❓ Question regarding the legal costs incurred by WA taxpayers due to legal action between the Premier and Clive Palmer. The Premier deflects, highlighting Palmer's initial claim against the state and framing the issue as a defense of WA's interests.
AnsweredQoN 490Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
CLIVE PALMER — LEGAL ACTION
490. Ms M.J. DAVIES to the Premier:
Noting
that the Federal Court has just handed down a judgement determination in
relation to the costs for the court case between the Premier and Mr
Palmer, I refer to this case for which Western Australian taxpayers will foot
the bill.
(1) Will the Premier reveal the full cost to Western Australian
taxpayers for the Premier and the Attorney General's legal fees?
(2) Will the Premier reveal the
full cost of his cross-claim?
(3) As we cannot
ask the Attorney General directly, will the Premier reveal the full cost of his
second visit to the witness box due to his manifest errors the first time
around?
490. Ms M.J. DAVIES to the Premier:
Noting
that the Federal Court has just handed down a judgement determination in
relation to the costs for the court case between the Premier and Mr
Palmer, I refer to this case for which Western Australian taxpayers will foot
the bill.
(1) Will the Premier reveal the full cost to Western Australian
taxpayers for the Premier and the Attorney General's legal fees?
(2) Will the Premier reveal the
full cost of his cross-claim?
(3) As we cannot
ask the Attorney General directly, will the Premier reveal the full cost of his
second visit to the witness box due to his manifest errors the first time
around?
AnswerView source ↗
(1)–(3) I
have not seen the exact details of what the Federal Court has found in
Victoria, I think, so I will get some immediate advice on that. I may well make
a statement to the house later on this afternoon about these matters, but I want
to make a few things clear. I do not have the exact details of the cost or what
the implication of the ruling is in terms of what costs Mr Palmer would have to
bear versus what costs the state of Western Australia would have to bear. I do
not have that information available.
In relation to the reason behind
this, I just want to make it perfectly clear that this is because Mr Palmer
decided to bring a defamation action against me. That is what occurred. People
try to spread the blame on this. Mr Palmer decided to take a defamation action
against me; I did not bring a defamation action against him. There are specific
reasons why he did that. I hope to be able to elaborate further today about those matters. But I make the point more broadly
that it was in the context of a $30 000 000 000 claim he had against the
people of Western Australia—$12 000 for every man, woman and child—that
the Attorney General and I were in the process of attempting to defeat. Then he
brought legal action against me, so you work it out. That is the context.
As
I said to the media the other day, it is one of the proudest moments I think of
my career that we were able to defeat that claim for $30 000 000 000 against
the state of Western Australia in the way that we did. I think it was actually
one of the proudest moments of this Parliament that we were able to do that. It
was a real risk to the state. The state's fate was in the hands of a single
arbitrator, a retired High Court of Australia judge, aged 85 years, who could
have made a ruling and then the state could, in effect, have lost $30 billion.
I was not prepared to take that risk. I just was not. Others might have thought
that was a risk worth taking, but I did not believe it was. Members have to remember that Mr Palmer also had an
action against us to bring down the border. We worked out the real reason that
was the case. It was because he made an offer to the state that he would drop
that legal action if we moved the arbitration to Canberra, where the arbitrator
was. Again, think about that. Think about the fact that you are pursuing this
line of questioning in light of those two facts.
Then Mr Palmer sued me for defamation
and now he has another action against me for $50 million for some sort of conspiracy claim he has. That is,
again, in my view, spurious because the Attorney General and I worked
together, as members would expect, to try to defend the state. So now he has a $50
million claim against me, the Attorney General, the Solicitor-General and
others. That is what this gentleman does. The opposition has to make a choice:
whose side are you on? Are you on our side or are you on Clive Palmer's
side? That is the choice.
Several members interjected.
The SPEAKER : Order, please, members!
Mr
M. McGOWAN : Undoubtedly, there
are costs involved in this matter, otherwise Mr Palmer would successfully bankrupt me—that is what he would do—and I would not be able to
be Premier of Western Australia. No-one could be because any time someone
occupied this role, someone like Mr Palmer could sue them and bankrupt them out
of it if he did not like a decision they made. That is exactly what happened.
It is a longstanding convention of parliamentary democracies—of the
Parliaments of Australia—that people in executive office like myself
and ministers receive support from the state to defend these sorts of claims.
Otherwise people like Mr Palmer, or any other
billionaire out there, if he or she did not like a decision a Premier made,
could bring an action against them and bankrupt them, and that is not
right.
Turning to the court itself, Mr
Justice Lee obviously did a tremendous amount of analysis, and I totally accept
the judgement that he made. He is a very
analytical and very professional judge. He found that Mr Palmer's
defamation against me was fourfold, in effect, compared with any
defamation that I committed against him. I just make the point that he found there was a minor defamation
on my behalf. I make the point to you all that every day on Twitter ,
Facebook and in the press, minor defamations are committed but we do not all
bring legal actions. I would expect that I have minor defamations committed
against me and the Leader of the Opposition would have them committed against
her every single day. If every one of us brought a writ every time that
occurred, we would need a lot more judges.
The world should not work that way whereby people of means with billions and
billions of dollars that were , I might add, provided to him by the state
of Western Australia, via a Chinese company, can then, every time there is a minor
defamation, seek to sue someone into bankruptcy. The world should not work that
way.
I hope to be able to make further
statements on this matter today. I just repeat to members of the opposition, although I know they will not listen because that
is not in their nature: whose side are you on—the taxpayers and the government of Western Australia or Clive Palmer?
Several members interjected.
The SPEAKER : Order, please,
members! This supplementary will be the final question for question time.
have not seen the exact details of what the Federal Court has found in
Victoria, I think, so I will get some immediate advice on that. I may well make
a statement to the house later on this afternoon about these matters, but I want
to make a few things clear. I do not have the exact details of the cost or what
the implication of the ruling is in terms of what costs Mr Palmer would have to
bear versus what costs the state of Western Australia would have to bear. I do
not have that information available.
In relation to the reason behind
this, I just want to make it perfectly clear that this is because Mr Palmer
decided to bring a defamation action against me. That is what occurred. People
try to spread the blame on this. Mr Palmer decided to take a defamation action
against me; I did not bring a defamation action against him. There are specific
reasons why he did that. I hope to be able to elaborate further today about those matters. But I make the point more broadly
that it was in the context of a $30 000 000 000 claim he had against the
people of Western Australia—$12 000 for every man, woman and child—that
the Attorney General and I were in the process of attempting to defeat. Then he
brought legal action against me, so you work it out. That is the context.
As
I said to the media the other day, it is one of the proudest moments I think of
my career that we were able to defeat that claim for $30 000 000 000 against
the state of Western Australia in the way that we did. I think it was actually
one of the proudest moments of this Parliament that we were able to do that. It
was a real risk to the state. The state's fate was in the hands of a single
arbitrator, a retired High Court of Australia judge, aged 85 years, who could
have made a ruling and then the state could, in effect, have lost $30 billion.
I was not prepared to take that risk. I just was not. Others might have thought
that was a risk worth taking, but I did not believe it was. Members have to remember that Mr Palmer also had an
action against us to bring down the border. We worked out the real reason that
was the case. It was because he made an offer to the state that he would drop
that legal action if we moved the arbitration to Canberra, where the arbitrator
was. Again, think about that. Think about the fact that you are pursuing this
line of questioning in light of those two facts.
Then Mr Palmer sued me for defamation
and now he has another action against me for $50 million for some sort of conspiracy claim he has. That is,
again, in my view, spurious because the Attorney General and I worked
together, as members would expect, to try to defend the state. So now he has a $50
million claim against me, the Attorney General, the Solicitor-General and
others. That is what this gentleman does. The opposition has to make a choice:
whose side are you on? Are you on our side or are you on Clive Palmer's
side? That is the choice.
Several members interjected.
The SPEAKER : Order, please, members!
Mr
M. McGOWAN : Undoubtedly, there
are costs involved in this matter, otherwise Mr Palmer would successfully bankrupt me—that is what he would do—and I would not be able to
be Premier of Western Australia. No-one could be because any time someone
occupied this role, someone like Mr Palmer could sue them and bankrupt them out
of it if he did not like a decision they made. That is exactly what happened.
It is a longstanding convention of parliamentary democracies—of the
Parliaments of Australia—that people in executive office like myself
and ministers receive support from the state to defend these sorts of claims.
Otherwise people like Mr Palmer, or any other
billionaire out there, if he or she did not like a decision a Premier made,
could bring an action against them and bankrupt them, and that is not
right.
Turning to the court itself, Mr
Justice Lee obviously did a tremendous amount of analysis, and I totally accept
the judgement that he made. He is a very
analytical and very professional judge. He found that Mr Palmer's
defamation against me was fourfold, in effect, compared with any
defamation that I committed against him. I just make the point that he found there was a minor defamation
on my behalf. I make the point to you all that every day on Twitter ,
Facebook and in the press, minor defamations are committed but we do not all
bring legal actions. I would expect that I have minor defamations committed
against me and the Leader of the Opposition would have them committed against
her every single day. If every one of us brought a writ every time that
occurred, we would need a lot more judges.
The world should not work that way whereby people of means with billions and
billions of dollars that were , I might add, provided to him by the state
of Western Australia, via a Chinese company, can then, every time there is a minor
defamation, seek to sue someone into bankruptcy. The world should not work that
way.
I hope to be able to make further
statements on this matter today. I just repeat to members of the opposition, although I know they will not listen because that
is not in their nature: whose side are you on—the taxpayers and the government of Western Australia or Clive Palmer?
Several members interjected.
The SPEAKER : Order, please,
members! This supplementary will be the final question for question time.
Explore WA Government Data
Search the full archive in the free dashboard, or query programmatically via API.
Explore more
Government Gazette
Appointments, regulatory notices, planning changes.
Hansard
Debates, questions, speeches and sentiment.
Tabled Papers
Reports and documents tabled in Parliament.
Committees
Committee profiles and recent reports.
Regulations
Subsidiary legislation with filters and summaries.
Bills
Proposed laws and parliamentary progress.
Acts
Current WA legislation and summaries.
Explanatory Memoranda
Bills with EMs (text/PDF) available.
Members
MP profiles, party breakdown and rankings.
Pollie Rankings
Data-driven rankings across 19 categories.
Amendment Chains
Track how schemes and regulations evolve over time.