Mining magnate Gina Rinehart says China’s government is ‘doing a better job than ours’

Gina Rinehart has compared China’s economic, defence, education and energy policies favourably with Australia’s, warning Canberra’s net zero push risked destroying the nation’s agricultural sector.

Gina Rinehart. Picture: Nigel Hallett

The nation’s richest person Gina Rinehart has praised China’s energy, economic, defence, and education policies, while warning that the government’s net zero emissions policies risked destroying Australia’s world-class agricultural sector.

In a keynote address that she said might “shock” her audience, Mrs Rinehart, chairman of Hancock Prospecting, argued that the Chinese communist government was “doing a better job than our government”.

“Which country’s government understands the importance of reliable electricity production and is building many coal-fired power stations and nuclear ones?” she said, delivering the keynote ­address at an Institute of Public Affairs conference on the Gold Coast.

China has built 37 nuclear power stations over the past decade according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and has 22 under construction, while Australia has an outright ban on ­nuclear energy.

“Which country’s government is running down its military, lessening its defence spending, causing a decrease in military personnel … lowering morale, while the other country’s government is doing the very opposite?” she added in what as a clear reference to Australia’s struggle to maintain its existing defence capacity,let alone expand it.

Speaking at a dinner on the 78th floor of Q1 on Saturday night, Mrs Rinehart, 70, slammed Australian governments for “lowering education standards, adding woke agendas, making students anxious with climate-induced global extinction propaganda, [and] teaching its students not to be proud of their country”, in contrast to Beijing, she said, which was well aware of the dangers of “mal­iciously distorting, denigrating and negating” a country’s history.

“Which country’s government has introduced special economic zones, lowering government burdens, successfully introduced in thousands of other places around the world, to improve investment, development and raise living standards?” she said, a reference to a policy pioneered by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1980 of providing concessional tax arrangements in certain areas to foster economic growth.

“The conclusion certainly shocks, and please remember, I’m not referring to the rights or responsibilities of the individual.”

Tony Abbott, senator Jacinta Price, Judith Sloan, and others also spoke at an invitation-only, two-day conference that brought together some of the free-market think tank’s biggest supporters.

Mrs Rinehart also said net zero policies would cost typical Australian agricultural stations between $10.4m and $11.5m, excluding another $650,000 to switch from diesel generators to solar power and batteries. “Sadly, very sadly, should the government pursue its policies, Australians will be without their outstanding agricultural industry,” she said.

Scott Hargreaves, executive director of the IPA, said Mrs Rinehart’s speech would be “an inspiration to all Australians wanting our leaders to put us back on a road to prosperity and urgently address the immediate challenges to national security.”

In his remarks, former prime minister Mr Abbott warned conservative parties against becoming a cheer squad for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but urged them to embrace becoming voices for the working class. “There are a lot more working-class people than elites,” he said.

Mrs Rinehart also slammed the recent million-strong surge in immigration which, according to IPA research, had provided only 40,000 new workers, owing in part to strict limits on workforce participation for students, and social security tests that can make employment unattractive for retirees and pensioners.

“Many students attend uni classes on average for six hours a week, but are restricted from … full time work,” she said. “Australia is in a worker shortage crisis; why not let pensioners, veterans, university students, disabled work without onerous government paperwork, and severe financial repercussions?”

Mrs Rinehart has been a long-standing critic of government regulation and the regulatory push to transition energy supply away from coal to solar and wind power. Hancock Prospecting recently bought minority stakes in four rare earths companies including: Lynas, MP Materials, Arafura Rare Earths and Brazilian Rare Earths.

Adam Creighton was a guest of the IPA.