The billionaire politician talks to Guardian Australia about the carbon tax, conflicts of interest – and why he doesn't need advisers

Clive Palmer’s beachside golf resort is dark and deserted, most of the villas unlit and the recreation rooms shuttered. Along the avenue of robotic dinosaurs there are some signs of human life, curious families peering into the gloom as the creatures move, roar and squawk. In between the dinosaurs, and almost everywhere else, are political billboards bearing the beaming face of the billionaire mine owner and politician.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The full interview with Guardian Australia's political editor, Lenore Taylor.

The Palmer Coolum resort usually charges a steep $60 to enter the Palmersaurus dinosaur display and the “Palmer Motorama” hanger full of vintage cars. This weekend, in a typical blurring of politics and business, the doors have been thrown open free to the 100,000 voters in the Queensland electorate of Fairfax who last year narrowly elected the leader of the, of course eponymous, Palmer United party (PUP).

“It’s not about big noting yourself,” he tell journalists the next day. “It’s about representing the people.”

Suddenly we are almost bowled over by the man himself at the wheel of a golf buggy, heading for the nearby driving range where a few hundred locals on picnic rugs and folding chairs are waiting for a free concert by an Elvis impersonator.

“Wherever you are Clive, thank you so much for bringing everybody together. You don’t see that from MPs or anybody in politics these days, so thank you so much,” the Elvis, aka Dean Vegas, is saying, peering out to lines of plastic chairs set up so far away from the stage it strongly suggests a much bigger crowd was anticipated.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fast cars, food and a dinosaur laying an egg.

The encounter with the golf buggy was due to the unlit path, but Clive does have a reputation for running straight at anything he finds in his way. He has launched scores of lawsuits (including at the resort’s timeshare owners – one reason for its emptiness), defamation actions (including against Queensland’s premier, Campbell Newman, and the deputy premier, Jeff Seeney, over comments regarding their bitter falling-out about their treatment of his business interests), and vicious public denunciations of his detractors and, as I discover the next day, jabs at journalists who ask detailed questions.



And Palmer himself is often accused of being something of an imposter, claiming grand feats that aren’t quite what they seem or don’t quite eventuate.



He is famously planning to build an exact replica of the Titanic, but work is yet to start; he has a coal tenement in Queensland’s Galilee basin, but as yet no approval for the necessary export infrastructure. He was named a “national living treasure” by the National Trust (reports suggest his staff may have been urged to vote in the ballot, run by a popular magazine) and he is the joint secretary general of the World Leadership Alliance, an association of former heads of state, but the position may well have something to do with more than $1m he donated to the group’s parent organisation.

But his fortune is a real $1.2bn according to the latest Business Review Weekly rich list. It was earned first through real estate and then mining royalties, particularly from Citic Pacific, the Chinese state-owned company that is mining Palmer’s Pilbara iron ore holdings with which he is locked in another long-running and bitter legal dispute over what he is owed and allegations he improperly spent money on his political campaigns.



And the man who says he wants to be prime minister, has just begun to flex his very real political power, courtesy of the three balance-of-power seats his party won at last year’s election.



He appears delighted with the PR coup of his joint media conference with former US vice-president and climate change crusader Al Gore, pointing out Gore had met neither the prime minister nor the opposition leader.



But the details of Palmer’s actual announcement remain vague: he will vote down the carbon tax but will propose, at some point, a new Australian emissions trading scheme (ETS) which, at least initially, won’t raise any money.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Palmer was unaware the Coalition's Direct Action bill was before the Senate

You are very naïve when it comes to politics, my girl

Figuring out how Palmer envisages this could ever eventuate is one aim as we sit down the next morning for an interview in the resort’s “Titanic II room”, adjacent to the resort’s foyer, pool room and empty breakfast bar. The walls of these rooms display more than 20 pictures of Palmer and his family with various world figures, and 22 framed Palmer-related cartoons and media articles, including two of the same front page of the Australian Spectator in 2012 which argued the Liberal party should make Palmer its leader.

“You can’t say that,” he says with impatient exasperation, when I suggest theCoalition, with its commanding majority in the lower house and its pretty well-known opposition to carbon pricing, is highly unlikely to ever back an ETS put forward by PUP even if the price is set at zero until certain that Australia’s trading partners have acted.



“I don’t think they are saying that. You might have one or two ministers saying that, but there are all sorts of people. I mean Malcolm Turnbull crossed the floor on an ETS in 2010, didn’t he?” (When I ask Palmer’s Western Australia senator-elect Dio Wang the same question later, he gives almost word for word this same answer.)



OK, I persist, but what if they do vote it down.



“It goes back to the Senate, it’ll be referred to a committee, there’ll be a proper inquiry into it, they’ll come up with another recommendation, if the recommendation is to pass it it will go back to the house again,” he says.



And if it is defeated again? This appears to be one too many questions for Palmer.



"You are very naïve when it comes to politics, my girl,” he snaps, an accusation not often levelled at someone who has spent most of the past 25 years reporting on politics.



“I mean it takes years for these sorts of things to happen. People change their positions. That’s why prime ministers come and they go. Governments come and they go. That’s why we have elections. Nothing in politics is written in stone, you should have learnt that last week … ideas are what matters,” he says, predicting “an overwhelming public opinion for the propositions I put up” and then immediately insisting it won’t in fact take years, but rather that there will be “an ETS of the type we want” by next June (which is when the legislation he is about to vote down would have delivered a floating-price ETS anyway).



Reading between the lines, Palmer could be banking on the climate debate in Australia being reset if the tax is, finally, “axed”, and – as domestic and international criticism of Australia’s complete lack of climate policy builds and the pro-ETS and highly popular Turnbull remains in the background – Tony Abbott is forced to a new position over time.



Proposing legislation to be debated and reviewed and voted upon would keep the issue live. This would appear to be what he promised Gore, having failed to get the idea of an immediate fixed- or low-price ETS past his party. It may well be what he discussed last week when he met Abbott.



But he could also be taking hopeful environmentalists for a ride. He does, after all, own a high-emitting nickel refinery and a big coal deposit. And back in his conservative electorate he was again sounding unsure about the whole idea of anthropogenic global warming and presenting his newfound support for the $10bn green bank, Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Renewable Energy Target (RET) – changes Gore said were “so significant” – as economic decisions that make sense even if you don’t believe in climate change.

And when I ask Wang if he believes in human-caused global warming he answers: “I have my doubts”, although he adds that he agrees it is best to be cautious.

We move to another still-unexplained element of Palmer’s climate announcement – the one requirement he did place on his senators’ vote for carbon tax repeal – an amendment requiring the price reductions be passed on to consumers.



The government insists this has already been taken care of, with new price monitoring and other powers given to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to ensure price cuts are passed on. But Palmer says he is requiring more.



“Our amendment makes it a requirement people will have to pass on the power cost savings, so it is not a voluntary situation … leaving it up to the ACCC to decide at its discretion whether it wants to enforce this,” he says.



“I’m in business, business wants to make money, if I was in business and this change came along I wouldn’t pass it on, I’d just keep the money. And I’d just play around with the regulator. But I’m not in business I’m serving the Australian people so knowing that I am going to make sure this legislation goes through to protect our pensioners and everyone like that.”



The answer is revealing, even though he is, of course, still the beneficial owner of his businesses, despite recently resigning several directorships.



And then he confirms the amendment, however it is finally drafted, will apply also to industrial contracts: long-term power supply agreements between generators and, for example, an aluminium smelter, or even a nickel refinery.



“It will apply to every Australian company, body under our jurisdiction … you don’t have to worry, it will apply to everyone,” he assures me, even industrial contracts which, if it turns out to be possible, is not going to be good news for business.



When we get to a discussion about the government’s Direct Action plan, which Palmer also intends to vote down, he appears unaware the legislation is already before the Senate.

The complexities of these debates raise obvious questions about where and how the new PUP is going to get its advice and information.



Has the government offered you briefings, I inquire. Palmer isn’t at all keen on that idea.



The government “always offers us briefings on everything” he says dismissively, but adds “when I was working in Canberra years ago when you were given briefings they were given from a very biased position so we’d get people to tick them off and vote with us … briefings are not a big deal, ministers give briefings to press all the time and they actually believe them,” he says, incredulously.



So where does he get advice?



“I personally have plenty of advice and our senators have plenty of advice … we have our independent staff that are not paid for by the government … that I pay for … we seem to have had enough advice for Al Gore to come down here and meet with us and not want to meet with Mr Shorten or Mr Abbott,” he says, as if that clinches it.



So how many advisers does he pay for? The answers get hazy. “I don’t know … I can’t think about that, it’s only a minor amount of money, it doesn’t worry me.” And then suddenly, there aren’t advisers at all, just Clive’s own brain, which is “effective” and will suffice.



“First of all we don’t have advisers, we have employees that follow our direction and our party policy, we don’t need to be advised on what to think or what’s the difference between right and wrong … I just have my brain which is very effective and I’m quite happy with my own advice.”

Throughout the interview, Palmer makes these switches from jokingly genial, to belligerent, to deliberately vague, apparently choosing which demeanour might best enable avoidance of the question.



But moments later, addressing a few hundred people at his Fairfax festival political forum (the resort is, during the day, crowded with locals), he switches once again, to absolutely, clinically lucid.



He delivers a pitch-perfect appeal to the anti-politician sentiment, a potentially lethal tactic as poll after poll shows Australians are becoming increasingly disillusioned with mainstream politics.



Getting into parliament is a shock, he confides to the crowd, where the over-60 demographic is heavily represented. “It’s even slower than the public service” (much laughter) “and it’s all stage managed”. There’s no hint of irony. And the fact that Labor, the Liberals and Greens all found something to like in his climate change announcement, he says, “just shows how hopeless they all are” (more hilarity).



Astonishingly, this billionaire, with his luxury houses, private planes and helicopter, cars and mining leases, is talking to an audience where several people have brought hot drinks in a vacuum flask and a packed lunch, and is coming across as “one of them”, maybe not in assets, but certainly in outlook.



The speech underlines the dilemma posed by Palmer, especially to the Coalition and the Queensland Liberal National party, of which he was a member for 40 years and, for a time, the largest single private donor before the spectacular falling-out.



Do they attack him – as the retiring veteran Queensland National party senator Ron Boswell urges – call him out as a cult of personality fuelled by gimmicks to try to stop him extending his influence. Or, given the significant upper house power he has already acquired, do they try working with him for a time, which appears to be the prime minister’s tactic.



The crowd files out of the PUP forum to enjoy the free Palmer resort attractions or perhaps eat at the Palmer-owned restaurants. The resort, the party and even the coal mines are all co-branded, with a trademark background colour of garish bright yellow.





It raises the obvious question about the appropriate boundaries between business and politics, and the potential for conflict of interest when a billionaire businessman owns his own party, sits in the parliament, controls the fate of much legislation and is preparing to vote down key measures in the Coalition’s first budget.



In Palmer’s world the boundaries are hard to find. His political candidates – such as Wang – can be his employees, and Wang will now employ on his senatorial staff the two people who ran with him on the WA Senate ticket: Chamonix Terblanche and Des Headland. Palmer’s own chief of staff is Phil Collins, who until recently ran his nickel refinery.



According to Palmer, it seems, conflict of interest does not really exist. “I don’t think there is a conflict of interest for an elected person in parliament, that’s my personal view.”



He abstained from the original carbon tax repeal vote in the lower house (at a time when his nickel refinery had an outstanding carbon tax bill of more than $8m. It was subsequently paid). But he now says that was only because “the press gallery wanted me to”.



The idea that his business interests could present a conflict of interest in the future is not valid, he claims, because we all pay income tax and yet politicians vote on income tax bills, and many politicians have relatives receiving social security and they still vote on that subject.



And his answer at the media conference the next day when asked whether the “festival” is really a vote-buying exercise is equally opaque.



It had nothing to do with popularity, he insisted, it was just about “serving the people” and he didn’t care if he didn’t get re-elected because he’d just have to travel the world in his private jet and wouldn’t that be “a very terrible future to look forward to” and he didn’t know how much the festival cost anyway because “I don’t worry about my financial affairs”.



And asked whether the turnout had been disappointing for the concert on the driving range the previous evening he replied that everyone went shopping on a Friday and in any event attendance had been pretty good because there had been 5,000 people there, a figure that was then reported.



It's Clive's version of reality.

