Clive Palmer a fair way from reality

CLIVE Palmer has conducted a media blitz just days before the federal election saying Rupert Murdoch's wife was a Chinese spy.

IN the week before the Queensland election, Clive Palmer said Greenpeace was funded by the CIA. In the week before the federal election, he said Rupert Murdoch's wife was a Chinese spy.

Mr Palmer conducted a media blitz yesterday morning from the fairways of the golf club at his resort on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, and he made the bizarre claims about Wendi Deng, from whom Mr Murdoch has recently separated, not as a throw-away line but deliberately in several of these interviews on national television and radio.

"You know Rupert Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng is a Chinese spy," Mr Palmer said.

"She's been spying on Rupert for years, giving money back to Chinese intelligence . . . that's why Rupert Murdoch got rid of her.

"That's the truth. She was trained in southern China."

HEDLEY THOMAS: Why we need to worry about the real Clive Palmer

AUDIO: Hedley Thomas talks about Clive Palmer on 2UE's A Sydney Morning with Paul Murray (MP3)

Mr Palmer kept talking as Network Nine host Karl Stefanovic asked him if he had "lost the plot".

He attacked The Australian's Hedley Thomas, who wrote a piece about Mr Palmer in yesterday's paper. Mr Palmer described Thomas as being "like Black Caviar with a broken leg".

The mining magnate also said he would be taking legal action against Mr Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian, as well as The Australian itself.

He said his action against Mr Murdoch was aimed at getting him to return to Australia to face proceedings in court, and that Mr Murdoch was a 'foreigner" who had "sworn an oath of allegiance to a foreign country".

He also, for the first time, responded to questions about an email he sent out to his employees at the Yabulu Nickel Factory in Townsville, in which he said he expected them to hand out literature for the Palmer United Party in the elections tomorrow "considering my long and continuing commitment to you and your families".

He said it was "just a beat-up" and "this is not a national issue". While his name appeared at the bottom of the email, he said he did not write it but he supported it.

When told that some of his workers feared they would be sacked if they did not volunteer, Mr Palmer said "That's their problem".

"You don't have to do it; it's a voluntary thing," he said.

Following his morning media blitz, Mr Palmer spoke to his local paper, the Sunshine Coast Daily, as he is standing for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax.

On the newspaper's Facebook page, 236 locals said they'd received automated campaign phone calls from Mr Palmer, including one woman who said she'd been bombarded with 20 in two days.

He is expected to hold a press conference today.

In China, Mr Palmer's claims about Ms Deng being a Chinese spy were derided and he was mocked by the nation's growing army of social media users.

A story outlining Mr Palmer's bizarre allegations appeared late yesterday on Sina and Netease, China's top two online news sites. Millions of people are expected to have read the story.

On Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, users mocked Mr Palmer.

"Welcome back Comrade Deng," one user, Shangzhi, said.

Another user, Cining, wrote: "What a success by the secret police" in regards to the spying claims while one commentator said "If she is a spy why doesn't China spend the money and put her in the White House, wouldn't that be more worthy?"