NEWS.COM.AU EXCLUSIVE:

CLIVE Palmer would say it's great minds thinking alike, but the self-proclaimed billionaire seems to have thought almost word-for-word like John F Kennedy more than 50 years ago.

Today at the National Press Club Mr Palmer - just hours after being sworn in as an MP - pleaded for newspaper publishers to pay their journalists more or risk them becoming revolutionaries.

But it sounded very similar to what President Kennedy said to the American Newspaper Publishers' Association in April 1961.

Take a look for yourself, below.

WHAT CLIVE SAID ...

"In 1851 - a long time ago - the New York Herald Tribune had retained its London correspondent, a little known journalist, named by his mother as Karl Marx.

"Apparently he was without means, his family was sick and hungry, he didn't have any money.

"He repeatedly appealed to his publisher Horace Greeley ... to boost his salary of $5 a story, a stipend his close friend Engels said was the lousiest petty bourgeoise heating that he'd ever seen."

"He sought another means to support his family, to find the recognition that all journalists deserve. So he was forced to give up his job at the New York Herald Tribune so he could spend all his time working on an idea.

"An idea he thought he would leave to the world. An idea which became the foundation if Stalinism, Leninism, revolution, and the Cold War."

"If only this bourgeois publisher and editor had treated him more fairly and listened to his increase for wages.

"If only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, the world might be a different place and the 20th century wouldn't have so much suffering.

"I just want to say today that I hope Rupert Murdoch and all publishers will think more about talented dedicated journalists and their families."

WHAT JFK SAID ...

"You may remember that in 1851 the New York Herald Tribune, under the sponsorship and publishing of Horace Greeley, employed as its London correspondent an obscure journalist by the name of Karl Marx."

"We are told that foreign correspondent Marx, stone broke, and with a family ill and undernourished, constantly appealed to Greeley and Managing Editor Charles Dana for an increase in his munificent salary of $5 per instalment, a salary which he and Engels ungratefully labelled as the 'lousiest petty bourgeois cheating'.

"But when all his financial appeals were refused, Marx looked around for other means of livelihood and fame, eventually terminating his relationship with the Tribune and devoting his talents full time to the cause that would bequeath to the world the seeds of Leninism, Stalinism, revolution and the cold war."

"If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different.

"And I hope all publishers will bear this lesson in mind the next time they receive a poverty-stricken appeal for a small increase in the expense account from an obscure newspaper."

Mr Palmer is a fan of the American president - he is a member of the President's Council of the John F Kennedy Library Foundation.

Here he is with the president's little brother, the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

And Clive wants us to believe he's an original thinker.

Continue the conversation on Twitter: @farrm51 @newscomauHQ

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