A Closer Look: Clive Palmer’s Lies Exposed by Investigative Reporting

An absolute earthquake in WA this week (March 28th 2019), as 7NEWS Brisbane revealed the magnitude of falsehoods in Clive Palmer’s controversial ad.

If you live in Australia and have ears, you have probably heard this ad, and more than once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQB9uPIBfHY

In short, Clive Palmer’s UAP candidates James McDonald and Palmer’s right-hand man Martin Brewster can be heard claiming there are Chinese-owned airstrips and ports in WA, which can lead to a Chinese invasion of Australia.

But a 7NEWS investigation (https://7news.com.au/politics/federal-politics/mining-company-slams-clive-palmer-partys-attack-ads-warning-of-chinese-security-threat-c-29427) has revealed many holes in Palmer’s story:

The airstrip Palmer is attacking in his ad is used to fly miners in to their work in a Pilbara mine near Cape Preston in WA, and back home. Many of them have spoken to 7NEWS to express their anguish over the ad; “It’s ludicrous and it’s terrible to see people on Facebook, even local people, who actually believe what’s being said!” says Dave Keen, who works at the small Cape Preston port.

But 7NEWS have also uncovered something much bigger and more disturbing; CITIC Pacific, the Chinese publicly listed company Palmer is attacking in his ads, runs the small airstrip and port and a mining project called Sino Iron on land owned by Clive Palmer’s company, and Palmer has made more than a billion dollars in royalty payments from this project!

Many of the Sino Iron mine’s workers have gone on record against Palmer’s for the first time: “It’s just so hard to think that there’s a minority out there that will actually believe Clive Palmer’s claims, unfortunately”, said Natalie Sparkman, who works at Sino Iron and fears Palmer’s scaremongering ads could risk her job, alongside 3000 other workers and miners employed by CITIC in WA.

“It’s laughable,” says Ron Newton, a CITIC worker. “And all our staff know that it’s a joke. The problem is, we’re not sure that the wide community understand that this is a ridiculous proposition”.

The research also exposes other “demonstrably wrong” parts of the ad; while UAP candidates can be heard saying the port of Cape Preston is a deep-water port, the small port is “so shallow, that the iron ore has to be towed out to sea in flat-bottom barges. … and it’s far from Chinese-controlled”.

A port executive expressed his anger over the statements that the Chinese could “take over the port”; “You’ve got federal police, you’ve got border force, you’ve got the immigration, you’ve got everything!” said port director, Ronnie Holthshausen.

Despite the ads, Clive Palmer’s company is happy to take more of CITIC’s money – Palmer is now demanding $750 million to allow CITIC to expand its tailings dam, which is desperately needed to continue operations, on his land.

UAP has denied 7NEWS requests for an official statement or interview.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes.