The gargantuan greed of Gina Rinehart
She is at it again. It’s election time so out rolls Gina Rinehart to give her opinion/edict about what must be done.
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart says Australian politicians don’t “have the guts” to tackle government spending.
Ms Rinehart said the cost of government was growing rapidly and this issue has been overlooked in the election campaign.
“There is one giant cost slab that isn’t decreasing: government,” Ms Rinehart told the Saturday Telegraph.
If we are looking to save money, the first place I would cut government spending is in the billions they hand out in corporate welfare to Gina and her mining mates.
In 2013, the PBO determined that $13 billion could be saved over the forward estimates by abolishing the concessions given to miners.
In 2014, The Australia Institute calculated that, over a six-year period, state governments in Australia spent $17.6 billion supporting the mineral and fossil fuel industries. Queensland’s assistance was by far the largest of all states, totalling $9.5 billion, followed by Western Australia’s at $6.2 billion.
This assistance takes many forms. Sometimes it is a direct cash payment. For example, the New South Wales government gave multinational coal companies $10 million in 2009 as an ‘assistance package’. Other times it comes in the form of discounted access to services provided by the state and its businesses – Queensland has provided the coal industry with ‘concessions’ on access to rail services worth over $1 billion between 2012-13 and 2013-14.
Often assistance comes in the form of infrastructure or projects that wholly or partly benefit the minerals and fossil fuel industries.
At the federal level, The Australia Institute publishes an annual study on subsidies of the mining industry, which totalled $4.5 billion in 2013, up from $4.0 billion in 2012.
Gina also took aim at the level of government red tape she claims obstructs industry developments.
“India has the guts to do what it’s doing to cut at least federal red tape, with the consequent immense benefits to its people, driving investment, jobs, economic growth and living standards – why can’t Australia?” she said.
Mining has the distinction of being the most dangerous profession in India. Every ten days last year there was a mining fatality. And every third day last year, on an average, there was a serious accident in the coal mining sector.
India produces 89 minerals by operating 569 coal mines, 67 oil and gas mines, 1,770 non-coal mines, and several more small mines, all of which translate into direct employment of about 1 million on a daily average basis and an overall sector contribution of about 5 per cent to the country’s gross domestic product.
However, the fact that disasters strike at regular intervals in coal mines and some of the metalliferous mines – iron ore, soapstone and granite mines – is a pointer to the Indian mining industry’s abysmal safety record and the failure of its utilities to learn from the ‘standard operating procedures’ (SoPs) implemented in countries such as Australia, the US and even China.
Plus, the frequency of incidents has increased in recent years, as flagged by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in its 2014 report titled ‘Views on Mine Safety in India’.
But for Gina it’s all about her. She says her $10 billion iron ore project at Roy Hill has been slowed down by the around 400 government approvals needed.
Gina doesn’t care about Australia. To secure the loan for her Roy Hill mine from an American bank, she contracted to use US steel and mining machinery, a decision which the bank said would create thousands of jobs – in the US.
Imagine if those contracts had gone to Arrium in Whyalla and to Caterpillar in Tasmania. Imagine if Gina had chosen to employ Australians instead of importing 1700 457 visa workers to exploit. Imagine if Michaelia Cash had actually done something about the union’s revelations.
Gina likes to tell us she is making a huge personal contribution to Australia but the reality is that Gina looks after Gina and nobody else, with the possible exception of her dear friend Barnaby Joyce.
Gina wanted the carbon and mining taxes gone. Done. Gina’s ANDEV group, in conjunction with the IPA, wanted dams. Barnaby’s on it. They wanted a development fund for Northern Australia. Done. They wanted a special economic zone so they can pay even less tax. A work in progress.
Gina bought dairy farms and cattle stations. Some months later the Chinese Free Trade Agreement is signed with significant concessions for the dairy and beef industries.
This woman uses her vast wealth to buy political and media influence. She can afford to fund misleading advertising campaigns. She has no concern for the thousands of mining jobs that are being lost.
If the government is to cut spending, let’s start with the corporate welfare queen.
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Charlie
Return to home pageGina Rinehart is such a repulsive person. Deceitful about her children’s trust fund, and devious and controlling. In fact I dont think there would be one positive adjective I could find to describe her.
Gina is another narcissist, with money and power.
I’m glad that someone else is finally publicly stating that she is Australia’s biggest welfare bludger. Because she is, and that’s a fact. Just vomit-inducing in all respects.
If the government is to cut spending, let’s start with the corporate welfare queen.
I agree to that.
Jaquix ‘dead’ is an adjective.
Gina singled out the growth in “green bureaucracy” and the minimum wage as some of the biggest issues facing those who wanted to develop Australia.
“So let’s drop the class warfare and recognise that high-tax socialist policies don’t create jobs – business and investment do, and we need a lot more businesses, investment and reinvestment to continue to do that creating,” she wrote.
Ms Rinehart said Australia’s minimum wage compared poorly to that in the United States, making parts of the local economy uncompetitive.
“Why not ask whether lowering the minimum wages and lowering taxes would make employers hire more people?” she wrote.
“There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain; do something to make money yourself – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising and more time working,” she wrote.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/14705142/rinehart-slammed-over-minimum-wage-cut-call/
And who will you sell your stuff to Gina when you finally own all the money in the world? Isn’t $2 million an hour enough for you?
One thing that continually astonishes me about Gina is her belief that everyone is jealous of her. She will never ever know the love, happiness and contentment I feel every day. She is a lonely, paranoid woman who never felt she was good enough to please her father. She thinks money is all that matters. I feel sorry for her but not enough to continue sacrificing my country to feed her greed.
i agree lets cut the miners subsidities thats billions of dollars that can be saved alone give her nothing
Why exactly is it we can afford to spend billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to the mining industry, yet we couldn’t afford several hundred million for a car manufacturing industry that employs 5 times more people than mining?
Would it perhaps be because the manufacturing sector is (or was) largely unionised, whereas mining is not?
Why would we spend $50 billion on submarines which will employ a couple of thousand people during construction when we couldn’t subsidise the car industry like every other car manufacturing nation does? We are spending $5-6 billion on the weapons for the subs alone. These will only ever be used in the continual war games we have to justify the ridiculous expense. An Australian sub hasn’t fired a shot in anger since 1915 and even then, they missed and got scuttled.
Anomander, perhaps more to do with Free Trade Agreements, but also ideology, imho.
Australian politicians don’t have the guts to tackle Gina’s zero payment of income tax either.
I once watched a video of Gina Rinehart where she stated that in Africa, miners work for $2 per day. But Australians don’t want to work, the implication being because they’re not prepared to work for $2 per day. If the nasty bitch thinks so little of us, why doesn’t she piss off elsewhere?
She has. Singapore is now her abode. Something to do with ‘slings’ and the like. ? ?
Ngiam Tong Boon is her favourite historical figure.
Mrs. Creosote!
Anyone got a wafer-thin mint?
Gina should simply STFU and piss off back to Singapore. If she wants to meddle in government she should meddle in theirs. She’s a disgraceful individual and just as much a F*CKING Fascist as her deceitful, lying father. A family of arseholes!
Gina is a perfect example of the old saying ‘beauty is only skin deep’. In her case, the beauty you see is all that you get.
I know she lives in Singapore as a tax dodge. I wish she would remove her business interests too. Just piss off totally. It’s quite obvious she despises us.
Gina inly serves Gina and the rest of us shiuld bow diwn and kiss her feet as she has saved this country!
Hiw can anyone take this woman seriously?
She doesn’t live Australia!
She doesn’t even love her children!
Gina’s father suggested we should “herd the worst of the Aborigines into one area and put a chemical into their water to sterilise them”
Her preferred version seems to be to starve the poor and find some black people who would be grateful to work for the privilege of remaining alive.
Gee I love irony. Nasty white people think they’re civilised.
I always look for the practical angle and see how we can use something to our advantage. Now anyone with half a brain would realise that if Gina wants something to be done, it is obviously to the detriment of the general populace, and to her advantage. If that idea can be spread around, she might act as a powerful vote-loser for the coalition. Twitter and Facebook anyone?
Also, “cutting govt. spending” is the neo-liberal mantra which, together with” tax-cuts for the wealth creators ” will finally deliver a govt. that is unable to spend on anything, thus allowing the likes of Gina to rule unfettered. Of course, it is govt. spending which injects financial assets into the economy, but she wouldn’t want you to know that. Just for those interested, here is a discussion about “govt. debt” (remember what our children will have to pay back? But only to us as the creditors!)
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=3346
She promotes capitalism so lets give her a real capitalist environment that has no subsidies. Taxpayers should not be subsidising her business.
This appalling human being also bought into Fairfax, put in management that forced through changes that led to a rapid drop in circulation and pressured the paper’s editors (without success) to follow the IPA agenda. The fat bitch also added her weight to the attempts to cut the ABC into irrelevance. Cuts that LNPlite will only partially restore, just like for the rest of Abbott’s cuts.
We are also cursed with the world’s worst oligarch, Rupert Murdoch and his equally repellent associates controlling nearly all of our commercial mass media that is the main or only ‘information’ source for most of Australia’s population.
No wonder when you speak to people that far, far too many just repeat the mantra that has been carefully indoctrinated into their minds. Very few make the effort to keep themselves informed and to think through the important issues.
Maybe it will end in violence but we may have a clearer understanding following the federal election how things may ultimately turn out.
Did we even have a “mining boom” or was the extraction of minerals just a conduit for the transfer of taxpayers money to non taxpayers like Gina?
I have never seen a more apt example of the old saying “power corupts”, than the self serving uterances of this abysmal excuse for a human being!
nexusxyz: I suspect “a real capitalist environment” is a figment of someone’s imagination (various economists really) which we try to approximate through careful regulation. That is why the Ginas of the world hate regulation. These people have only ever thrived by not having any competition and getting huge payouts from governments for “developing the economy”. Her father Lang Hancock acquired his fortune by buying up huge parts of WA at dirt cheap prices because he had good contacts with the state govt. He knew/suspected/saw the land contained iron ore and no one else did. He knew the land actually belonged to the first peoples, which is why he thought it would be a good thing if they all died. And Gina doesn’t even care about her own children. What else can we say about such people.
Andreas Bimba: it will end in bloodshed if it goes on like this. Fortunately, I think I will be dead and gone by then. (I am old)
No BLOODY WAY. The only reason she is rolling in money and fat, is because of her father’s inheritance.
She’ll be dead soon enough. Death that great equalizer spares no one. No one will truly mourn her, there’ll be plenty of pretty speeches at the service, but not one jot of true emotion.
She is deathly frightened of snakes so one wonders why she gets on so well with Bananababy Joyce, since he’s lower than an ant’s nuts and tends to slither about. And she got on well with Abbott, with his Lizard-Like expressions as he watched young girls around the place, licking his lips and slobbering.
Enough of these gutter comments about that most attractively wealthy Gina! Time for a more cerebral and incisive commentary on the article: aren’t the participants in the photo the most repulsive specimens of humanity! And why don’t more Oz miners do the decent thing and offer to work for those eye-watering South African pay rates? And have you ever seen greater congruence between a photo and personal philosophies? I must apologise for the frightful things I’ve just typed but it just sort of… came out.
[In 2014, The Australia Institute calculated that, over a six-year period, state governments in Australia spent $17.6 billion supporting the mineral and fossil fuel industries]
The hypocrisy is astounding. This sort of thing is supposed to be against the LNP/IPA free market rules – against the very economic theories they use to justify cuts such as the cessation of support for the car industry or more generally in terms of a small government.
Personally I do not recall the MSM ever reporting on this expenditure – they have reported the large values, but I don’t recall seeing them provide any detail or reasoning as to the necessity of these gifts. I suppose it is the same blackmail used by the movie industry – give us huge benefits or we will make the movie elsewhere.
And these are on top of the bliions lost via fuel tax credits and accelerated depreciation tax concessions for the mining industry.
Like Reptilian Rupe, Gargantuan Gina must be made to toe the Australian public’s line.
Operate under our terms or you will lose your operating licences!
Those terms include: optimum worker conditions and pay; ALL employees to be found ON-shore; ALL tax in 2016 and her previous operating years to be paid; late payment interest to be paid. I’m happy to add to the list.
Would top the list of the ten most disliked Australians
“I once watched a video of Gina Rinehart where she stated that in Africa, miners work for $2 per day. But Australians don’t want to work, the implication being because they’re not prepared to work for $2 per day.”
Athena, when Gina Noheart decides that $2.00 a day is enough for her and gives her billions away to the needy, I’ll take her suggestions seriously. Until then she is nothing but a hypocrite of the highest order.
So lead by example Gina Noheart!
@Alan Baird – I suspect that kiss may well be the nearest Gina gets to a root she doesn’t pay for for the rest of her miserable life.
In jest we seek release… 🙂
What we have had the privilege (!) of witnessing is the origin of a new feudalism. In Australia, Land of the Fair Go.
The fortune is secured, corralled or whatever by the first generation and added to by the second. This spares the subsequent members of the neofeudal line from having to ever work at all, save from doing a bit of supervision of their toilers creating their wealth on their estates. So far, a major effort has been put in by Gina’s offspring to fighting among themselves over the wealth, a major beneficiary of it all being that army of lawyers marshaled into action in the course of these family squabbles.
One further irony: without the tax paid by the lower orders, who do not have the financial resources to avoid tax, that wealth would have no police or military forces to defend it. By now the mineral wealth of WA would be in the hands of the Indonesians (read Javanese), the Japanese, Chinese, Russians, French….