She's not Poet and She don't know it

February 17, 2012 5:56 AM

Gina Rinehart AKA "The Iron Lady"- Australia's richest woman expresses her politics in rhyming couplet. She even carved it on a rock.

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


Oh yeah - she is also trying to take control of a group of Australian papers with her suspected goal being editorial control. Interestingly her raid on Fairfax shares came one week after they published an unflattering family profile (Iron Lady link above)

But but I think we can all agree the most evil thing she's ever done was attempt to get the Murdochs to take the Simpsons off the air for being "non-family friendly"

posted by JPD (35 comments total)

Not friendly to the Burns family, I presume?
posted by Skeptic at 6:01 AM on February 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Poetasters for Sustainable Capitalism.
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:01 AM on February 17, 2012

Hah, Geoff Lemon is an old friend of mine. Nice to see him getting some traction putting the boot into this.
posted by Thoth at 6:07 AM on February 17, 2012

Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
Then when their kids grow up Australian, kick them out, the scrounging foreign whores.
posted by howfar at 6:15 AM on February 17, 2012 [3 favorites]

So, she's a Vogon?
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:36 AM on February 17, 2012 [11 favorites]

Austrailian eh? Related to a guy named Murdoch perhaps?
posted by j03 at 6:36 AM on February 17, 2012

It's bad doggerel, undoubtedly; but somehow the worst part of it is the title.
posted by misteraitch at 6:40 AM on February 17, 2012

It seems the rich are just taking the piss now. Can we not just kill a few of them? Y'know, just as a precautionary measure? I'll let you pick who!
posted by howfar at 7:08 AM on February 17, 2012

... And this person is the richest woman on one of the Earth's continents. I swear to god the needle on my cynical meter is buried in the red and about to snap off.
posted by RolandOfEld at 7:10 AM on February 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ah inherited wealth. Truly you make people who have never had to work for their money feel they are owed thanks by people who do.
posted by PenDevil at 8:20 AM on February 17, 2012 [6 favorites]

Ashoka she ain't.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:40 AM on February 17, 2012

While reading it, I didn't think it was really deserving of the title "universe's worst poem". I mean, it was pretty bad, but despite the hacky writing, it at least flowed in an okay manner, and the rhyming...well, it rhymed, even if a little trite. But then, this near the end

Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores

What? You can't cram words like "multiculturalism" in and expect it to flow right! If writing hacky rhymes, try reading it out loud before carving it onto a rock. Oh, and

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

Ah, the twist ending! You know, In Time was actually a pretty decent movie, if you can suspend some believability.
posted by mysterpigg at 8:46 AM on February 17, 2012

"Rinehart was [her father's] eager apprentice, travelling the globe with him as he trained her to take over the mining behemoth he predicted Hancock Prospecting would become. He called her his "right-hand man" and addressed her as "young fella". At the same time, he expected her to be a decorative addition to business meetings. "He used to pick at her about her dress and her style and her behaviour," remembers an old family friend. "He used to keep picking at her if she put on weight. He'd say, 'Where's my pretty girl?' " Much later, when father and daughter fell out over his marriage to Rose, Hancock taunted Rinehart about the kilos she had gained. In a vitriolic letter that surfaced during one of the court cases after his death, he said he wanted to remember her as the "neat, trim, capable and attractive young lady" she had been rather than "the slothful, vindictive and devious baby elephant that you have become".

She's certainly not very likable, but this is incredibly sad.
posted by stockpuppet at 8:51 AM on February 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

She's certainly not very likable, but this is incredibly sad.

So is being imported as a "short term foreign worker", then being kicked out when you're no longer valuable as cheap labour. The strange thing about having a nasty dad and millions of dollars is that you get to choose what you do next. Look what she chose. Boo hoo fucking hoo.
posted by howfar at 8:56 AM on February 17, 2012 [4 favorites]

Maybe her next vanity project should be having a baby with the exhumed DNA of William McGonagall?

If it's a girl, she could name it Julia Moore; if a boy, James McIntyre.
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:22 AM on February 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

That is very bad. Very very. I was thinking 'how the hell could this have reached the news, let alone be carved in a rock for all posterity?' Oh, because of the money. How do you tell a really rich person (who has to be right about things because they're rich I mean come on, it's practically Science!) that a ten-year-old could do better, and keep your job?
Maybe you don't say anything and let them wear their new clothes for all the world to see.
Or, as Chumbawamba wrote...
"Rich people who claim to know
What's wrong with this world
Can't know anything at all
They're busy giving the orders
For us to build their second homes"
posted by Zack_Replica at 9:25 AM on February 17, 2012

She even carved it on a rock.

Well, at least she's got some artistic desires, and she learned how to do the rough work of rock carving, and actually spent the time doing the carving. What's that? She just paid someone to carve it for her? Never mind.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:46 AM on February 17, 2012

It's bad doggerel, undoubtedly; but somehow the worst part of it is the title.

It's so very hard to pick just one worst part!
posted by kprincehouse at 10:00 AM on February 17, 2012

Economy going limp?
Look up! 'Tis a friendly blimp.
The Federal Reserve must fall.
Act now! Google Ron Paul.
A candidate righteous and fair.
Get your government hands off my Medicare!
posted by Behemoth at 10:28 AM on February 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

John Galt sure isn't pithy.
posted by joechip at 10:46 AM on February 17, 2012

"Some call it impossible to include phrases such as 'special economic zones' in a fluid and aesthetically pleasing poem. Those people are right."
posted by Songdog at 11:06 AM on February 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Mining heiress
Rants and raves?
Beat the scabs
With Burma-Shave!
posted by The White Hat at 12:24 PM on February 17, 2012

I don't know who's cringing more, the Australian in me or the occasional poet.

I should favourite this to thank JPD for bringing it to my attention, but can't bring myself to favourite the thing itself. Sorry, JPD.

"Welcome short term foreign workers to our shores." Yes, welcome to our shores.
posted by rory at 2:10 PM on February 17, 2012

In special economic zones
Special things occur
Like special zero-interest loans
From us, through tax, to her.

We pay these special wealthy folks
To do the things they do
'Cos else (it's such a funny hoax)
They wouldn't. Yes, it's true!

No-one would ever bother to
Unless they kept it all
A billion dollars might just do
Two thirds is way too small.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 2:19 PM on February 17, 2012 [7 favorites]

I'll have you know that reading this poem officially brought me past the tipping point and made me start thinking "you know, maybe I was unfairly dismissive when I first was exposed to the idea, maybe David Icke has a point when he says the 1% literally are impostor lizard-people from Algol".
posted by metaman livingblog at 2:21 PM on February 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Thank goodness Gina Rinehart cares so much about the poor!
Without her, what would Aussies do with all that undug ore?
Just look at all this magic coal, our wonder underground -
And plenty of uranium, which industry has found
Irradiating national parks, like northern Kakadu;
Let's dig it up and sell it to all on eBay, PDQ.

Welcome, short-term foreign workers! Come and stay a while.
Wreck your health to bring us wealth, then queue up single-file
For Qantas flights to take you back to places with no future -
I'm sorry, middle-class existence really wouldn't suit yer.
As for riches, sadly, thanks to government attacks,
It's difficult to make ends meet because of rampant tax.
Just look at how our Gina strives to earn a bob or two.
No, really, she can barely buy a paper. (Fairfax? Phew!)

Prosperity's our lucky country's birthright, people say;
Or if not every Aussie's, well, it's Rinehart's, anyway.
And whether she intended it or not to cause such mirth,
Let's hope her poem ends up buried deep within the earth.
posted by rory at 2:54 PM on February 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

Just to clear it up, she didn't carve it on a rock. It was printed on a plaque that was fixed to a rock.

Here is the rock. Here is the plaque.
posted by robcorr at 3:02 PM on February 17, 2012

Even more disappointing. But that rock is very cool looking.
posted by benito.strauss at 5:24 PM on February 17, 2012

Ah inherited wealth. Truly you make people who have never had to work for their money feel they are owed thanks by people who do.

To be fair to her, she didn't inherit terribly much, what she got from her father was mostly a load of debts.
posted by wilful at 3:45 AM on February 18, 2012

I used to think Clive Palmer was the most contemptible mining magnate. Good to see that prick has some competition. By which I really mean I weep for my country.
posted by bystander at 3:53 AM on February 18, 2012

Ugh. That "plaque" appears to be laid out in MS Word, and either sublimation printed (a colour process that is difficult to not make look cheap and ugly) or laminated. Monument plaques, the brass 3D kind you see in cemeteries and on the side of buildings, run to under a grand for a really nice one, including bolting it to the rock.

At her wealth level it makes zero financial difference whether the plaque looks awesome (regardless of the crapness of the poem), or like a cheap trash donated plaque that a school P&C would chuck into the library storeroom as soon as the photos are taken and the donor fucks off.

At least pre-20th century aristocracy had taste. That's one of the worst things about this modern pestilence of mercantile-class Rich People - these Ayn Rand-worshipping, Fox News funding, climate change denying, right wing scumbags - they are so fucking relentlessly devoid of regard for beauty and skill and history and the sense of leaving a legacy for future humanity.

The stupid woman probably thinks it's a great poem and a nice plaque.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 6:24 AM on February 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

At least pre-20th century aristocracy had taste. That's one of the worst things about this modern pestilence of mercantile-class Rich People - these Ayn Rand-worshipping, Fox News funding, climate change denying, right wing scumbags - they are so fucking relentlessly devoid of regard for beauty and skill and history and the sense of leaving a legacy for future humanity.

To the modern Right, aesthetic taste is in itself automatically suspicious. If you care about proportion or typography, you probably have liberal sympathies or an unsoundly cosmopolitan worldview which might lead you to such sympathies, and you may well be a homosexual or an atheist as well.

Setting a plaque in Times New Roman and printing it as cheaply as possible shows proper "conservative" virtues: the awareness that everything is a market transaction, and a demonstration of contempt for those who hold values outside of the market, such as aesthetics.
posted by acb at 6:36 AM on February 18, 2012

Having said that, she could have at least thrown in a few grocer's apostrophe's to demonstrate contempt for the liberal egghead urban elitists with humanities degrees.
posted by acb at 6:38 AM on February 18, 2012

To the modern Right, aesthetic taste is in itself automatically suspicious.

Then why write a poem, of all things?!

That's the curious thing about this bunch: on one hand they proffer to abhor "cultural elitists", but on the other hand they unselfconsciously ape them. Their inferiority complex is as overwhelming as it is perplexing.
posted by Skeptic at 4:26 AM on February 20, 2012

To be fair to her, she didn't inherit terribly much, what she got from her father was mostly a load of debts

I'll believe that when you explain the multi-million dollar lawsuit that was fought over his estate. I'd say maybe she just really likes spending money, but that piece of shit plaque puts paid to that theory.
posted by howfar at 9:15 AM on February 20, 2012