The high court has begun hearing Clive Palmer’s case against the Western Australian law purporting to extinguish his rights to claim damages in a long-running commercial dispute.

Palmer is self-represented in one of the proceedings, and entered his appearance in Canberra this afternoon, although it was counsel for his company Mineralogy, David Jackson, who began the substantive argument.

Jackson took the court through the history of the 2002 agreement between Mineralogy and Western Australia relating to project proposals to mine iron ore, the three wins Mineralogy had in arbitration and the right to compensation it had sought to enforce in November 2020 before Western Australia passed the extraordinary law.

Jackson submitted that the Iron Ore Processing (Mineralogy Pty. Ltd.) Agreement Act employed “fake” titles and descriptions when it referred to disagreements about Mineralogy’s project proposals as “disputed matters”.

Jackson said this was “not an accurate depiction” because some disputed matters had “already been decided against the state”. He suggested the legislation used “untrue or bland terms” to make extinguishment of rights to compensation “more palatable”.

Justice Stephen Gageler was skeptical – he questioned if the matters “are, were, or might be in dispute”, then what was wrong with describing them as disputed matters? Jackson replied that MPs might have been misled by how the act presented the issue.

The matter is expected to last for four days – with Palmer himself not due to give submissions until Wednesday afternoon at the earliest.

In case it wasn’t clear earlier – the Victorian government has confirmed that everyone who lives in, or has visited, the Melbourne townhouse complex between 2 and 14 June is considered a primary close contact and is required to isolate for 14 days.

The Kings Park Apartment Complex, on the corner of Dodd and Wells streets in Southbank, has now been publicly listed as an exposure site.

Previously, contact tracers had only identified 61 people in the housing complex as primary close contacts and the rest were just marked as tier two, meaning they just have to isolate until they receive a negative test result.

But after two tests came back positive, everyone is locked down.