Clive Palmer's tardy efforts to find a replacement insolvency expert to testify at the Queensland Nickel trial has earned another rebuke from the judge.
The billionaire businessman's first pick pulled out days before the Brisbane Supreme Court trial began, prompting him to seek a long-term adjournment on his first day in court.
Justice Debra Mullins ordered the nine-week trial continue to hear liquidators' claims against Mr Palmer for about $200 million they say was owed to creditors when the refinery shut down in early 2016.
The mining magnate was told to find a replacement quickly but the process has not gone as smoothly as Justice Mullins would have liked.
Late on Tuesday, a lawyer for Mr Palmer's companies, Dr Chris Ward, told the court the replacement expert would no longer be available to discuss the trial as planned.
"We've spoken to Mr Hughes again and it turns out he's actually in Brazil on Friday and can't see us," he said.
Earlier, an exasperated Justice Mullins questioned the Palmer camp why a new expert hadn't already been retained.
"It's so important, your expert, I would have hoped he would be working ... from last Friday," she said.
Justice Mullins was also unimpressed with an application from Mr Palmer to postpone other witnesses to accommodate the delay in retaining Mr Hughes.
"That may be part of the price to be paid for not having looked for an expert at an earlier point in time," she said as she rebuffed the request.
The court has previously heard that as QN hurtled towards collapse, the company was $25 million in the red and losing $5 million more each month as creditors circled.
Despite this, in the days before administrators were called, QN allegedly signed deals worth $235 million with Mr Palmer's Galilee Basin mining assets, China First and Waratah Coal.
The agreements were allegedly of no commercial benefit to QN and worthless but paid Mr Palmer ahead of workers if the refinery went into administration.
Justice Mullins says her task is to assess if a reasonable person would have signed the deal QN did with the mining companies.
US mining valuations expert Richard Marston, who was the co-author of a report scrutinising the two companies, doubled down on the $1 price tag he placed on the assets.
"I don't think investors would have been interested in this project as of January 2016," he said from the witness box.
"The prices of coal was too low and the market too depressed ... that period of time was among the worst in the coal industry."
Mr Marston said Mr Palmer's proposal to develop the mining assets into mines was a mega-project located too far from a port to make it financially viable at the time.
Australian Associated Press
