Opinion
‘Cut tape and tax’: Gina Rinehart reveals eccentric wishlist
Peter Milne
Business JournalistAustralia’s richest person Gina Rinehart has railed against taxes, bureaucrats and “bird-killing” clean energy she claims will raise food prices and cause a shortage of fresh produce.
The chair of Hancock Prospecting told a Bush Summit event she wanted to put smiles on faces in the audience, and there were “great outcomes to achieve” with the travelling roadshow organised by her company and News Corporation. It visited her hometown of Perth for the first time on Monday.
Australia’s richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, wants governments to cut taxes and red tape and to help farmers pay for net zero policies.Credit: Trevor Collens
She gave a 10-minute speech for the crowd of about 200 with recurring themes that taxes, bureaucracy and renewable energy were the enemies of regional Australia.
The push to net-zero emissions was too expensive for the agricultural sector unless, like Rinehart, you had a “mining company in your back pocket.”
“Just look at requiring electric vehicles alone, be they for lawnmowers, motorbikes, utes, four-wheel drives, tractors, harvesters, trucks, bulldozers, graders, front-end loaders, and-or more,” she said.
There is no legislated requirement to buy electric vehicles.
Rinehart wants farmers’ spending on non-existent “net-zero requirements” capped at $200,000 otherwise she claims they will have to shut down.
“With the consequences, Aussies in the towns will see huge food price increases and fresh food shortages,” she said.
“You know, this is the maths that has to be gone into.”
A long list of state and federal regulations “that required, in our view, cutting” was presented.
She proposed that laws sunset after four years, and suggested bureaucrats be required to put their names to reasons why legislation should continue.
“If more than say 75 per cent of that department recommends reinstatement, then those views are published, a suitable committee is formed to review and decide,” she said.
There was a call for the WA government to allow pastoral leaseholders to purchase the freehold for a maximum of $2 million. Hancock Prospecting, which runs 45,000 cattle on two stations in the north of WA, would undoubtedly see this as a good deal.
Rinehart wants governments to spend more in the bush, but her wish for “the best equipped and most luxurious hospitals” in a string of Pilbara iron ore towns seems ambitious.
Rinehart, said to be worth $37 billion in the AFR Rich List, also called for state and federal governments to commit to establishing special economic zones across northern Australia to “cut both government tape and tax.”
She attributed the idea to her father Lang Hancock.
“He came out with many practical ideas, as you often do, living in the bush, where you either make do or do without,” she said.
“Including after finding significant iron ore deposits – he decided to lobby for the lifting of the government iron ore export embargo, which took him some eight years of persistence to achieve.”
Rinehart spoke just 800 metres from WA’s Supreme Court where two of her children are battling her for a share of the iron ore wealth she inherited from her father.
The allegations followed Hancock Prospecting lawyers last week blaming Rinehart’s father for engaging in subterfuge and being unable to comply with the most basic duties he had to the company.
Rinehart sought to correct the record on family discord.
“Growing up on stations, the family unit is close and trusting, as ours certainly was,” she said.
“It’s saddening that media likes to ignore the good if you’re successful and not a socialist.”
Rinehart said while she had concerns about Hancock’s running of the company in his final years, it was reported “without adding the truth that Dad and I had again become very close before his sad departure.”
With her checklist complete Rinehart told a joke she said was “scientifically fact-checked” by physicist Edward Teller with the punchline that a man with two wives got more radiation from sleeping with them than standing next to a nuclear power station for a year.
Fortunately, Rinehart ended by making her point more directly: “let’s not upset many farmers with bird-killing wind generators and massive solar panel stretches and bring on clean, safe nuclear energy.”
She did not go on to explain how the future low-tax Australia of her dreams could afford to switch to the most expensive energy source possible.
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