Rinehart wants red tape cut to make Australia great again

Gina Rinehart has warned that Australia is viewed by governments and business leaders around the world as “a joke”.

Gina Rinehart at her Helen Springs cattle station in the Northern Territory.

Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart has warned that governments and business leaders around the world “can’t understand us” or see Australia as “a joke” and she says the “debacle” over the Adani coalmine is not encouraging.

Ms Rinehart argued that the levels of red tape and bureaucracy in Australia created enormous costs and sovereign risk, so people did not want to invest.

“Global leaders and significant investors see us as a high-taxing, high-cost country who has all the resources that they could ever dream of, but we keep messing up,” she told The Australian.

“They can’t believe how we could get things so wrong.”

Ms Rinehart used the debate about energy pricing to back her view, saying that power prices were too high, and power in some places too unreliable, but governments listened to fringe groups and outlawed the use of coal or gas to produce cheap power.

“However, it is not just the politicians. Some of our communities see coal and gas as dirty words and then wonder why power costs are rising and wonder why investment goes overseas,” she said.

Australia’s fourth-richest person, with an estimated wealth of $10.4 billion, said the country needed to learn from successful governments that had cut red tape, for the immense benefit of their countrymen, like India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi or the US under President Donald Trump.

Ms Rinehart said Mr Trump was “leading” and taking America back to some of the grassroots that built the country.

“Obama used to say ‘yes we can’ but unfortunately he didn’t. Donald is most certainly a doer. In the future you’ll be able to reflect on this president as ‘yes he did’,” she said.

“When Donald says he is going to cut red tape and lower taxes and make America great again, he does it. Australia should adopt this.” The Australian billionaire suggested Australia should cut the number of public servants, halve the corporate tax rate and “make Australia great”.

Ms Rinehart said that the “huge and unsustainable” increase in red tape in Australia could be due to risk-averse government agencies, and political leaders who chased populism rather than good policy.

“Or perhaps it is mainly driven by power seeking, or a simple lack of knowledge of its impacts on business and jobs from governments that are becoming increasingly out of touch in our country,” she said.

“Whatever the reasons, the resultant red tape hurts investment, industry and industry development, job growth and living standards.”

Ms Rinehart, when asked about the recent federal budget, described it as “high taxing, high spending and more debt”.

“The opportunity to be a leader in our region, making Australia a lower-cost country, which would attract investment and create thousands of jobs, raising living standards, continues to be lost,” she said.

“Unfortunately, most politicians are too busy playing populist short-term politics, making things difficult for businesses with increasing red tape ... forgetting that it is businesses who create Australian jobs and provide the revenue for our defence, police, hospitals, elderly and roads and more, and are critical to enabling our very living standards.”