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SYDNEY: Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr Wednesday condemned as “recklessly irresponsible” claims by mining billionaire Clive Palmer that the CIA was funding a plot against the coal industry.
Palmer, Australia's fifth-richest person and a top donor to the conservative Liberal/National opposition, launched a tirade against the left-wing Greens Party Tuesday following the passage of a new tax on mining profits.
The self-made coal tycoon accused the environmentally focused Greens, a key ally in Prime Minister Julia Gillard's minority coalition government, of involvement in an American intelligence agency conspiracy.
“I think they want to promote their commodities at the expense of ours,”Palmer said, pointing to the Rockefeller Family Trust's link with a strategy
paper called “Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom” as proof.
The paper was developed by Greenpeace and US group CoalSwarm, which is partly funded by the Rockefeller Trust.
Palmer highlighted the 1970s Church reports into intelligence agency abuses following the Watergate scandal “which sets up the Rockefeller organisation as a conduit of CIA funding”.
He described Australian activists using the strategy report and the Greens as “a tool of the US government.”The CIA rejected Palmer's suggestions, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation via email: “Simply put, these allegations are false.”Carr slammed the comments and said they could damage Australia's credibility abroad.
“It could create the impression that somehow we're a risky place to do business when you've got such a formidable businessman... talking about a CIA plot to wreck the Australian economy,” the foreign minister told reporters.
“I think it's a recklessly irresponsible comment that is going to have investors and the American government wondering if some part of the Australian political system has lost its collective marbles.”Greens founder Drew Hutton, a strident anti-coal and coal seam gas activist singled out for criticism by Palmer, said he was considering legal action over the remarks in which he said the billionaire had accused him of treason.
“As a proud Australian, I am disgusted by these bizarre and dishonest allegations,” Hutton said.
The issue dominated parliamentary question time, with Attorney-General Nicola Roxon calling on opposition leader Tony Abbott to confront Palmer and dissociate himself from the “extraordinary” and “bizarre” remarks.
“National security is much more than jokes about shoe-phones,” Roxon said, accusing the tycoon of watching too many television spy comedies.
“The leader of the opposition should be calling Mr Palmer and giving him a dressing down for this sort of behaviour and he could use his shoe-phone if he thinks that's better.”Carr added that Palmer's closeness to the opposition and would-be prime minister Abbott was of particular concern, and that “wrecking the economy of an ally” would not be in US interests.
Abbott called Palmer a “larger than life” character and said he was “absolutely right” to say that the Greens wanted to stop the coal industry but “I don't think they need any CIA influence though to give them that position.”
