Rinehart's poem

Western Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart has composed a poem and had it engraved on a boulder somewhere outside Perth. It’s a paean to rent-seeking capitalism that made me want to throw up. I reproduce it here for the purpose of amusement, as well as to shed some light on how Australia’s elites think:

The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy are 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 properity 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.

The poem’s content demonstrates the thinking of modern-day conservatives, and specifically the class of rent-seekers who make up WA’s mining elite. The idea that “hope lies with resources buried deep within the earth” is an implicit swipe at any efforts to establish a more secure manufacturing base in Australia, and would have the petro-tyrants of Riyadh, Tehran, and Caracas nodding in agreement. The line after that, extolling the virtues of “enterprise and capital” is pure Ayn Rand.

Following on, she tells us of jobs forced offshore and investments not made because of “political hacks” and “rampant tax”. No doubt she has been taking lessons from Republicans across the Pacific, as this matches their ‘job creators’ rhetoric. Then, we get more amusement from her assurances that prosperity is not “created by waving a magic wand”. Apparently she is too stupid to see the irony of this, as extractive industries are all about this – it’s things such as industrial policy which are hard work. (In the early United States, for example, Jefferson’s export-driven ‘yeoman farmer’ vision was more magic wand-like than Hamilton’s economic policies.)

The poem ends with accusations of prejudice against miners, workers, and foreigners on the part of those who don’t unfailingly support her industry. The idea that the corporate elite is more in touch with the working class than its critics is plain old right-wing culture war resentment, straight out of the Sarah Palin playbook. One of the most revealing lines, however, is her call to “welcome short term foreign workers to our shores”. This is where we see the conservative mind at work. Short-term, so that they are more vulnerable; permanent migrants might unionise and secure pay rises. The final line, calling for “special economic zones” reveals her intention, and that of Australia’s corporate elite: to turn this continent into one massive low-wage, non-unionised, undemocratic, unequal hellhole like Dubai or the Jim Crow South.

Make no mistake: this is the anti-Hamiltonian, anti-Keynesian, anti-manufacturing, anti-democratic, and anti-union vision which the Ayn Rand cultists who run this country, and every other, are hell-bent on imposing upon us. We must stop them before it is too late.