Here is what's really bugging Clive

DOES Clive Palmer need to worry about bugs? According to his former head of security, Mike Hennessy, the answer is yes.

DOES Clive Palmer need to worry about bugs? According to his former head of security, Mike Hennessy, the answer is yes.

But probably not in the exciting way "Professor" Palmer -- leader of the Palmer United Party and self-appointed head of both the (hitherto unknown) World Leadership Alliance and World Economic Council -- quite imagines.

Mr Hennessy insists his former boss has long suspected he has been targeted by covert electronic surveillance operations, but it took a dawn drive by Mr Palmer and his early morning arrival at the dinosaur park and golf resort he owns at Coolum on the Sunshine Coast for Mr Hennessy to appreciate the depth of the resources tycoon's fears that he was a target of modern espionage.

"He'd driven all the way from the Gold Coast up to the resort in his Drophead Rolls-Royce," Mr Hennessy told The Australian.

"Anyway, he turned up and it was all covered in insects because he'd been driving in the early hours of the morning . . . and he pulled up and I was there and I said: 'How are you going Clive?' And he said: 'Yeah good, Mike. Can you organise to get someone down to wash the vehicle?'

"I said: 'Yeah, no worries, there's bugs all over the front of it.'

"And he stood there. And he went white. And I said: 'Are you all right'?

"And he says: 'You really think it's bugged?' And I said: 'What?'

"He says: 'Do you really think the car is bugged'? And I said: 'No. I said there's bugs all over the front of it -- insects all over it.' "

Federal parliament should not have been surprised by the question to Tony Abbott yesterday. After all, Mr Palmer has linked a reputed break-in at the Brisbane offices of his company, Mineralogy, to the Chinese, The Australian newspaper, and this reporter earlier this year.

He has accused the CIA of funding the Greens in Queensland. Helicopter flights near his Townsville nickel refinery were black op Queensland police spying missions.

And during the federal election, he nominated Rupert Murdoch's former wife, Wendi Deng, as a Chinese spy.

Bugs are the least of his worries.