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The Sad Case Of Loathsome Gina Rinehart

Do you know who Gina Rinehart is? She’s a brash Australian (he said, redundantly) who is one of the world’s richest women, and from the sound of William Finnegan’s fascinating profile of her in The New Yorker, one of the most hated women in Australia. First, this is why I don’t think I have ever […]

Do you know who Gina Rinehart is? She’s a brash Australian (he said, redundantly) who is one of the world’s richest women, and from the sound of William Finnegan’s fascinating profile of her in The New Yorker, one of the most hated women in Australia. First, this is why I don’t think I have ever met an Australian I didn’t like:

Australians are not known for their deference to the moneyed. I once worked as a pot washer in a casino restaurant in New South Wales. It was a big kitchen, and the pot washers were at the bottom of the job ladder, below even the dishwashers. And yet we made an excellent wage and, as employees, we had entrée to the casino’s private members’ bar, which was on the top floor. We would troop up there after work, tired and ripe, and throw back pints among what passed for high rollers on that part of the coast. Once or twice, my co-workers spotted the owner of the casino in the members’ bar. They called him a rich bastard, and he, in turn, bought us all drinks.

Rinehart does not sound like the sort of rich, er, bastard who would buy anybody a drink:

Many Australians are afraid to talk about the most talked-about person in Australia. “I don’t want to lose my house,” one former associate told me. He meant that Rinehart might sue him for defamation, a relatively easy thing to do in Australia, and that defending himself against the sort of legal onslaught she is renowned for mounting would leave him destitute. I contacted many associates, ex-associates, employees, ex-employees, politicians who publicly support her projects, even neighbors. Most declined to speak—even the politicians. Most of the exceptions insisted on anonymity. I happened to meet, in Perth, a person who had worked at Hancock Prospecting. “Oh, Mrs. Hard Heart!” the person exclaimed, when I mentioned Rinehart. A nondisclosure agreement precluded further comment. Peter Foss, a former state attorney general and justice minister, was personally unafraid, he said, but he had seen Rinehart in action in the fight against her stepmother and, when it came to ex-employees, he told me, “She will sue them for sure, and she’ll bankrupt them.

She is a Randian goddess, and also a poet, having composed the not at all Vogon-like verse below, and attached it to a 30-ton iron ore boulder that’s part of a public art installment in her home state:

Our Future

The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life
Their hope lies with resources buried deep within the earth
And the enterprise and capital which give each project worth
Is our future threatened with massive debts run up by political hacks
Who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant tax
The end result is sending Australian investment, growth and jobs offshore
This type of direction is harmful to our core
Some envious unthinking people have been conned
To think prosperity is created by waving a magic wand
Through such unfortunate ignorance, too much abuse is hurled
Against miners, workers and related industries who strive to build the world
Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores
The world’s poor need our resources: do not leave them to their fate
Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late.

Sadly groaning, aye.

For all that, she is also a tragic figure, if not a particularly sympathetic one. Read the whole story to see what her father did to her, what she did to her father, and what she has done to her children. She will die richer than any woman in the world, yet, assuming she owns no dogs, unloved by anyone. Money and ambition ruins people.

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