Gina Rinehart: World's Richest Woman Criticizes Poor 'Lazy' Workers, Australians Respond to Insult
Gina Rinehart, a mining magnate who is worth £19 billion ($30,040,900,000), has been under fire by both the wealthy and working class for her advice in a column about how to become rich. According to The Telegraph, Gina Rinehart said people should "spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working" to become more successful.
Gina Rinehart's comments came from her column in Australian Resources and Investment magazine. The business woman added that the minimum average wage of $600 a week should be cut. Rinehart also suggested Australia has lost it's "hard-working roots," and that billionaires, such as herself, helped the poor more than others, The Telegraph reported.
However, many Australians have responded to Rinehart's comments, saying that they are insulting for those who are not born into a mining fortune and instead must work for their food.
"These sorts of comments are an insult to the millions of Australian workers who go to work and slog it out to feed the kids and pay the bills," Wayne Swan, deputy prime minister of Australia, said. Rinehart deems Australians as "lazy workers who drink and socialise too much," Swan continued.
Ged Kearney, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, added: "Gina Rinehart's comments are the product of someone who has never had to earn a living and an insult to millions of working Australians who didn't have the head start of inheriting a fortune from their father and of being able to bully politicians by virtue of their inherited wealth."
Rinehart was declared the richest woman in the world in May 2012. She inherited a £13 billion ($20,614,100,000) fortune from her father in 1992 and has since added to her wealth. Rinehart capitalized on growing prices and demand in China and India, to build an iron ore empire worth more than $30 billion.
As a business woman, Ian McIlwraith, a business commentator at Fairfax Media, said Rinehart is seeking for attention she feels she deserves.
"Rinehart is simply frustrated that she is not getting the adoration she feels businesspeople like herself deserve, and is not yet able to cut the ribbon to open her own major mine," McIIwraith said. "Her rosy - and self-serving - view of Australia's past somehow neatly avoids its origins as a convict dumping ground, but instead invites more of a US-style pattern of development by pioneering capitalists. That is almost as mythical as her $29 billion of worth."