Meet Australia's and possibly soon the world's richest woman.

June 22, 2011 5:05 AM

You probably haven't heard of Gina Rinehart. However, she's Australia's richest person and will quite possibly be the world's richest person in a few short years. Her currently limited political activity appears primarily directed at maintaining profitability, avoiding taxes and stopping a price on carbon pollution.
posted by wilful (40 comments total)

Wow, a women who got super-wealthy off of digging up stuff ought to belong to everyone, is against having to pay a tax to dig up stuff that ought to belong to everybody.

I mean, hell, if governments just auctioned off mineral rights for their fair market value, maybe we could lower taxes.
posted by orthogonality at 5:13 AM on June 22, 2011 [11 favorites]

Rent seekers gonna seek.
posted by Aizkolari at 5:22 AM on June 22, 2011 [11 favorites]

I was one of her gardeners for a short while in 1990. She liked the buffalo grass left long.
posted by Ahab at 5:34 AM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Rineheart also founded anti tax and climate change sceptic lobby group ANDEV ("Australians for Northern Development & Economic Vision")

I've got no clever one-liner for this one - at this point, a billionaire funding an anti-science lobby group is so stereotypical that it's almost banal.
posted by vanar sena at 5:38 AM on June 22, 2011 [4 favorites]

Every time I read about the super-wealthy, I wonder how they'd taste.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:47 AM on June 22, 2011 [25 favorites]

Every time I read about the super-wealthy, I wonder how they'd taste.

Too rich.
posted by nathancaswell at 5:53 AM on June 22, 2011 [28 favorites]

In 1999 her proposal to name a mountain range after her family to commemorate its contribution in establishing the pastoral and mining industry in the Pilbara region was approved. The so-named Hancock Range is situated about 65 km north-west of the town of Newman.

I remember when being famous meant having a sandwich or cocktail named after you.

Or if you were really something, a street name.

I suppose she can now claim mining rights on the whole mountain range, using the age-old "yes my name is written on it" legal argument.

posted by xqwzts at 5:54 AM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Fois gras?
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:55 AM on June 22, 2011

Every time I read about the super-wealthy, I wonder how they'd taste.
posted by Faint of Butt

Eponysterically?
posted by Skeptic at 6:00 AM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

What's wrong with people like this? I mean clinically. What drives them to feel entitled to more more and more?
posted by En0rm0 at 6:23 AM on June 22, 2011

I don't think entitlement is the right idea. They see wealth as a game and the point is to maximize wealth to what ever degree the system let's you. Laws and government are merely the guardians at the gateway to opportunity, if you can get by them, you aren't technically doing anything wrong.
posted by doctor_negative at 6:36 AM on June 22, 2011 [6 favorites]

I don't think entitlement is the right idea. They see wealth as a game and the point is to maximize wealth to what ever degree the system let's you.

A better-put version of what I was in the middle of writing.

Though it's only a game in the "Game of Thrones" sense. There's nothing light-hearted about it.
posted by Trurl at 6:39 AM on June 22, 2011

Oh good, somebody else I need to hate.
posted by londonmark at 6:47 AM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

What's wrong with people like this? I mean clinically.

Nothing that can't be fixed with a hatchet.
posted by FatherDagon at 6:51 AM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Neurosurgeon, are you?
posted by tapesonthefloor at 6:55 AM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Seriously, if you can amass 4.something billion dollars in the first place, I don't see how the system is all that stacked against you. I got into it pretty good the other day with a friend who thinks we tax the rich at too high a rate, and he had no answer for how it was they'd managed to get rich at those onerous rates, if the tax rates were keeping people from getting wealthy. Yet, he was complaining about an unemployed person he knew getting a $1000.00 "handout" in the form of an earned income tax credit when he hadn't paid $1000.00 in taxes, because he'd spent 9 months of the year unemployed. OUTRAGE!

I know this is woman is Australian and not American, but the same scenario seems to be at work with her. The worst part of it all is the duplicitous nature of how the super-rich have turned the middle class against the poor, when it's the super-rich who have been utterly fleecing the middle class since the 1970s. 100,000 "welfare queens" will never make up the damage done by one good high-class grifter at the top, but G*d forbid that we should continue even taxing them at the current rate.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:06 AM on June 22, 2011 [14 favorites]

What's wrong with people like this? I mean clinically. What drives them to feel entitled to more more and more?

By definition, greed cannot be sated. It's not about the having, it's about the wanting.
posted by Legomancer at 7:12 AM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Hey look, rich people still suck. Next!
posted by Glinn at 7:13 AM on June 22, 2011

...damn richers.
posted by davelog at 7:17 AM on June 22, 2011

God, you miserable little cockroaches do like to scurry around underfoot squeaking out nonsense-noise and dribbling filth, don't you? How I wish someone would stomp you all into a gooey smear of exoskeletal fragments and bug-pus.

This beautiful, selfless woman - a woman who has given more to Australia and thereby the world than any of you foul insectoids could even comprehend - has done nothing wrong but to try to care for a few hitherto abandoned holes in the dusty, dry Australian dirt.

With nothing but her generous supply of tears, sweat and love, Gina "Mine-Smart" Rinehart has delved deep into the very SOUL of our crusty brown land and drawn forth a sweet and wholly justified reward.

And these humble treasures have been urged from the fusty, scrotal soil of Australia only because of Gina "I'm-Fine" Rinehart's amazing and charitable gift of compassion. A gift which the world is RIGHT to repay.

Gina, I hope you dig up ALL of this musty, fecal land we call "Australia", and thereby become a BILLION times as rich as you will be when this news article comes true. Then the horrible six-legged beetles who infest this thread will tumble into your giant mine-hole and will never trouble us again.

But remember, Gina - I'm on YOUR side! Please don't stuff ME down your giant, nation-gaping resource shaft! HA HA HA! Right? Right? Right? Gina? Right? Gina?
posted by the quidnunc kid at 7:30 AM on June 22, 2011 [10 favorites]

The carbon tax idea will be dead anyway once a Republican president gets into office- shes just ahead of the curve. The best thing we can do at this point is invest in her companies, but at least we can do do ironically.
posted by happyroach at 7:34 AM on June 22, 2011

Can we start handing out the red caps now?
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:35 AM on June 22, 2011

You know, the quidnuc kid's comment above is now making me view Gina Rinehart like "Mom" from Futerama, which seems more or less apt.
posted by schmod at 7:36 AM on June 22, 2011 [3 favorites]

Devils Rancher, we must be constantly aware of these straw man arguments and call people out on them. Nothing saddens me more than when I hear frustrated intelligent friends taking the bait thereby allowing wingers to take them off point which is their goal - distraction and subterfuge. Just allowing the debate legitimizes their argument. They did the same thing with the mortgage crisis. The real damage done by all the foreclosures in recent years were in defaults on million dollar+ homes but if you ask the average cable tv viewer they will tell you it was from subprime mortgages to poor people. The rich create the problem then have their PR people standing by to get out in front of the crisis to shift the blame downward to keep the class wars safely between the middle class and poor while they ride off with their fortunes and lie in wait for the next opportunity to make personal gains with socialized risk.
posted by any major dude at 7:40 AM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

Life's pretty sweet for you when you're this rich. It's hard to remember having to worry about putting food on the table, getting medical care, or having a job. So you get a little callous.

But it's good to remember there are more of us than there are of them.
posted by Mental Wimp at 7:57 AM on June 22, 2011

But it's good to remember there are more of us than there are of them.

So far that doesn't seem to make much of a difference.
posted by Legomancer at 8:14 AM on June 22, 2011

Mental Wimp, don't disregard those deluded masses who consider themselves potential millionaires, they are a large part of the middle class and tend to vote as if they are already millionaires. When you factor that group into the picture you get a large segment of the population voting against their own future interests and when the statistics catch up with them they'll find too late that they voted away their safety net.
posted by any major dude at 8:14 AM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

Australia's not going to have a Republican president (which, in any case, would be a tautology there) any time soon, given that the Tories kicked the republic referendum into the long grass in the 1990s.
posted by acb at 8:25 AM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

But it's good to remember there are more of us than there are of them.

If "them" is people who want lower taxes and fewer government services, and only want action on climate change if there is zero cost and zero impact on their current lifestyle, then no, there are more of them.
posted by rocket88 at 8:35 AM on June 22, 2011 [4 favorites]

Occupation Mining inheritant

I wish I could have been a mining inheritant. Mind you, I probably would go all Sunset-Boulevardy instead, tossing out world-weary quips that "money is a menace to happiness", and spend my days talking to my porcelain dolls.

Nice work if you can get it, mining inheritant.
posted by Capt. Renault at 8:53 AM on June 22, 2011

Oh I bet she's trade everything she has for just a little more...
posted by Redhush at 9:18 AM on June 22, 2011

tapesonthefloor: "Neurosurgeon, are you?"

When I take office I'll put him in the "Lobotomist in Chief" position.
posted by symbioid at 11:15 AM on June 22, 2011

Between her and the despicable rodent Clive Palmer, it is hard to love the mining set. Nathan Tinkler looks like he comes closest to being an acceptable human.
posted by bystander at 2:52 PM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

To be fair to Rinehart, she's only putting forward the same views currently held by the majority of Australians who are against a carbon tax. You can be middle class and shortsighted, selfish and stupid too.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:32 PM on June 22, 2011

I wonder how a young person could get some of these super-rich to pay them to advocate against a carbon tax and environmental regulation (though my opposition comes from nihilism, not self-interest).
posted by Lovecraft In Brooklyn at 6:53 PM on June 22, 2011

I wonder how a young person could get some of these super-rich to pay them to advocate against a carbon tax and environmental regulation (though my opposition comes from nihilism, not self-interest).

In which case you don't need to be paid. Just go be yourself, LiB.
posted by wilful at 7:47 PM on June 22, 2011 [1 favorite]

After the game the king and the pawn return to the same box.
posted by jcworth at 8:18 PM on June 22, 2011 [2 favorites]

I might be prepared to sponsor LiB to spread the message of no carbon tax. Could you be sure to broadcast your opposition far and wide, especially to those who are undecided or who might already agree with you?
posted by bystander at 12:58 AM on June 23, 2011

I wonder how a young person could get some of these super-rich to pay them to advocate against a carbon tax and environmental regulation

Rineheart prefers her advocates to be a lot older than you, LiB.
posted by harriet vane at 3:17 AM on June 23, 2011

LiB, that's pretty easy actually, become a member of the Young Liberals
posted by Hello, I'm David McGahan at 7:23 AM on June 23, 2011 [1 favorite]