. Humans are not entitled to see that.’

The dunes and bushland are not the only impediments; there is also an agitated local council, disgruntled residents, and the relevant state government minister, Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney, who despite being from the same side of politics continues to clash with Queensland’s richest man.

The journalists are told that Seeney refuses to watch the DVD. Screwing up his eyes, Clive impersonates the deputy premier, saying, ‘I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t want to see it.’ A couple of journalists chuckle. While there was once a suspicion that Clive would benefit from having the Liberal National Party in government, it now appears that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Clive makes out that he has hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in Queensland if only people would let him.

When the DVD is finished, Clive announces he has ordered a robot dinosaur from China and will place it near his golf course to roar at tourists as they prepare to take a putt. Each journalist is then handed a replica of a blue, gold and white plate from the Titanic. It is a parting gift from their host, who clambers into a golf buggy and hums off to another engagement, passing barely any guests on the way. Later, Clive hosts a lunch for representatives of the Chinese shipyard he wants to build the Titanic II, a cruise ship with old-world luxury but modern safety features. He insists everyone wear a Titanic badge, as they share dumplings and hear him declare the project will not only promote Chinese engineering and workmanship but also unite East and West — maybe even foster world peace. In typical fashion, Clive finishes off the proceedings with one of his favourite quotes: ‘Together, we can achieve the extraordinary’.

1

By George

With her corn-coloured hull and matching smokestack and mast, the Orion cruise ship has a special place in the hearts of many Australians. This long-range voyager brought numerous immigrants to the great southern land and, when not returning to Europe with cashed-up tourists, even found time to help out in World War II. Whenever the Orion docked in Melbourne, it was only expected that the local journalists would look among her passenger list for someone worldly and interesting — like the wondrous ship herself. During a stopover in 1954, one Melbourne newspaper found ‘bright, breezy American Mahogany Celb, wearing a loud tweed coat, two-tone shoes, a bow tie and scarf, a ten-gallon Stetson and a £1,000 diamond ring’. He was perfect for a colour story. Yet the retired Californian finance analyst was not the only seasoned traveller on the docks deemed worthy of a write-up: local travel-company owner George Palmer was heading back to London also, on his thirteenth world voyage. He was accompanied by his wife, Nancy, and eight-year-old daughter, Jean, both on their seventh world trip, and a newborn baby, Clive, who was only weeks old but already embarking on his first family adventure.

When Clive Palmer was welcomed into the world, he was welcomed into the entire world, his father broadening his horizons from babyhood and demonstrating how there are countless opportunities and possibilities for those willing to go in search of them.

George Palmer was not naturally flamboyant like the Californian with the Stetson hat and bow tie, but his inner confidence and almost boyish curiosity got him places. And, over time, his fair share of headlines too.

‘Take a solid six-foot frame, add a pair of spectacles, a flashing smile and a straw hat. Now sprinkle well with imagination, verve and vision, and you’ve got the recipe for the amazing George Palmer — personality extraordinary,’ declared one article on George. Clive’s father was, in the eyes of another journalist, a ‘six footer with round, jovial face and the ability to sell almost anything. Energy, verve, initiative, personality. That’s George.’

The family trailblazer, George Frederick Thomas Palmer, was born at the start of the last century, the son of a stove-maker with blistered and calloused hands, and a mother whose family owned a foundry. His parents were only in their early twenties when they married in 1908, and George had already been conceived. They made a home for the family in the Melbourne suburb of Albert Park, with its wide streets, Victorian-era buildings and flourishing sports fields and parks.

George and his brothers, Les and Ronnie, enjoyed a childhood like any other; their parents worked hard to support them, and the boys, in turn, were expected to eventually do the same — get a decent job and learn how to contribute to the family. The Palmer boys’ formative years were inevitably affected by World War I. George’s uncle was one of the brave Aussie diggers sent to serve on the frontline, and generations of Palmers to follow would feel a sense of pride in his dedication to country and countrymen. By the time the Allies had declared victory, more than 60,000 Australians had died and thousands were left maimed and scarred, many refusing to talk of their experiences on their return home. This was meant to be the war to end all wars, and its successful conclusion brought with it a sense of euphoria despite the horror many suffered.

Around this time George visited a silent movie theatre in Melbourne — the birthplace of Australian cinema — and watched a film deposit a layer of excitement and possibility over the battle-weary world. He had a boy’s curiosity but, additionally, a desire to experience more of what life had to offer for himself. And, as they say, fortune favours the brave.

Australia had produced one of the world’s first full-length feature films in 1906 — The Story of the Kelly Gang — and the industry thrived during the silent-movie era. Though he was just a kid, George desperately wanted to be a part of this cinematographic revolution. He wanted to make his own movie. But the nine-year-old couldn’t afford to even watch a film without working for it, so he went all-out, collecting bottles from friends and strangers, digging them out of bins, liberating them from restaurants and exchanging them for a little cash. The determined Melburnian was prepared to collect day-in, day-out, competing with those much older for the right to earn some money — his money — and the opportunity to live out his dreams.

Having some cash didn’t mean he would be taken seriously by the film industry, mind you. After all, he was still the wide-eyed son of a steelworker, a boy in short shorts, and his family wasn’t exactly wealthy. So George took a part-time job with a mining company from Tasmania, delivering messages around Melbourne for a couple of months, to earn the extra money required to buy trousers and at least start looking the part. Little did he know his brief experience as a courier would be one of the only times he would work for someone else, and certainly his only ever entry-level job.

By fourteen, when most of his contemporaries were debating whether to stay in school or find work, George was taking his first big gamble as a budding entrepreneur. The money he had earned could have bought many things, but he would use it to make something others might find valuable: an Australian-made movie mixing thrills and funnies to give his audience the best of what he believed cinema had to offer.

None of this was a simple exercise. Apart from having to organise cameras, crew and cast, George had settled on an ambitious plot that required all the scenes to be filmed outside and no less than a working train for a prop. He managed to procure use of a Sunday morning A2 locomotive and carriages bound for Healesville, and also the Camberwell golf course — the sand traps would allow him to film a dramatic landslide scene — as well as East Camberwell and the Canterbury Gardens.

Working on the picture during weekends and holidays, George played the leading role, a letter carrier whose mailbag is stolen by a train robber. At one point in the film, the carrier — perhaps a glorified version of the courier George had been earlier — lies unconscious on a railway track as a train approaches. The thundering locomotive switches to a different track, the audience all the while knowing that should the train have jumped the points it would have meant certain death for the hero.

It was creative work but hard work nonetheless. George even developed a hernia for his troubles but was too afraid of the surgery to have it corrected. He would have to carry it with him on every adventure.

By the time George took his tentative first step into this brave new world, Australian movie-making was starting to decline, under threat from American imports. As he set out to promote his short silent movie, which he called The Mail Robber, he realised he had one point of difference from the Hollywood film-makers — his age — and he was determined to promote it. What might be a weakness for many would be turned into one of his strengths.

‘This picture was produced in the suburbs of Melbourne by a 16-year-old boy producer and actor, George Palmer, of Surrey Hills, who is now the youngest moving picture producer in the world,’ the Sunshine Advocate wrote in 1925.

Screening The Mail Robber around Melbourne, George compensated for its short running time by giving speeches about how the movie had come about. Sometimes he would act out a scene with a local actor or actress, or even sing a song. By the time he was done touring, the first-time movie producer had made about 100 pounds — a veritable fortune for a teenager at the time.

News of his plans for another movie soon spread. This production would take six months — his first film was only a one reeler, as it was known in the day, and this was to be a five reeler. Again, George would differentiate his work from the American imports with local scenery, including shots of the timber industry around Powelltown, east of Melbourne. George used another train — on the Melbourne to Wangaratta line — for this production, along with an imported yellow cab he drove despite not having a licence. Bigger, bolder and riskier, the stunts involved several near-misses for George, his cast and crew.

George called his second movie The Northbound Limited and the red-tone posters he put up around Melbourne gave some indication of what it had to offer audiences.

ACTION — SPEED — THRILLS YES! IT’S

AUSTRALIAN! AND A PICTURE YOU OWE

YOURSELF TO SEE

Not only did the ambitious teenager use capital letters to attract interest, he also made his name as large as the title — after all, he was the writer, actor, stuntman, director, producer, and the film was distributed by his own Palmer’s Pictures.

‘An Australian thriller, cast and story that will keep you guessing from start to finish, and hold you spellbound at its gigantic thrills’, boasted the posters.

Travelling around Victoria to promote the film, George found many fans, especially in the media. One newspaper declared it ‘full of action from start to finish’; another said it had scenes ‘calculated to make the most hardened film fan hold his or her breath in amazement’, while one simply noted ‘thrills a plenty’. Another newspaper reported that the film, which has since taken its place in Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive, ‘serves to show what can be accomplished by the perseverance and determination of an Australian boy’.

What these days might be considered cocky, even precocious, was, in the era before the Great Depression, widely applauded. The success of these ventures instilled in the young Victorian an entrepreneurial spirit, a business confidence that would ultimately see him take on the world in his own way.

On the set of The Northbound Limited, George met a woman called Mabel. Despite her being several years older than the teenager, they soon married and had two children: a son, who would also be named George, and a daughter, Fay. The couple would eventually divorce, the children staying with their mother and losing contact with their father.

Being applauded in Devonport’s Majestic Theatre is one thing, but to really make it in the movie business George knew he had to go to Hollywood. He headed to the United States, writing scripts and making himself known to industry figures, including the silent movie star Wallace Beery. George also marvelled at the California radio scene which, like film, was an emerging art and at the forefront of innovation, and an area in which he could see himself excelling.

However, any plans he had to stay in the US were killed off by the Great Depression. George soon found himself back in Australia — in sleepy Tasmania, no less — working behind the scenes in radio at station 7UV. The Tasmanian premier at the time was the Labor politician Joseph Lyons, who saw great potential in radio. Having opened 7UV, Lyons formed a relationship with George that would continue as their respective careers prospered. The two would discuss the media, and even share cold flights across Bass Strait to the mainland, where greater opportunities could be found for each.

By 1931, George had returned to Melbourne and, still only in his early twenties, became new station 3AK’s first manager, technician and announcer. Radio had become a career. The first 3AK broadcast actually came from George’s bedroom in the suburb of Balwyn. It was a difficult time for many in Melbourne, the Depression bringing people from the country to the city in search of work, and vice versa. But anyone who had a radio (a basic model of which they might have bought for around £12; £40 for the top of the line) could be entertained for nothing more than the cost of powering it.

To hear 3AK, and the mostly orchestral music it broadcast to start with, Melburnians would have to be up late and live not too far from George’s bedroom, such was its limited range. The station only had a B-grade broadcasting licence, allowing it to broadcast only at night, and wasn’t meant to compete with the ABC, so it became known as ‘the Voice of the Night’.

Within a few years, 3AK would benefit from additional government funding and move closer to the CBD. New announcers were put on, and George opted to use dance music, brightening the lives of those who were still awake for the broadcasts. Joseph Lyons had by now become prime minister, after the Labor Party split on the issue of how to deal with the Great Depression. Lyons had advocated a conservative approach and, amid a fierce economic debate, founded the breakaway United Australia Party. His party formed government and had the unenviable task of guiding Australia through an economic minefield of unemployment and poverty. At 3AK, they tried to remain upbeat and positive, and George pondered how a radio broadcast, like a movie, could influence so many. Lyons’s speeches were often relayed by 3AK, so the prime minister agreed to open the new premises, giving a speech that was broadcast on the station.

By 1939, the global economy was improving, but Lyons became somewhat despondent as the international security situation deteriorated. At home, he faced speculation that the up-and-coming Robert Menzies was after his job. In the end, Lyons died in office, with Menzies taking over as prime minister before further political upheaval saw the UAP lose government altogether. Menzies would later found the Liberal Party of Australia.

Yet there was another politician, speaking another language, having a much greater impact than any Australian. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party had polarised the world, bringing Germany into armed conflict with many countries, including Australia. George’s hernia probably wouldn’t have made him the most attractive prospect for the military, but, after leaving 3AK, he found another way to serve his country and countrymen: by setting up a bus service.

George’s bus service was initially based in the Melbourne suburb of Yarraville but ended up breaking down the barriers of interstate travel in Australia. Palmer’s Interstate Express Passenger Service — also known as Palmer’s Overland Service, or Palmer’s Interstate Service — would eventually connect Melbourne and Sydney, and Sydney and Brisbane, in what was then a rapid two-day commute. Unlike trains, the buses could go anywhere, and commuters did not have to change services at the border.

The business thrived in the war years as a means of transporting servicemen and their families. The vast distances that needed to be travelled in Australia were, for George, a commercial blessing, but for the military, a strategic curse, given the threat came from the north and most defence establishments were in the south. Because of his hernia, George, prone to pain and discomfort, would at times struggle with the driving duties or leave others to load the luggage. His condition was getting worse and no matter how much money he spent on remedies and therapies, sourcing them from all over the world, the businessman could not find any relief.

During World War II, on the bus one day George met a teenager by the name of Nancy McCarthy and felt an immediate connection. A Catholic of good Irish stock — not only was her father a McCarthy but her mother was an O’Shannesy — Nancy was one of six sisters raised in Tasmania. She remembers money being tight at home and that she ‘always had to share everything’. The McCarthys lived in Penguin, a little town facing Bass Strait and a choppy sailing route to Melbourne. Nancy grew into a stoic woman with confident and fixed beliefs.

Nancy had come from Tasmania to help the war effort by working in a Melbourne munitions factory, lying about her age so they would give her a job. An uncle had died in France during World War I and was buried at Ypres, alongside many other Australians, and she had a deep desire to support those on the side of good. It was hard work in the factory — she would later tell her son, Clive, that some of her friends died there — but meeting George gave her something to look forward to. She saw in him a go-getter, a high achiever, a man of means and principles. The mood was tense in Australia; American soldiers stationed in Queensland had clashed with their Australian hosts in what became known as the Battle of Brisbane, while marauding Japanese fighter pilots had recently sunk HMAS Armidale, killing 100 Australian and Dutch servicemen. George could not serve in the trenches like his brother Les, who was dispatched to Papua New Guinea to take on the encroaching Japanese forces, but he was still doing his bit for Queen and country, and Nancy respected that.

By now George’s first marriage was irretrievable, so in the summer of 1942 — on the day his divorce from Mabel was finalised — he married nineteen-year-old Nancy in the Baptist Manse at Brunswick. Throughout their marriage, the Palmers would complement each other: George the thinker and the doer in the family, and Nancy his strongest supporter. He had lost confidence after the breakdown of his first marriage, and was feeling older than his thirty-two years, but Nancy would help restore his faith in his abilities. They started a family the year the war ended, their daughter, Jean, among the first of the baby boomers.

When the international conflict came to an end, George began looking offshore for opportunities, establishing a travel company that became known as Atlas World Tours. During the prime ministership of Joseph Lyons, one of his frontbenchers, Billy Hughes, had suggested Australia would need to ‘populate or perish’ and the governments that followed put that immigration plan into action. Thousands of foreigners were making their way by ship to settle permanently in the great southern land, so George found holidaying Australians to fill the ships on their return voyages. Always looking for an adventure, George would often go along for the ride, accompanied by Nancy, Jean and, before long, little Clive.

George’s world travels gave him an opportunity to return to his roots in movies, something he wasn’t able to do during the war years. He met Jane Wyman and other Hollywood stars and was only too happy to send the photos back to the newspapers at home. As he travelled, George dabbled in radio and technology, something that, for