Mining magnate Gina Rinehart has spoken at a series of Bush Summits where the billionaire businesswoman outlined five key priorities for Australia.
Below is a transcript of one of Mrs Rinehart’s speeches in the series. In this address, delivered in Launceston, Tasmania, Mrs Rinehart spells out her argument how government tax and regulation should be wound back to put the country on an upward trajectory.
Hi and welcome to all our farmers, small businessmen, miners and other regional Aussies, struggling with time taking government paperwork, and policies that don’t consider the people in our country areas!
It’s fantastic to be welcoming you to the Bush Summit here in Launceston.
The Bush Summit, like defence, has become increasingly important as I hope it is one that enables those in the country areas to be heard, rather than taken for granted and overlooked.
No matter how hard we work, no matter how much we contribute, and that we have developed primary industries that shine on the global stage.
Our agricultural produce is amongst the best in the world, aren’t we fortunate to be able to enjoy it, and our mining companies are world leaders.
Again, lucky us, as that is the engine room of Australia and massively contributes more than all other industries combined, to give us the high living standards we currently have.
Thank you to all members of our primary industries. And to our small and medium businesses.
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart has spoken at a series of Bush Summits
These standards of living are not an accident. They are the result of investment and our incredible people in our primary industries.
Mining provides not only jobs that pay more on average than the national average of salaries and wages, but massive export earnings, the largest of any industry, and taxation revenue too.
Yes, without the billions in taxation revenue mining provides – 65,000 police and 210,000 nurses each year – Australia would simply not be the same.
Yes, the mining industry is a stand out contributor, but too often we just think of this in economic terms, rather than the lives it helps.
Mining revenue helps to provide for our elderly, our people in trouble in emergencies, our uni students, and is essential for the houses we built.
The copper those in Tasmania explore for or mine, is used in pipes and to convey electricity. The iron ore you explore for or mine, helps to build machinery and equipment essential to build houses – from scaffolding, cement mixers, saws, to the everyday shovel and scrapers needed for brick mortar and tiling, and much more. In short, lack of supply of these minerals forces up the cost of housing. The housing crisis doesn’t stop on the mainland, I know it reaches Tassie too.
It is upon these primary industries that all other activity is built. We cannot have manufacturing without mining and agriculture. We cannot have healthcare without mining, including oil and gas. And we cannot have defence, which is meant to be the government’s prime responsibility to its citizens, without the revenue-creating industries and the many companies they support that contribute tax revenue.
It seems it is too easy for some to forget that every aspect of our lives is touched by either the mining or the agricultural industry. As you’d know, everything either has to be grown or mined, be it the food on our tables, the energy used to refrigerate or cook it, or the utensils used to eat it, and much more.
These Bush Summits are a refreshing opportunity to hear from those in country areas, and I hope with the help of the Bush Summit media, that our governments listen.
This is our time to let our politicians know we don’t want to go down as an industry or country, we want to go up. We want to see policies that don’t frighten away investment, that instead lead to increased investment, increased living standards, and more in your pocket after tax, to spend as you wish. We want to hear from pollies that they will be the leaders that deliver the up.
We’ve sure had enough of the ‘down‘. The down makes many parents worry for the future of their children and grandchildren. And many in agriculture worry if the agricultural industry can even survive.
Down will continue if we don’t cut government approvals and tape, that add costs and delays. But it’s not just businesses that are hurt. Given these expensive government burdens, there’s less money available for wages and staff benefits, less money available for employing more staff, less money for training and retraining, less for donating to charities or for research. And it worsens if expansions or new projects are delayed or lost thanks to government tape and slow approvals, as all of the above gets even worse. Let’s stop the view that government burdens don’t matter, they only affect businesses, they don’t, they add costs to all, and many people suffer.
The Minerals Council of Australia has recently estimated that we are missing out on some $68 billion of investment because our major mining projects are ‘increasingly put in the too-hard basket because of the challenging investment environment in Australia’.
The MCA found that only 5 per cent of projects at the feasibility stage will move to a favourable financial decision each year, and that only 20 per cent of projects that debut on Australia’s major projects list are progressed to completion, while 80 per cent are abandoned altogether. Not the pipeline of projects list our media or pollies talk about, when 80 percent are abandoned!
Without cutting government tape and abandoning negative policies, this situation will only get worse.
And we all know of the rising costs of living. I especially feel during these rising costs for all those trapped in poverty on pensions of one type or another, our 2.5 million pensioners, incredible veterans, uni students and disabled, not permitted to work without onerous paperwork, and then only permitted a few hours per week. Each of these people should be permitted to work as long as they’d like, so they are not trapped unable to cope with the rising costs crisis.
Too many in our country are with these government restrictions wrongly facing ‘heat or eat’. This is unacceptable; our politicians should act immediately. And we have a worker shortage crisis, scarcely helped by expensive immigration, while making it difficult for our own Aussies to work if they chose. Let’s not forget, the approx. one million migrants this government has brought in, resulted in only approx. 40,000 added to the workforce. Yet, causing many disadvantages, the nearly one million people adding to our housing crisis, increasing the cost of rentals, straining police with more crime resulting, and increased delays into hospitals, even being turned away from emergency, as our doctors, nurses, medical facilities simply can’t cope. And delays in medical treatments too.
If only our governments would truly consider the farmers and many struggling, instead of nice sounding words, even saying they like visiting here and meeting country people from around Launceston. We don’t want empty words, we want to know taxes that were to be dropped when GST came in, payroll, licence fees and stamp tax will be dropped. Wouldn’t that help the cost of living. Wouldn’t that help to lower housing costs.
We want to hear that the federal government will drop its excise tax on fuel, not just lowering costs for our cars and other vehicles, but lowering the cost of all transported goods, and all goods that require fuel for their processing or manufacture! Removing excise duty on fuel would actually help the cost of housing crisis, rather than the government building housing, when the record of government building infrastructure yells, big mistake, too inefficient, too expensive!
We are unfortunately on the ‘down’ path. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that we have now seen five consecutive quarters of negative economic growth per person.
Let’s instead lift our country ‘up’.
Please use your time and voices, at every opportunity, for Australia to return to this ‘up’ path.
I’ve encouraged in my speeches at the bush summit in Townsville and Bendigo, increasing our defence and defence industries, and fixing our curriculum, to help with the path up. Continuing now with my outline of what I believe needs to be done for our country, I’m sad to say we are over governed and overtaxed, I believe it should be a priority for our governments, in the interests of Australians, to cut the size, expense, and intrusion of government.
On my last visit to Tasmania, to see my relatives on my father’s side of our family, mixed farmers, I asked what they and their friends found to be their greatest concerns. Then the concerns were IR related and excessive environmentalism. Now I read it’s the housing crisis.
Australia will continue in a downward direction if we don’t cut government approvals and tape, that add costs and delays, Mrs Rinehart says
Our major resources projects and primary producers spend much of their time, energy and money dealing with an ever-increasing burden of government tape. As mentioned above, few mines even proceed to development. It seems that government don’t realise you must have new mines or even extension of mines, as mines are not sheep with fleece that grow each year,. When depleted, the revenue, jobs and opportunities stop. And all the many businesses they support suffer too.
Our politicians may forget, but we cannot afford to, governments do not create wealth, they only consume it.
Governments do not make money, there is only taxpayers’ money. Whether it has come from current contributors and workers through the many different taxes they are charged, or if it comes as those charges to future contributors and workers by being run up as debt, for our children and grandchildren to be high taxed in future to repay. We should remember, handouts from government cost the taxpayers, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Indeed, government handouts to their favourites or the noisy, are a very inefficient way to redistribute wealth, and taxes must pay for this.
In the first two years of its existence, the current federal government added an average of an extra 50 bureaucrats each and every day. But remember these are not new productive revenue creating jobs. These are new revenue consuming jobs, eating up the revenue produced by Australians, you and me. For each new bureaucrat role created by Canberra, the cost to all of us increases.
It’s time to turn this around. It’s time to get back to common sense and get back to the ‘up’ path. Getting government out of the way, reducing the number of bureaucrats employed to tie up our economic development. Cutting the government’s tape and tax burdens is the path to increased levels of investment, essential for higher levels of growth, higher levels of living standards, and more after-tax monies in your pocket for you to spend as you would wish.
I’ll continue with the other important priorities as I see them as the Bush Summit travels to each destination.
And please don’t forget to join us at this year’s National Agriculture and National Mining and Related Industries Days, this year to be held at Penfolds and Santos, with more information on the screen. These are important national days, they are your days, November 21 and 22 each year, please make sure they’re in your calendar. Hope to see you there.
Thank you.
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