Don’t forget how we got so lucky
Article by Adrian Lowe courtesy of The West Australian.
Gina urges greater recognition for key industries.
Mining billionaire Gina Rinehart says Australia forgets how lucky it is to be enjoying unrivalled living standards, neglecting to acknowledge the roles mining and agriculture have on the economy.
Mrs Rinehart said governments “seem to forget” that “modern resources and agricultural industries underpin human flourishing”, while reigniting her push for the Federal Government to mark two days in November as national days for the two sectors.
“I was worried and have become more worried that we sometimes forget how we came to be so fortunate,” Mrs Rinehart, executive chair of Hancock Prospecting, pictured below, writes in Wednesday’s The West Australian.
“For all the platitudes we hear about supporting the agricultural and resources sectors, their actions show the opposite,” she said of governments. “Platitudes and press releases don’t lift a single tonne of any mineral out of the ground.”
Mrs Rinehart said the growing burden of red tape — including looming “huge increases” to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act — and increasing regulation around net zero emissions, were evidence that government actions defied their supposed support for the sector.
Government tape “drowns us”, she said in a speech on Tuesday night to mark National Agriculture and Related Industries Day, an event she has called for more people to mark to “celebrate essential sectors”, alongside November 22 as National Mining and Related Industries Day.
“The bureaucracy blocks us or hinders us at every opportunity,” she said. “Projects succeed not because of government but in spite of it. Some positive and innovative ideas never see daylight.”
She writes that for projects which do “eventually make it through the puzzle of constantly expanding rules, taxpayer-funded “lawfare” awaits to delay and disrupt them through the courts”.
Mrs Rinehart says more than one million people are employed because of the nation’s resources sector, and a wealth of tax revenue is provided to fund vital services.