Gina Rinehart is one of the most privileged people in Australian public life. She has been fortunate to inherit wealth from her father, and to possess the ability to capitalize and expand that wealth.
Of course, it's hasn't been plain sailing. She spent most of the nineties agitating about, and arguing over wills with, her step-mother. And lately she has been caught up in court actions with her children.
All the same, the picture most Australians carry of Gina Rinehart is of an extremely priviliged individual who advocates for a political worldview that can only politely be described as base fantasy. I mean, this is someone who can afford to buy into one of the biggest media companies in the country and self-publish some of the most tritely ideological attempts at poetry ever foisted on the literate public.
One of the biggest problems facing our politics these days is the sheer lack of originality, and Gina's latest outpourings are a classic example of this problem.
Apparently the most urgent need in Australia at this moment in time is a good, thorough dose of Thatcherism. The reason we need this is so that the plebs don't loose sight of the fact that their sense of entitlement is endangering the "bottomless pit of money" produced by the mining interests.
Hang on, there are a couple of problems here.
Problem number one is a case of selective memory. We had a good, thorough dose of Thatcherism. Those economic policies were initiated and carried through by the Labor federal governments from 1983 to 1996. We had a second good, thorough dose of Thatcherism (which is presently being reprised by the understudies) from 1996 to 2007. That was all the cultural war nonsense little Jack Howard carried on about. You know, all that blather about history wars and constant carping about the ABC, the National Museum, school standards -- you name it, there was a midget conservative whinging about it. Oh yes, and the waterfront dispute and -- eventually -- the deceptively-named Workchoices. Maybe Rinehart was too busy suing people to notice what went on from the mid-1990s to the mid-noughties.
Problem number two is ignorance of the status of mining in the national economy. There are two points to this.
For all the carry on, mining is less than 10% of the economy, and contributes less than that percentage of jobs to the workforce.
A basic knowledge of economic history would save Gina Rinehart from her worst error. Mining is a finite business. Once you've hit the bottom of a mine, there's nothing more to dig. It's a boom and bust industry. If our national prosperity depended on it, then we're in deep dark stuff. If you want proof, just go and have a look at Nauru. This is the sort of future Gina Rinehart dreams for Australia.
Problem number three has already been mentioned.
Gina Rinehart lives in a privileged bubble, and seems to regard anything that furthers the expansion of that bubble to be in the national interest. Unfortunately, all traffic goes out of the bubble, and not much seems to go in. How else to explain the poverty of mind that could produce derivative junk-poetry, and now calls for a revival of a style and idea of politics that has ceased to work.
Repetition is not the same as originality. Gina Rinehart's interests are not the national interest. If she wants to see how many people share her political fantasies, maybe she should do something about practically buying her way into parliament.
What we actually need is a politics that is able to spell out and compel the fulfilment Gina Rinehart's obligations to the nation from which she derives her wealth. Small things, like taxes that contribute meaningfully to the public good. And perhaps a crash-course in anything-but-mining-and-suing to expand the mind.
