Clive Palmer has claimed a discussion between top mining executives and Aboriginal elders about native title descended into a food fight that left him with ‘potato salad dripping down’ his nose.
The billionaire mining magnate said that he and ‘four other executives of major Australian companies much bigger’ than his Mineralogy iron ore outfit went to talk to Indigenous communities about mining rights under native title legislation.
Native title, which came into effect in 1994, recognised in law for the first time the right of Aboriginal peoples to own their traditional lands and waters.
Speaking to Sam Newman’s You Cannot Be Serious podcast, Mr Palmer said he and the mining bosses chipped in $10,000 each for a ‘massive buffet’ in the meeting held with the Aboriginal land service in the Pilbara in WA.
The 71-year-old acknowledged that many of the people he was speaking to ‘had a lot of injustice done to them’.
‘They started abusing us and blaming us for everything that had happened in their life, because I suppose we were the first white people that had interacted with them so we copped it,’ Mr Palmer said.
‘They all went to the buffet and started picking the buffet out and throwing cabbages and coleslaw and that on the four of us
‘I remember having potato salad dripping off the end of my nose.’
Billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer (pictured) said that he and ‘four other executives of major Australian companies much bigger’ than his Mineralogy iron ore outfit went to talk to Indigenous communities after native title was introduced in the mid-1990s
Native title, which came into effect in 1994, recognised in law for the first time the right of Aboriginal peoples to own their traditional lands and waters
The political maverick said that his mining colleagues assumed they ‘couldn’t talk to those people’.
But Mr Palmer held a different attitude.
‘I sat down and said, “Look, if you’d been arrested because the colour of your skin, or if you had injustice done to you, you’d be mad”,’ he said.
‘”You’d be angry too. Let’s talk to these people, one on one, and see whether we can build up a relationship with them”.
‘And that’s what we did. We invited them to the pub, two or three blokes at a time, had a beer with them, discussed the whole situation, and we got some cooperation.
‘We went back the next day. We didn’t have the buffet, but we had a very good conversation.’
He added: ‘It’s not whether you’re black or white, it’s whether you’re Australian, whether you want to be respected and treated fairly.’
Negotiating with First Peoples’ groups and signing native title agreements has been a feature of many of Mr Palmer’s business activities over the years.
In 2010, as part of his Waratah Coal $8 billion China First coal mine and rail line venture in Central Queensland, he signed a cultural heritage management plan with the Jangga People.
Clive Palmer said he and mining bosses chipped in $10,000 each for a ‘massive buffet’ meeting held with the Aboriginal land service in the Pilbara in WA (Pictured, a mine in the Pilbara)
Negotiating with First Peoples groups and signing native title agreements has been a feature of many of Mr Palmer’s business activities over the years (pictured: Mr Palmer and Jangga People spokesman Colin McLennan shake hands at the signing of a cultural heritage management plan in 2010)
The Janga people had a claim to about 150km of the rail project that was set to link the mine with a new terminal at Abbot Point, near Bowen.
‘It creates the opportunity of jobs, and with the cultural heritage sites, it’s maintaining that we look after all those main sacred sites,’ Colin McLennan from the Jangga people said of the agreement at the time.
In 2014, the Australian Financial Review alleged his business Mineralogy secured at least three mining leases under a controversial government policy that bypassed negotiations with native title holders.
The policy was later repealed amid concerns voiced by lawyers, indigenous groups and mining lobbying groups.