Billionaire Clive Palmer Banned from Flight after refusing Full-Body Scan

Editor-in-Chief

BRISBANE — Clive Palmer, ”billionaire having a temper tantrum” as named by the LNP party leadership, refused to undergo a full-body scan at Brisbane airport. Following this, he was banned from flying out.

Interestingly, the incident occurred the same day that Kevin Rudd’s government announced that they may revoke Mr Palmer’s right to operate a lucrative West Australian port.

The eye-witnesses claim that he threw another ‘tantrum’. A witness said, ”He absolutely went right off. He was abusing people.” Unlike many other airports in different countries, Australian travellers do not have the liberty to choose between a full-body scan and a “pat down” check. However, Mr Palmer refused the full-body scan and startled travellers looked on as he argued with the airport’s security officials.

However, Mr Palmer had a different version of events accusing the Brisbane airport staff of setting him up. Speaking to the Sunday Mail, he said, “What happened was I went through security initially to catch my private plane. I’d already gone through security. My staff heard someone say, ‘here he comes, let’s get him’.

They wanted me to have a full-body scan. But my doctor has advised that I shouldn’t have any further doses of radiation.”

The Queensland mining magnate has feared that Mr Palmer and his late first wife, Sue, were exposed to radiation during their visit to Russia. Earlier last year, he spoke to ABC about his wife’s tragic battle with the disease, wherein he said that their visit to Russia close to the Chernobyl incident might have been a trigger or a contributing factor.

He said, “I think that goes back to a time when we were in Russia and we went and saw Gorbachev, and it was just after we were there during the Chernobyl situation, so we were only 1,000 km from Chernobyl, so many people have died in Europe from that experience and I think that might have affected her at the time.”

Image Courtesy: Benjamin Mcdonald, Sven Teschke; Wikimedia Commons.

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Trisha Chowdhury

Editor-in-Chief at The Global Panorama

Trisha is the Founding Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Global Panorama. She is currently a student at the School of Journalism, Media & Cultural Studies at Cardiff University, United Kingdom. While she enjoys every aspect of the news production process, reporting and analysing international politics and current affairs is her forte. Apart from writing over a diverse range of topics, she also heads the Politics section on the website.