Dr Gina Rinehart AO
Long Service Awards & Chairman Birthday
SPEECH
Hello everyone and thank you for those wonderful messages and stories from across our businesses. It’s especially wonderful to know our staff say they’ve never worked for a better company than ours.
Reaching a decade or more with one company is a remarkable stretch. You might be interested to know, research shows on average, Australian workers spend just three years and four months with one company or employer, which makes your decade or more a very special achievement and shows much valued loyalty. And for years this was before any chairman’s profit share, loyalty bonuses, 2 gr Wagyu, and even before delicious Bannister dairy!
Big round of applause for each and every one of you please.
On this special occasion I’ve asked to have drawn,10 more raffles, for $100,000 each, pre-tax, just for those who’ve been with us for 10 years or more, whether able to be with us tonight, or working on site. If you have already won a raffle then this will be bypassed, to redraw, to benefit another.
Many of you have been with us from start-up of our mega Roy mine and together we’ve witnessed some of our most significant milestones – debt financing achieved, led by Garry Korte, an incredible task and a world record at the time and probably still is for a mainland, part greenfield mining and infrastructure project, requiring the sign off of 17 of the world’s major banks and 5 ECA’s to provide the essential US$7 billion of debt funding without which there would be no Roy mega project.
First ore railed, how good was it, that this ore reached Port Hedland on National Mining Day! -Nov 22nd, Tad and I, my daughter and others were standing by the rail to see, and of course thanks to you and the dedication of our then Roy COO Sanjiv, we were awarded fastest ramp up of any miner in the Pilbara – A outstanding, indeed rare achievement and one of many prestigious awards over the years.
We have a truly fantastic team of CEOs and CFOs that it has been a joy for me to work with over many years. 8 fantastic CEO’s who have worked very hard to help make companies we can all be proud of, please stand Garry, Gerhard, Sanjiv, Stuart, Adam, Sue, and overseas CEOs, Mike and Carlos. And Senexes new CEO Darren, plus all our supporting CFO’s Jabez, Greg and Chris.
Please join me in applause.
Ours being the most successful private company in Australia ever, and other successes would not be possible without all of you. I hope you are always very proud of our industries and their huge contribution to our country.
And what we have achieved together. Three cheers for all of you.
Hip, hip
Hip hip
Hip hip
Building our globally significant, mega Roy was a mammoth effort especially for our then small private company. Tad was with me back then, he remembers.
Of course, Taddie and I didn’t have the resources of fantastic CEOs and CFOs at the start of Hope Downs or when our fantastic partners first joined us at Roy. Please join me in showing enthusiasm for our loyal and hard-working Taddie, who has stuck by me through thick, thin and more thin!
And round of applause for our fantastic partners too please.
Years and years of thousands and thousands of approvals and government permits, endless regulatory hoops to jump through, layers upon layers of government tape to slow us down from all 3 tiers of government, and there was no shortage of left media delighted to spread Roy, and earlier Hope, would struggle or even fail.
But you showed up every day with a ‘can do’ attitude and remained loyal and fantastic and we sure proved the naysayers wrong!
Construction of billions of dollars’ worth of Pilbara development, building infrastructure, staff facilities, processing plants, a dedicated rail line, port berths, roads, airport, rather exciting times, weren’t they?
In your honour I’m delighted to announce tonight, that HPPL will pay for a unique and world class top floor of the new West Perth Hancock Iron Ore headquarters building, available for all staff after office hours, but with Roy providing the video conferencing room on that level.
I wish I could be with you to share this with you in person, plane failure instead, but here goes, straight from Europe.
Firstly, what our new building will look like in the daytime.
And taken from inside the mock up office building, even showing our Pilbara banded iron ore carpet!
It’s taken a while to achieve this, I love the colour, the desert sturt pea was my Mother’s favourite outback flower, she admired its strength in difficult hostile conditions, while maintaining its more delicate soft looking beauty. I inherited this love and placed this strong and beautiful flower on our logos for our cancer foundations, “survive and thrive”.
Now, outside video of nighttime, illustrating some of the many things we can do on our world first unique office building.
Now to match this world first, we had to come up with some pretty exciting common interiors, i.e. outside of practical comfortable work zones, and again we’ve called on European designers, to help us, led by Nina and her husband Francesco of Barberini and Gunnell.
Firstly, hope you like what your new cafe will look like.
And finally, what HPPL is providing for your top floor.
Well you may have noticed tonight we’ve saved on a few things, waiters, flowers, entertainment and even a roof, these savings are going towards the more lasting Hancock Iron Ore building, and Sanjiv has taken on an additional role, to commercialise, or monetise some of the things that Roy has developed for its infrastructure, including AI and possibly other Hancock companies too, where possible.
Do you all know the new york based story of p’nuts the famous squirrel?
Well, that’s a silver version of p’nuts immortalised, hanging above your teppanyaki area with a plaque displaying an important quote from the rather well known, brilliant Elon musk.
Quote, “The larger government gets, the less individual freedoms you have … Your freedoms have just been eroded year after year with more and more government, laws and regulations and regulatory authorities” end quote.
Now is not the time for Rino’s or Lino’s!
P’nuts was a harmless orphan squirrel, greatly loved by a New York couple who took him in and looked after him for 7 happy years, only to then be devasted by 4 government agencies, invading their home for 5 hours, ram shacking it to find their well-loved, clearly healthy squirrel and take it away. Those of you who think the government acts in your best interests, well, please think again, the innocent squirrels head was guillotined and the couple permanently lost a loved member of their family. 2 actually, Fred their raccoon, was guillotined too.
Now showing on the screen are some of our websites that you may not be viewing which have more info including several of the CPAC speaker videos. One such CPAC speech by President Milei, I will be referring to soon.
Some of you may remember I published a book on our bureaucracy experience – launched by Prime Minister Modi.
With his permission, borrowing the phrase he made famous for my title, “From Red Tape to Red Carpet”. Sadly, since book and even the annual national mining days I founded, things haven’t got better, in fact they’ve gotten worse. Far worse.
This is something we need all to be aware of, as it doesn’t just affect companies but affects all of your and your families’ futures so badly, that as the MCA has reported, 80 percent of the projects in the reported pipeline, are now the casualty list. The importance of this 80 percent can be better understood, when you add up the revenues of all non-mining businesses, their total together is less than our essential mining industry.
Villains of our living standards, we have a record 7 consecutive quarters of falling living standards, falling investment, record business failures, include Anti-mining policies like Nature Positive mining negative, Australia negative, alarmingly not yet dead if federal Labor is returned, especially if ALP Teal is our next government, Paris accord related onerous and complicated government tape and regulations, adding huge expense and adding more bureaucracy, paid for by you.
Did you know the size of the Canberra bureaucracy is forecast to grow from 173,558 to 209,150 this year, which you pay for. Just the increase is more than the entire populations of Margaret River and Esperance combined. There goes the opportunity for tax cuts – we have the privileged bureaucrats to pay for.
These are not our essential nurses, police or defence men and women but rather Canberra-based bureaucrats living in that far away Canberra cocoon, where producers and taxpayers take a distant place after handouts to marginal seats, unsuccessful ideological pet projects, non-productive policies like DEI and other left woke!
Is it any wonder investment is deserting australia? Investment needed to support our living standards and the future jobs for our children and grandchildren, and the homes they would like to be able to buy, and families they would like to be able to raise.
President Trump straight after his inauguration, on his first day, exited the Paris accord, and in that first week, the left media has scarcely reported, approximately a trillion dollars of investment flowed into the USA. By the time I was able to chat to President Trump, Friday night almost 2 weeks after his inauguration, the President told me more than 3 trillion dollars had flowed into the USA. It will take much more than a tiny tinkering around a few edges to start bank accounts opening and returning the investment flow to Australia.
Somehow, we need to get this message to the out of touch Canberra cocoon.
You’re welcome to copy and make use of our posters with the Kangaroo wearing driz-a-bone, borrowing from President Trump’s successful policy, much welcomed by American taxpayers, to drain the swamp.
Now CPAC USA was inspiring, wish you could all have been there! Any who want to go to CPAC next year with me, without leave days deducted, please write to Kath Savage as to why, and the winners will get that CPAC trip.
Now let me share with you parts of one speech given at CPAC, where many brilliant speeches were heard. This one is from the brave and intelligent President of Argentina, and I hope this outstanding leader who I’ve had the great privilege of meeting, won’t mind too much, my shortening and adapting some of his words for you. Even shortened it is a powerful speech, powerful in its messages. And is very relevant to Australia, but you’ll hardly see any media coverage of it here. I hope you will find encouragement as to what is happening overseas, even if not yet happening to benefit Aussies, and I hope you listen to every word.
Semi quote from Pres Javier Milei:
“History happens in stages, moments in which the spirit and the idea materialize in a person or in a group of people, sometimes close, sometimes with kilometres of distance between them, which, I imagine would be similar to the images we see in neural networks of the human brain. Today we are, in one of those moments in which History, is changing its course.
We are seeing in real time the destiny of countries around the world branching towards a new path, different from the place where the out of touch political establishment of our countries were taking us.
Just as in the 1930s it was possible to see that the flame of freedom was fading. Today we are witnessing a moment when the long march of the state over the individual is being rejected, in country after country.
I am referring, of course, to the collapse of the collectivist model, of the party state, and the dawn of a new era of freedom. I believe that we are genuinely fighting a crucial battle for the future of humanity.
We must understand where we stand and what we are up against in order to know where we want to go. Throughout the world, Western societies face the same problem and the same negative enemy: a political class that extracts more and more resources from citizens through taxes, in order to implement a model of bureaucratic expansion.
A political class who does not possess a crystal ball but that seeks to regulate every aspect of people’s lives, honouring one of the maxims of Benito Mussolini’s fascism: “Within the State, everything; outside the State, nothing; and nothing against the State.”
This political class or bureaucracy, is an extended caste whose members, beyond superficial differences, share the fundamental idea of the implementation of the advance of the State over individuals, over you and me.
They are all those who, out of financial self-interest, or are immersed in ideological propaganda devoid of common sense, or are naive to where such path leads, work for the interests of the State: the traditionally left media, the bureaucratic non entrepreneurial businessmen or power and or favour seekers, the generations of permanent bureaucrats who are not elected and the academic institutions that provide the theoretical framework and propaganda for state expansion; and all those who, in some way, belong to the cult of world collectivism. And, of course, this includes the traditional political parties, which, regardless of their name, follow the fundamental thesis that more State is better.
In Argentina, for example, we had a political system made up of “50 shades of socialism.”
In the United States, there was the illusion of bipartisanship, with a Democratic Party that set the agenda and a Republican Party incapable of confronting it… until the arrival of President Donald trump.
President Trump is an outsider, just like me because the task before us, the challenge before us, is not for traditional politicians who have long lived their lives off the system.
Patriotic leaders who owe nothing to anyone, who are not compromised by the vices of the system and who know that change is more important than power and financial favours to the government’s chosen ones, which obviously had to be financed by the taxpayers.
The modern State has more tools, which have grown in sophistication over time. We are not talking about an obvious State, like the neo-fascist or communist one, but rather a subtle and insidious State, which advances on the individual through art, propaganda and cultural infiltration.
I am talking about the financing of academia, encouraging the elaboration of studies that justify the implementation of interventionist public policies, and the direction of media outlets. I am talking about the subsidies to culture, to produce propaganda and here in the United States, the USAID scandal, which allocated millions of dollars from taxpayers to finance everything from magazines and television channels (to DEI and) to electoral fraud.
And governments with discriminatory aspirations, among many other aberrations, including the agenda of climate paranoia, the excesses of gender ideology and the lab research that led to the creation of COVID.
In short, I am talking about a global network of influence and opinion paid for with its citizens’ taxes, a propaganda apparatus unprecedented in human history, perhaps the largest political scandal we have ever seen.
Beyond their obvious incompetence, the political class is not dedicated to solving problems. After all, a solved problem is an area from which the State must withdraw. On the contrary, the political class is dedicated to perpetuating problems and thus living off them forever. That is why they live creating new problems, installing them from their propaganda machines to then offer themselves as a solution. And what does that solution consist of? the implementation of regulations that cause even more problems, (and expense) to be added to by more regulations.
In medicine, the term “iatrogenesis” is used to refer to the damage suffered by a patient as a consequence of medical care. It could be said then that the statist regime consists of iatrogenesis as a State policy!
Today, those of us who want to dismantle this dangerous or insane system are called anti-democratic. But, again, this is a misrepresentation of words, something very typical of the left. They do not call democracy the government of the people by the people, but the paradigm of unlimited state expansion that they themselves administer. For them, democracy only exists if they win what they want, so they can subject the people to their regulations. But when they are the electoral minority, the majority’s choice somehow becomes “undemocratic”! In fact, many of those who accuse us of being undemocratic were not even elected. They make decisions that affect billions of people around the world. They are accountable to no one but themselves, and they cannot be ousted by popular vote. And yet, they talk to us about democracy!
They say that President Trump and I are a danger to democracy, but in reality they are saying that we are a danger to them. We are a danger to the State party, to those who live off its unlimited expansion, to those who want an individual dependent and subject to their regulatory whims. And they know they are right: we are their worst nightmare. We come for their privileges, having been elected by the majority of each of our people, with the clear mandate to take away from them a power that should not belong to them.
Today, our countries, Argentina and the United States, need to go through a second independence. The first freed us from the European monarchies; the second will free us from the tyranny of the State party.
That is why we have put effort into identifying it, because you cannot fight against what you do not know. Having a well-defined enemy is a fundamental aspect of our cultural battle. Now we know it, we have won the elections and we are in the process of disarming its tool of perpetual oppression. We do not have any secret formula to disarm it’s leviathan, only knowing human history and knowing what has worked and what has not.
We defend a set of values that we are not willing to negotiate, just as they have not been willing to negotiate when it came to taking away our freedom. What they imposed without our consent is being eliminated without their consent. That is why we are passing the chainsaw through the sectors and powers of the State that we consider superfluous, redundant, unnecessary or directly harmful to our citizens.
And, what’s more, this year we intend to put into motion Phase 2, which we have dubbed “the deep chainsaw,” to continue shrinking the State, giving back to the people the wealth that should never have been taken from them.
Shrinking the State is cutting off the hose to the State’s entrenched bureaucracies, fuelled by taxpayers’ money to keep us subjugated. They exercise fierce resistance to change.
Our method is similar to that of our dear friend Elon Musk: going through office by office, keeping what works and serves, and discarding the rest. That’s why I gave him a chainsaw.
With us, no one who cannot justify the cost of their salary in taxes is safe. Many of them will have to return to the private sector and earn a living by offering their goods and services in the market, just like the taxpayers they have lived off for so many years.
My condolences to the politicians who believed this moment would never come, because they are going to get a bucket of cold water. Fortunately for them, in every misfortune there is an opportunity, and because of our regulatory progress, private sector wages will continue to rise. So, if they do things right, they can be part of progress, away from the state caste.
Here in the United States, rebellious bureaucrats have attempted to sabotage the work of the Department of Government Efficiency and are resorting to bureaucratic and legal mechanisms to try to block any reform, which is also happening in our country, and it is something we must fight every day. But none of this has taken us by surprise. We are aware that they will do everything possible to stop this change, no matter the resulting damage. If they have to destroy the world to preserve their privileges, they will do so, and we will continue to fight.
It is essential that the nations that have embraced the ideas of freedom remain united and collaborate with each other. We must form an alliance of free nations, because, as I have said on other occasions, organised evil can only be defeated by organized good. Only through this right-wing international can we put an end to the political caste we are facing, which is plunging the West into the darkest depths, and regain the impetus to protect ourselves from the despotic forces that want to subjugate us.
Only in this way can we get out of the nightmare of the omnipresent State and continue doing what we know how to do with the West: test the limits of what is possible, trusting in the creativity, common sense and problem solving of individuals and not in the sterile discretion of self-serving bureaucrats. Only in this way can we return to our path of greatness as a civilization, honouring our ancestors, who gave their lives to see a free world and a prosperous humanity. Only in this way, can we rediscover ourselves and believe again in what made us great as a civilization and nation. May God bless the Argentine Republic, may God bless the United States, and may the forces of heaven be with us. Long live freedom!”
End quote.
Congratulations and thank you for your loyalty and years with us which have helped build the company we can all be so proud of today.
I rather hope you found meaning and inspiration in President Milie’s shortened address, as Australia sure needs its billabong drained and needs you speaking out.
Please enjoy the evening.
