Oh no, they're talking about Politics |
Theory |
Practice |
Philosophies |
Terms |
As usual |
Country sections |
|
“”Despite what Channel 10 would have you believe, the only genius financial decision that Gina ever made was not being choked by her own umbilical cord.
|
—Jordan Shanks[1] |
Gina "Vogon" Rinehart (1954–) is an Australian mining heiress and a compelling argument for the nationalisation of her industry. Gina is the daughter of the late Lang Hancock,[note 1] inheriting Hancock Prospecting following his death in 1992. She was at one time the wealthiest woman in the world, with a personal net worth of $18.9bn. When she started out in 1992, all she had was a dream. And $75 million dollars.
Gina and her family of thieves have stolen billions from Australians. They receive the lion's share of mining profits because the government allows individual families to own assets that are non-innovative, required by all, and generate massive profit. The Rineharts don't even do the developing themselves; all they do is sell their ore rights to companies like Rio Tinto.[2] Other companies do all of the actual work of developing the mine, but it happens in a 'joint venture' so that Gina gets her share and it looks like she's doing something useful. She's taking a finite natural resource and shipping it off to other countries so she can hoard cash. She's just a glorified shoveling and taxi service.
If she'd been born with nothing, she'd be the local caravan park harridan (much like that Dan Bilzerian shitkicker), but instead you get her witless articles sprayed over the press every few months.
“”...slothful, vindictive and devious baby elephant"
|
—Lang Hancock[3] (Looks like someone's already made a start on that obituary) |
Rinehart has caused some public controversy and debate over her personal viewpoints and for statements she has made in recent times. (15 billion dollars, and she still can't afford decent PR. Or some decent eyebrows.) You can't deny she makes great copy. She owns a fair chunk of Fairfax, so perhaps she is single-handedly trying to revive their fortunes by literally making the news for them.
In 2012, Rinehart stated that Australians should spend less time consuming alcohol and socializing if they desired to become wealthy. This offended then-Australian treasurer Wayne Swann who considered it an attack upon the working class, while Ged Kearney of the Australian Council Of Trade Unions claimed Rinehart's views were immensely backward.[4]
A handy guide to picking yourself up by your bootstraps, by Gina Rinehart.
Rinehart created more controversy in 2014 when she argued that Australian welfare recipients were destroying the economy and accused left-wing media sources of brainwashing the public.[5] This from the person who bought a newspaper so she could whine like a stuck pig about taxes and her workers' salaries any chance she gets.
In 2013, Rinehart intimated that convicted felons should pay a fine to avoid prison.[6] For the incredibly wealthy, increasing their wealth makes little marginal difference. However, increasing the power of what you can do with your wealth makes a big difference. This proposal is not about getting out of jail. She's literally asking to be able to write a check for all her misdoings. But notice how it is sold. It would be doing us a favour by saving taxpayer money from being 'wasted'. We particularly like how she suggested you could forgo your voting rights if you didn't have enough money to pay for release.
Laws? Taxes? Pfft... they're for the little people.[7] Drop all regulations so we can be just like India![8] What an amazing standard of living and corruption we can aspire to. Her message is so mixed one presumes she is caught in a maelstrom of her own spin.
She thinks Australia is blessed but could do with a dose of Thatcherism.[9] Thatcher would eat you for breakfast, spit you out into the ocean and then sink you with a torpedo, Rinehart. Furthermore, Thatcher was educated in chemistry and took climate change very seriously. This woman's pores are literally leaking entitlement juices.
She didn't actually call for sterilization of the poor, though. What does it say about our society that we have trouble working out if this kind of thing is satire or not?
When it comes to government styles, Rinehart adores the authoritarian government of China in comparison to the democratic government of Australia. In a keynote address delivered to the purportedly libertarian Institute of Public Affairs, Rinehart praised China's special economic zones as well as China's rapid expansion of coal and nuclear power plants. She chastised Australia's carbon neutrality policy (and climate change in general) as being "climate-induced global extinction propaganda". Rinehart praised China's education system, with its state-enforced jingoism,[10] in contrast to Australian's education system, which she described as having "woke agendas" and "teaching its students not to be proud of their country."[11] (In reality, in most surveys, Australia's education system is generally ranked a fair bit higher than China's; to give but one example, a U.S. News and World Report survey in 2023 ranked Australia as #8 and China as #23.)[12]
On the flip side, in a stopped clock moment, Rinehart supports Ukraine in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to the point of pissing off the government of Vladimir Putin into banning her from Russia for having a supposed "Russophobia agenda".[13]
Gina got put in charge of the family trust. She was supposed to give to her children at age 30. When the bill came due, Gina didn't cough up the money because "they're not mature enough", which isn't how trusts work. What kind of psychopath defrauds their own children out of their inheritance?[23](One who likes being one of the richest individuals in Australia. On the downside Christmas must get a bit awkward.) Her own kids refer to her as Fatty. Jesus, even in her own family she can't command respect.[24]
But seriously, anyone else who did what she did would be hammered in the courts. S'pose you get the justice you can afford, and Gina can afford the best.
She might have lost this round of Let me bully my children the way my father bullied me,[25] but Gina's independent wealth was estimated at $US12.2 billion ($15.8 billion), down from $US17.4 billion in '13. She'll be fine.
Milla Jovovich Bianca Rinehart is currently running the trust. Sorry, she's already married. (And she'll age terribly.)
Showing that Rinehart had never heard of the Streisand effect, in May 2024, Rinehart tried to suppress an unflattering portrait of her by acclaimed indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira that was being displayed as part of an exhibition of Namatjira's work at the National Gallery of Australia.[26] When that failed, Rinehart embarked on a campaign to have those in her orbit pester the gallery with the same demand.[27]
Predictably, this attempt at censorship failed miserably. Not only did the gallery refuse to censor the painting, the attempted censorship resulted in international coverage of the censorship attempt (which often included unflattering coverage of her family's racism and unsavory history), as well as widespread memes and mockery on social media.[28]
Benjamin Marks, an Australian libertarian activist and comic writer created a website and Facebook page defending Ms Reinhart, where he argues that she is our "friendly voice of moderation"[29].