We may never again have more opportune cause for a class war in Australia than in these next few months.
We have a big, soft target, Gina Reinhart, making two million dollars an hour digging up ground that we, the people, own, an ugly, coarse, unpleasant woman who hates her children and is now proposing to poison the Barrier Reef.
If not now, when? If not we, who?
It is fair at this point I think that we ask five questions:
(1) Is it right that she earns more in two hours than most Australians earn in a lifetime?
(2) Is she a fit and proper person to be running an international company and seeking to run The Age, Channel 10 and The Sydney Morning Herald? (A clue lies in her poetry) Can she be denounced by our parliament as Rupert Murdoch was by his?
(3) Why not seize a third of her wealth as it comes in and with that five billion eight hundred and forty-four million dollars a year help build an Australian civilisation which tourists and scientists and artists will want to come to and maybe live in, spending copious wads of money here?
(4) Why not put this plan before parliament and see how Tony Abbott wriggles and squirms before supporting it? And
(5) Are there five hundred voters in all Australia who would be against it? If so can ten write in and identify themselves?
The theory behind the cry ‘We can’t do that! It’s class warfare!’ is that Gina deserves every penny she has and a night nurse, for instance, is wrong to envy it.
Let me say she is not wrong to envy it. She doesn’t want undeserved millions. She wants a just wage for the work she does, saving and prolonging lives and easing the pain of the dying. That Gina earns in eighteen minutes what she earns in a decade strikes her as unjust, and unfair, and bad for the society, but Gerard Henderson (for one) thinks it’s wrong of her to make comparisons. That is coveting. That is meanness of soul. That is ‘class warfare’. And class warfare is poltics by improper means.
A Gina-specific law that stripped from her a third of her earnings for the next eighteen months, renewable every eighteen months thereafter, would secure the approval of ninety-one percent of the voters, end the Liberal Party, ensure free dental health care for everyone and a quarter of a million public houses for the disabled and the victims of the Meltdown plus rent assistance and home nursing for the old. Yet Labor, of course, won’t do it.
Of course they won’t.
Discuss.
‘The Labor Party is, was, and always will be, John Curtin wrote in 1908, ‘the hand-maiden of Capitalism.’
Discuss.
Name:
You exemplify ridiculous hyperbole Bob. I can only assume the ferry ride back from the city has made you a little seasick and off. Rinehart doesn’t run Fairfax or Channel Ten. Anyone with the faintest grasp of corporate structures and equity holdings realises that. She is a shareholder with a significant stake. It is highly unlikely even with a board seat she could instigate change at Fairfax – and before you cite Bolt as an example at Ten that was Murdoch Jnr not her.
What will this society you refer to look like Bob? What would you advocate spending money on that would appeal to tourists, artists and scientists? (government grants for the last two no doubt wouldn’t hurt…). In every society save a communist one (didn’t that work splendidly everywhere) there are those with more than others.
What such a piece of legislation would do is stifle entrepreneurialism, discourage risk taking (and the result of this job creation) and would also remove a target for the Left to deride… Who would the muesli munchers curse in the morning if you drove out the Billionaires?
Do you think she deserves two million dollars an hour?
Please answer this.
Do you think she should give some of it back to us?
She does – taxes, and indirectly through the thousands she employs and through royalties.
I don’t know what she deserves to be honest. As Henley said, surely she is entitled to be master of her fate.
Perhaps no one deserves that much money save Tim Flannery – he constantly comes up with unique, correct predictions and also ingenius ideas (removal of fillings).
Say yes or no or be banned for life.
It can’t be that hard. You either approve unlimited unearned wealth, or not.
I believe in unlimited earned wealth (with the appropriate rate of taxation). I ask you this Bob – do you believe in disincentives for enterprise?
I believe in disincentives for cigarette manufacturers, disincentives for asbestos manufacturers, cluster bomb manufacturers, Exxon and Enron and those like Rinehart who steal our natural wealth and imperil our environment. How about you?
Think they should be encouraged, do you?
Please answer this.
I am Verily Nostradamus and I believe Gina Rinehart deserves two million dollars an hour and, if we can get rid of the Carbon Tax, more. She has worked so hard for it. She deserves every penny. She really does.
If Gina is stealing our natural wealth Bob why don’t we simply ask her to return it to the ground (along with the money generated to pay for services, welfare and to support the needy).
Cigarette and asbestos manufacturers are a different thing entirely Bob, to co-mingle the argument is clever, but does not address the question I posed. A more general one about stifling enterprise by misguided policies of compulsorily acquiring a private individual’s wealth.
Are you channelling Che are you dear boy?
Cigarette manufacturers are endangering our lungs and Gina Rinehart endangering the Barrier Reef and our economy and, oh yes, the planet with upflung, earth-warming pollution.
What is the difference?
You accidentally left off the liquor industry Bob. Lots and lots of harm there I am told.
And, yes, they are rightly discouraged.
Excellent Bob; except I would take it all off her at once.
Amazing quote from Curtin. He obviously mellowed as he aged . . .
All very interesting, however I see one fatal flaw in your proposition. You assume that a government who enacted this Gina specific act would use this money for beneficial, interesting things.
They wouldn’t. It’d disappear into the black hole of consolidated revenue and be used to chuck a few more dollars in bribes down the insatiable throat of the screeching baby bird that is the australian middle class.
So .. they have given no money to the disabled and the aged so far, you say?
What gave you that idea?
Please answer this.
Ok so maybe I was being a little melodramatic…
This wasn’t intended as a criticism of the current government. I firmly believe that we’re in for some bizzare and dangerous times when the coalition wins the next election.
But anyway…..of course tax money is used for health, the aged, disabled, etc.
I was referring to the tendency of australian governments (of both political persuasions, but the coalition is much worse) to give large handouts to well-off families when the money could be better used to fund things like what you’ve suggested here.
Does anyone know of the extent of Gina’s philanthropic efforts?
Bringing in foreign workers for the benefit of Australia’s multicultural society doesn’t count.
Where is her MONA?
Where is her Gina University?
Where is Gina nursing school?
Where is Gina’s disability fund?
Where is Gina’s campaign to raise the standard of indigenous health?
Where is Gina’s funding for research to fuel the post mining Australian economy?
Where is Gina’s business school?
Where is Gina’s Theatre?
What scholarships does she fund?
Which fellowships for start-up businesses, for artists, for writers, musicians?
Where is the institute she supports into cancer research?
Seriously, does anyone know?
I suggest you ask Ben Cubby or others how they feel about that kind of charity.
What a fine figure you must’ve cut, laughing, like that.
Back to the matter at hand. What does Gina give?
You are sounding crazy, Bananaman.
Please get some sleep.
I have the answer from an excelent source.
Gina runs a cancer charity for her mum, and she sponsors an opera singer. A single Opera Singer.
Apparently she is known to give her friends gifts on their birthday/xmas and take them out on her boat.
She is involved in no large scale philanthropy. She could build hospitals. She could build schools.
There is no such thing as ‘trickle down’ : it is now and always has been ‘siphon up’
The wealthy don’t want most of the wealth of the world; they want the whole lot.
They’re in for disappointment, and perhaps it is time for the tumbrils to roll again.
It is a tempting narrative to pursue, but ultimately just lazy. Rinehart is the wrong target. And I say that despite the very strong misgivings I have about her newly found desire to diversify her investments into underperforming media companies, to say nothing of the injustice of nurses, childcare workers, butchers, bakers and cabinetmakers earning so little by comparison.
But what kind of new Australia would half of Rinehart’s wealth even build ? It wouldn’t fund a third of a National Broadband Network, let alone a utopia of scientific and artistic endeavour. However, the plunge in our dollar as capital flees the country in response to the legislation required to appropriate Rinehart’s wealth would ensure we are much cheaper destination for overseas tourists.
We already have hundreds of billions of dollars of our collective wealth – superannuation – tied up in offshore equity markets, largely providing liquidity to hedge funds and other miscellaneous professional gamblers. That is a better target, Bob. Have a word in Albo’s ear about why Labor does not legislate to enforce a portion of our superannuation funds managed by institutional investors to be invested in Australian based scientific research and start-ups.
And when you’re next nursing hot coffee with Abraham Carr, you could ask him why Labor has maintained the kind of policies that have encouraged Australians to spend the past decade bidding up the price of our houses to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, much of which borrowed offshore, and all of it completely unproductive, ephemeral. No scientific research or artistic endeavour underwritten by this, no resulting increase to tourism. But future generations of Australians locked out of ever affording their own home. A childcare worker can now only dream of buying property in Sydney or Melbourne. Where is the justice in that ?
Rinehart’s wealth is a drop in the ocean compared to the lost opportunities resulting from asinine government policy. Liberal policy. Labor policy.
Great post
Well said Spleenbatt, although barricades and guillotines are starting to appeal to me more and more.
Well said Spleenblatt. However, I see no reason why we can’t go after the lot of em; Labor, Liberal and Rinehart et al
It was a shit post, spleenblatt. Gina PLUS Clive PLUS Alan Joyce would make a difference and you know it. Along with all the Alan Joyces. I know of someone who hit on a nice little gas earner in the Timor Sea, we are talking eye watering amounts spread between a handful of very secretive individuals. Sack the bookkeeper and hire a Financial Controller and pay him hundreds of thousands to outsource the accounts and keep quiet about exactly how eye watering type territory.
Nationalise the lot and interview for the most qualified people to manage it. People who know about geology and site management. Stuff like that. Because right now it’s the stockbroking cowboys who are the winners in all this.
Thankyou for the gleaming riposte. By all means, let’s get this revolution pumping. But don’t forgot Solomon Lew, Gerry Harvey, Kerry Stokes, Frank Lowy, Harry Triguboff, Lindsay Fox, Angus & Richard Grinham, et al. The heads of the Catholic and Anglican Churches. All of those pernicious middle class landlord siphons and their privately educated progeny. Let’s do this right. The laneways, promenades, and cul-de-sacs will glow crimson with the pulsing blood of crony capitalists, finance spivs, property developing sharks, and all miscellaneous traitors to the cause of equitably earned and equally distributed national wealth. Heads will roll, baby ! All senior employees past and present of Macquarie Bank please take your place in the Conciergerie. That includes you Bob Carr – that portentous baritone won’t save you now, I don’t care how fucking erudite you are. And Bob Hawke, erstwhile real estate spruiker, step up to the scaffold for your Blade One above the neckline, you festering great hypocrite. Yep, nationalise the lot of it, jail the executives, impoverish their families, conscript our young to the administration of oil rigs and iron ore deposits. Stuff like that. I’m on board. How can we make this happen ? Vote 1 Labor ?
Gina has wealth beyond what any individual could ever need or want. So much wealth, in fact, that her personal bank account alone could directly benefit the lives of any number of Australians. It’s not benefitting her, she is miserable, so there is one significant wealth resource not being put to any effective use right there. Alan Joyce and the various Telstra experiments show that CEO’s getting paid inordinate amounts is not a way of securing quality canditates, as is purportedly the reason. In fact, what you get is someone who is more than willing to sell their soul to do the bidding of the board. Again, we’re back to the interests of a handful of people versus society at large. If we go after the extreme end of wealth disparity then that alone would make a significant difference and the upper middle class private school afficionado’s could be left alone.
You have not addressed Spleenblatt’s post.
Are you unable to do so?
It does rankle somewhat to be trapped in a turbulent neo-liberal crony capitalist experiment, where coke-snorting 32 year old investment bankers earn 30 times the wage of a nurse caring for 3 children, and whose firms can rely on the support of the government’s balance sheet to cover their losing positions lest they threaten to topple the edifice of finance that keeps the furnace of consumption bubbling along. It rankles even more than no side of politics seems remotely prepared to do anything substantive to address this seemingly glaring flaw in our system, but then the system is at heart fundamentally, irretrievably flawed, as indeed, it might be said, are the people any system purports to serve. I can only take some solace in the greater likelihood that we would all probably be far worse off in a failed Communist experiment. At the very least, I’m pretty sure my own politburo connections would be not have been sufficient to secure me a decent car and edible bread.
Regardless, there is no scope for an Australian government to appropriate the assets of one specific, wealthy individual who has not broken any laws. There would have been scope for greater taxation of the sources of Rinehart’s wealth had Labor not scuppered its own original legislation in favor of a couple of multinationals and some breathing space from mining industry propaganda to win the next election.
Labor would do (would have done) better to address failed policy that supports equity and housing market ponzis, which do not create real, sustainable long-term wealth, and which have resulted in the massive misallocation of hundreds of billions of dollars to far greater long-term detriment than Rinehart’s own paper wealth. This is much harder to do, of course, far more vested interests and voters to piss off with this kind of policy approach, and who knows, maybe it would unravel the whole thing for everybody.
There was definitely an argument to be made for the quasi-nationalization of some of our banks receiving government guarantees circa 2008/9, but I fail to see that Rinehart’s own paper wealth is the basis for an equivalent argument for nationalization of the resource sector.
Nah, fuck it. I’m losing my resolve here. Let’s just tether the rancorous fat bitch to the pyre and melt her gold fillings down for free dental care.
Outstanding posts
As Churchill noted (and you echo) “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
The compulsary acquirement of private individual’s wealth (not the basis of proceeds of crime) and the nationalisation of banks are a slippery slope to accepting happily the dehumanising effects of communism. The scourges, the famines, the inhumanity.
It has always amused me no end that the leftist intelligentsia often harbour communist desires, and criticise open, liberal democracies. But you can see why – the communist manifesto was writen by a couple of young fellows who never had a job in their life. So there in lies the overlap of experience. In a delicious irony however the leftards are the very first people who would be subject to ‘re-education programs’ and gulags.
I had to have a cigarette after reading that.
This post has got more holes in it then the Timor Sea!
Name some.
When I die my three children will sell the place and with, probably, eight hundred thousand each be able to pay off modest houses of their own and take a European holiday each, with, by then, their spouses and four or five children.
If you think they do not deserve this please say so.
And give reasons.
Where is it written down that being of the left,automatically condemns you to sack cloth and ashes?
An opportune purchase of a house that has obviously increased well beyond its integral value, is a product of market capitalism, a complete distortion of true value buttressed with stupid housing policy by both sides of politics.
Well said, allthumbs. I’m a Labor supporter, but have done well out of my houses. Yet I have never bought a house with an eye on possible real estate gains, I have bought my houses as homes not counting on making money out them.It has just happened, maybe just good look and good choices..
What happened to the rule of law Bob? Do you do away with it when it suits?
Why only Gina? There are others that have large amounts of wealth?
Where do you draw the line?
This is providing government with absolute power over the lives of private individuals.
I am pretty sure the western world recognised that this was a bad maxim a couple of hundred years ago.
Are you against the rule of law?
Please answer this.
Spleenblatt is right about the housing market being Ponzi-like.
What is all this about the rule of law?
All it really means is that we are ruled by laws, whatever they are, rather than by the whims of one or more powerful individuals.
Exactly.
The rule of law is a legal maxim whereby governmental decisions are made by applying known legal principles.
What we are talking about is bending the rules to cut down one individual because we feel like it.
Hence the end of the rule of law.
Like I have said before, its a dangerous precedent to allow government to pass laws that appropriate wealth of certain individuals in a discretionary fashion.
I trust that you agree with this.
Of course. But I can be Devil’s Advocate with the best of them.
