She’s our favourite leading lady to hate. And she’s encroaching on the remaining 30 per cent of the non-Rupert-owned media empire.
Gina Rinehart’s rising stake in Fairfax has the company and its readers battling vertigo as she inches closer to becoming supreme commander of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
At the time of printing, she stood at 18.7 per cent and her intentions were spelled out. She sought the position of deputy chairman, three of the eight board seats and to hire and fire editorial staff at will. She also refused to sign a charter for editorial independence.
Anti-Murdoch readers used to take comfort in the fact that Fairfax’s two mainstream metros (and a host of independently owned community papers) were alternatives to Rupert’s rags of the dark side. But now a sense of uneasiness has pervaded. If she claims 19.9 per cent of Fairfax stocks, she must propose a takeover bid.
The 58-year-old mining baron is worth $28.17 billion according to BRW’s top 200 list. Her promotion to the big leagues came after her father’s death in 1992 when she was crowned Executive Chairman of Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd and the HPPL group of companies.
In 2006, she made it to the billionaires club and last year became Australia’s richest person. She is currently the wealthiest woman in the world.
Mrs Rinehart’s 10 per cent stake in Channel Ten and her newfound interest in Fairfax begs the question: What’s her end game?
Unlike Murdoch, she has no experience in the media industry, let alone tested knowledge for carving out an evolving and increasingly digital landscape.
Instead of cutting her teeth in a newsroom, she spent her formative years being groomed for her what she does best: forging a lucrative mining kingdom and battling against the mining tax.
Thanks to her notorious taste for litigation, the mining madam’s disdain for the media is common knowledge. Recent run-ins with her offspring – a legal battle to remove Mrs Rinehart as trustee of her children’s trust – led her to insist on a suppression order, by appealing to the High Court. All for her family’s safety, we are to believe.
During the proceedings, an email from Mrs Rinehart to her daughter Hope was tendered to the court: “…your ill-considered action is now also causing media attention and jeopardising the lives of our family …Any prolonging of this unnecessary and irresponsible action … will cause continuing media attention and greater jeopardy for the safety of you and your children and family.”
A similar letter to her daughter Bianca said: “High prices will be obtainable from the media and undesirables for family photos. If you engage in bidding wars for such photos, you’ll just end up paying and they can use the photos anyway wherever they wish. You could be blackmailed forever.”
Apart from her recent foray into the media, Mrs Rinehart’s public profile has largely been focused on her cash cow – mining. An active opponent to the mining tax, the magnate seems dedicated to digging up Australian soil and even managed a gift of 1,715 imported workers from the federal government for the Roy Hill iron ore mine in Western Australia.
When she’s not busy colonising parts of the country for its resources, she’s rallying other industry heavyweights through the lobby group Australians for Northern Development and Economic Vision (ANDEV). Its
64 members, which include her son John Hancock and daughter Bianca Rinehart, claims the government is making it more difficult, risky and less financially enticing for investors.
ANDEV calls for a “Northern Economic Zone” to attract companies – domestic and international – with tax breaks. Not just a few. The group wants to bin fringe benefits tax and any chance of a resource super profits tax and it seeks to lower or eliminate payroll tax and knock back income tax. But we’re told that money-making is not the real focus here: “ANDEV has more to do with people than companies. Its about preserving Australia’s future for our families and future grandchildren.” A photo of four smiling children in hard hats and reflector vests and the words “children” and “grandchildren feature prominently on the website.
Little is known about where she stands on key political issues such as refugees, immigration, climate change, aboriginal affairs, health care, education, social welfare, trade unions, gambling and foreign conflicts. If she insists on having a louder voice than the rest of us, shouldn’t we demand that she make her opinions known? Had her publicist not declined an interview on her behalf, we may have all had a clearer vision of times ahead. Instead, I was told: “As you may appreciate, she is very busy, and, we receive many requests every week. It simply is not practical to spend a significant part every week granting interviews.”
The media’s role is to operate as a fourth estate, not to churn out propaganda for the powerful nor bury facts that should be transparent for the sake of public interest. Mrs Rinehart’s track record of gagging the media and her less than deferential position to its public service, points to the goal of choking what should be a democratic mouthpiece.
Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser hit the nail on the head when he said: “The idea that you can buy what you want is becoming pervasive and Rinehart seems to think politics and politicians are for sale,” in last weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald.
As consumers of news, it is our duty to demand for editorial independence regardless of who owns the enterprise. Or is it simply naïve to believe in such a concept when the most powerful person in Australia is signing the cheques?
