UAP labels Chinese-owned mine that pays Clive Palmer $1m a day a security threat

A United Australia Party advertisement making unsubstantiated claims that an airport at a WA mine could aid a Chinese invasion ignores that the mine is party founder Clive Palmer’s main source of income.

The video claims Chinese-owned Sino Iron having its own airport – like nearly all major WA mines that rely on a fly-in fly-out workforce – is “contrary to the security of Australia”.

There is no mention that the mine operates on a tenement owned by Palmer’s Mineralogy Pty Ltd and paid Mineralogy $348 million in royalties in the 12 months to June 2020, according to the latest filing with corporate regulator ASIC.

UAP WA senate candidate James McDonald says in the video that the airport was built “with the help of Labor”.

While Labor did hold government in WA in 2006 when the project was approved it was John Howard’s federal Liberal government that approved the foreign investment.

Regardless of the action of any government, CITIC Pacific which owns Sino Iron would not be operating in the Pilbara if Clive Palmer had not closed a $5 billion deal with the Hong Kong-based and Chinese Government-backed company in 2006.

The two-minute video labelled ‘Don’t let China take Australian land’ was also used for the 2019 federal election and has been viewed 2.1 million times on YouTube in the past two weeks. A shorter version is running on television.

Palmer had a very different stance on Chinese investment in Australia in 2009. The UAP chairman said in 2009 that the Foreign Investment Review Board was “racist” and Australia needed to recognise that capital now resided in China, not the US.

“We don’t want to insult them based on their race or their culture,” Palmer said at the time.

The video is part of the at least $40 million advertising campaign Clive Palmer promised for the last five weeks of the federal election campaign.

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Due to high iron ore prices, during the election campaign Clive Palmer will likely earn money from the Chinese-owned mine faster than he can spend it on the UAP campaign that frequently demonises China.

The video quotes retired RAAF squadron leader Martin Brewster – without mentioning he is a UAP Senate candidate in Queensland – saying “Australia could not repel military aircraft if they landed from carriers offshore”. No reason is given as to why Sino Iron’s airport would better support an invasion than many other similar runways in the Pilbara.

Phil Collins, a former RAN commander, said in the video that the Cape Preston port Sino Iron built was a deep water port with “facilities necessary to support and sustain large scale naval operations in the Indian Ocean”.

However, far from being a facility that can support large vessels, Cape Preston is WA’s only iron ore export port that cannot berth bulk carriers. Instead, smaller vessels shuttle between the port and carriers moored in deeper water further offshore.

Sino Iron and Mineralogy have been fighting numerous lengthy and expensive legal battles for a decade.

Following an April hearing in the WA Supreme Court between the two companies, a UAP media release said “the Chinese Government was unlawfully seeking control of Australian land in the Pilbara region”, without explaining how bringing a dispute before a court was unlawful.

The release also called on Defence Minister Peter Dutton to have the Sino Iron site inspected “in the interests of the nation’s security” as “we received complaints from workers on site that there are secret activities going on”.

The UAP did not respond to questions.