A few weeks ago there was a lengthy article about mining magnate Gina Rinehart, now Australia’s richest woman. It was not a flattering profile, as is much I have read about her; I last mentioned her here in my 27/5/2011 entry. She is right-wing in the extreme, an outlook inherited from her late father, Lang Hancock, who was ruthless and not a particularly nice person. An article quote concerning his attitude to Australian Aborigines:
At one point, Hancock suggested forcing unemployed indigenous Australians – particularly “no-good half-castes” – to collect their welfare cheques from a central location: “And when they had gravitated there, I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future.”
The land for these personalities is merely something to exploit; environmental concerns are anathema to them. She wants to use cheap (i.e. virtually slave) imported labor in her mines; she does not want to pay a mining tax. Recently she has been increasing her share portion of Fairfax Media, produces of newspapers such as The Age, presumably in order to exert more influence in getting her views across. Another somewhat more amusing effort is an attempt at propaganda poetry. She does not like to be crossed and has people afraid of her. I have a particular loathing of bullies, though, and that is what she seems to be, to me.
She would be a perfect candidate for the RDA in Avatar; indeed, she would eat Parker Selfridge for breakfast.
