the High Court ruled unanimously<\/a> that the law passed by the WA government to prevent Mr Palmer from suing it was valid.<\/p>\nHaving exhausted legal challenge options in Australia, Mr Palmer still had other options under international law.<\/p>\n
The claim was brought before the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which is an intergovernmental organisation, by Singaporean company Zeph Investments, which is owned by Mr Palmer.<\/p>\n
Mr Palmer sought $300 billion from the Commonwealth in damages.<\/p>\n
The case against the Commonwealth argued breaches of the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand free trade agreement.<\/p>\n
![\"Michelle](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/05c056fe572d9f31209a07124fce2371\")
<\/p>\n
Michelle Rowland has welcomed the international tribunal’s decision.\u00a0 (ABC News: Matt Roberts)<\/p>\n
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland said the international tribunal had rejected Mr Palmer’s claim against Australia, finding it had no jurisdiction over the dispute.<\/p>\n
She said he had been ordered to pay Australia’s costs of $13.6 million.<\/p>\n
“Mr Palmer is not a ‘foreign investor’ and is not entitled to any benefits under Australia’s free trade and investment agreements,” Ms Rowland said.<\/p>\n
Decision welcomed by governments<\/p>\n
Ms Rowland welcomed the decision, saying the government had “vigorously defended this claim from the outset”.<\/p>\n
She said she hoped the decision would see Mr Palmer withdraw remaining international claims against Australia, but that the government would continue to defend them.<\/p>\n
Ms Rowland said the government should never have had to spend over $13 million defending the claim.<\/p>\n
“The Albanese government remains committed to actively engaging in processes to remove or reform existing investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms.”<\/p>\n
In a social media post, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook said the case against Western Australia would have “bankrupted” the state if successful.<\/p>\n
“I trust this decision will finally close the book on this long-running saga,” he said.<\/p>\n
Senior WA minister Reece Whitby welcomed the tribunal’s decision, saying he believed the matter should now be closed.<\/p>\n
“A $300 billion claim has now been determined that there is no case,” Mr Whitby said.<\/p>\n
“These are mind-blowing numbers, and I think the tribunal has made a very correct decision that there is no case to proceed further.”<\/p>\n
He said Mr Palmer’s initial action against the WA government seeking compensation for the rejection of the Balmoral South mine development, a claim of close to $30 billion, at the time threatened to bankrupt the state.<\/p>\n
“It points to the fact that we’ll always defend Western Australia, we’ll always stand up for taxpayers of this state and for our economy,” Mr Whitby said.<\/p>\n
A response from Mr Palmer’s office said he would review the judgement.<\/p>\n
It is understood he can still seek to challenge the decision through the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland.<\/p>\n
University of Western Australia International Law expert Alvin Yap said the decision was not surprising given the way modern treaties were structured.<\/p>\n
“In older generations of investment treaties, there was a concern that an investor could set up a shell company in the foreign jurisdiction and thereby qualify as a foreign investor on those treaties, and thereby enjoy the protection that is supposed to be granted to foreign investors,” Mr Yap said.<\/p>\n
“Now, newer generation of investment treaties such as this one, they are very aware of this problem, so they have inserted language to clarify that where a company has no substantial business in the jurisdiction, [that is] it’s just a shell company, it cannot enjoy the protections that should be granted only to foreign investors.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mining billionaire Clive Palmer has been ordered to pay more than $13 million after an international tribunal dismissed…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":258332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4740,135753,2142,55794,16665,97520,135754,115806,16530,50,115807],"class_list":{"0":"post-258331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-clive-palmer","10":"tag-federal-government","11":"tag-federal-politics","12":"tag-high-court","13":"tag-international-law","14":"tag-international-tribunal","15":"tag-iron-ore","16":"tag-mining","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-pilbara"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115275438861243237","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}