From the AFR:
Clive Palmer has declared he will abstain from voting on the carbon tax in the House of Representatives and will wait until the vote is brought to the Senate to decide his party’s position.
…Mr Palmer again denied there would be any conflicts of interest between his position on the repeal of the carbon tax and his involvement with a number of mining companies…
“If you own or are building a house and they are discussing construction or something, do you have a conflict of interest? No of course you haven’t, because parliament is not about making an executive decision. It’s about putting an idea up for debate and hopefully getting it through.
There is a big difference between a pollie owning a home to live in and Palmer’s billion dollar mining empire. The equivalent would be if Palmer were voting to increase negative gearing when he owned several billion dollars worth of investment properties.
His entire party should abstain from votes affecting mining or he should sell his interests.
