Grubstakers - Episode 18: Gina Rinehart

Episode Date: June 3, 2018

Episode 18 of Grubstakers is our first international episode. We leave the US behind and take a look at the richest citizen of Australia, Gina Rinehart. Learn all about how the only daughter that Lang Hancock actually acknowledged paternity of built her vast fortune by skillfully inheriting his claim to the largest iron mine in the world then having commodity prices go up. Plus more family drama than could be contained in the mini series about her that she got banned from tv.

Hey everybody, welcome to Grubstakers. Today we're going to take a trip to the land down under to investigate Gina Reinhart. She's a mining heiress. Some people think she rocks. We'll see whether she does. So throw a shrimp on the barbie, crack open a Foster's, and here come some Grubstakers for you. I think we disproportionately stop whites too much.

I taught those kids lessons on product development and marketing, and they taught me what it was like growing up feeling targeted for your race. I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. You know, I went to a tough school in Queens, and they used to beat up the little Jewish boys. You know, I love having the support of real billionaires. Hey everybody, welcome to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. I'm here, Sean P. McCarthy, joined as always by my friends... Andy Palmer.

Yogi Poliwal. Steve Jeffries is out today. He's doing essential work for the DSA. They gave him the contract. He's going to carry out the hit on Angela Nagel. That's right. But we're very happy to be here.

We're doing an international episode today. You know, all of our billionaires up till now have been United States billionaires. That's right. And, you know, we Americans, we may think that we are the only people in the world who matter or whatever other arrogant stereotypes you might have if you are listening from outside of the United States. But we wanted to give a thank you to the people of Australia who have, I believe, our biggest listenership outside of the United States comes from Australia. I think Canada might beat them a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, I guess. But Canada is America, if you know what I mean. It's the 51st state. But across the pond, Australia is our number one. That's why today we are doing an episode of Gina Reinhart, born Gina Hancock, the richest woman in Australia. So we're going to get into that. And her name is shortened.

Her actual name is Georgina because her father wanted a boy named george but settled with a daughter named georgina and i think we'll dig into her father first he settled with three daughters one of which he acknowledged named georgina all right andy let's let's cut up andy's gonna have plenty of time to uh uh really thrill our australian listeners with the jokes that they have heard from every american doing study abroad in the land of wonder the land down under that's where we're going today yeah great let's get into gina reinhardt here uh gina reinhardt forbes uh estimates as of may 2018 she's worth about 18 billion dollars she is currently the seventh richest woman in the world and as we

mentioned she's australia's richest citizen she was born in 1954 to a man named uh lang hancock who was uh quite the character um if we want to start with his biography i guess or we should yeah i guess we'll go and he was a charming fella yeah so um lang hancock essentially he was a miner and the people give various degrees of credit to him for uh discovering what's called the hammersley mine which is uh by volume of production the biggest iron mine in the world currently hammersley and uh so and even today um gina reinhardt's fortune a big part of it comes from this because she gets a 1.25 annual royalty check from the hammersley mine which was a joint venture between her father and rio tinto which is an aust is an Australian and British multinational mining company.

And essentially, so she gets 1.25% of the profits of the biggest mining company every year just for essentially having inherited the rights. Right, right. Like no work whatsoever. but so the urban legend is that Mr. Lang Hancock in 1952 was flying over this mine and he it was with his then wife and it was a rainstorm

and apparently he noticed like the color of the rain rust basically is what they say in the yeah then this was like a very you know iron rich area though one of her own... And he said to her, I say, turned to his wife and said,

can't you hear, can't you hear that thunder? You better run, you better take cover. Though it should be noted that one of Gina Reinhart's own employees disputes this. Fred Madden worked at Hancock Prospecting as the company. We'll get into them a bit more later. He worked there as an executive, and he was one of the few Gina Reinhart employees who did not sign a nondisclosure agreement. Lucky him. that it was, quote, discovered by him was ridiculous. He said, quote, overblown, excuse me. And he said that the iron ore there was actually, quote, discovered by a government geologist in the 19th century. Lang Hancock, he described as just an individual

who came along at the right time. And indeed, Lang Hancock essentially, after whether or not you want to give him credit for discovering it, lobbied Australia relentlessly to change the laws of mineral ownership. And this was something Lang would do that Gina does not, where he would openly speak with the press and really embellish his origins and how he became Lang Hancock, the man down under. Yeah, I guess she can't really do that, being that she's an heiress to his empire, He became Lang Hancock, the man down under. Yeah. Yeah, I guess she can't really do that, being that she's an heiress to his empire.

So she can't be like, and then I discovered all of my dad's money. Right. Well, that's like, and this is like where her personality, she's very prickly about this idea of being an heiress or whatever. My main source for this episode is a great New Yorker article I'll link to on the tumblr uh it's it's about her it's called the miner's daughter but basically they say that um her her website uh for like the current project they have going at roy hill which we'll also talk about a little bit the website like and other media that's officially launched by her always tries to upplay the financial distress that her father's estate was in when she took it over. And, of course, a background to this is that Australia's mining economy is booming mainly because of Chinese production. You know, Chinese manufacturing.

Well, it was booming in like 2012 oh okay uh but she she actually kind of her wealth went down a bit since 2012 i believe yeah i think she was worth like 30 billion and now she's down to third 18 at one point she it was 18 and now she's down to like 10 or something forbes has her at 18 today oh at one point she was the richest woman uh not only in australia but also the world, when at the height, I believe it was around $30 billion. That was before Steve Jobs started his cancer treatment. But Lange's wealth was from selling his iron to the Japanese.

Apparently, they bought a lot of iron from him back then. But Lange also not only did this mining stuff, but he also was an asbestos... They needed that iron to manufacture tentacles. They had this huge Godzilla problem. That is an offensive stereotype, Sean. Fosters. Australian for beer. Sorry, a little interlude from our sponsor.

Fun digression. They do not drink fosters in Australia, as you might have heard, but the most popular beers down there in the top five, or Corona, I believe, is number two. I'm just remembering this. And I believe Victoria is actually another Mexican beer

that's very popular down there. Okay, well, I just have this one. Fosters, Australian for beer. But yeah, Lang was manufacturing asbestos as well that was the other thing he was so yes before he discovers quote unquote this iron mine uh he is a uh and i'm quoting from the new yorker he ran a blue asbestos mine uh in the 1930s and 40s uh that was again quoting from the new Yorker, thought to have caused hundreds of asbestos-related deaths, many of them among its largely aboriginal workforce. And if you've read a little bit about Australia or you live in Australia, you might know that

the country has a troubled history with the aboriginal people who live there. And in the case of Lane Hancock, he had some outspoken opinions on them. Lane, what do you think? Those that have been assimilated into earning good living or earning wages amongst the civilized areas that have been accepted into society and they have accepted society and can handle society, I'd leave them well alone.

The ones that are no good to themselves and can't accept things the half cast and this is where most of the trouble comes i would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in future and that would solve the problem apparently he is not including his illegitimate daughter in that quote she's one of the good ones you know she really no she's one of the half cats or half-cats. I don't know if he was trying to, like, cool it up with his eugenics. Like, hey, the half-cats, we need to sterilize them. I think so. I think he's trying to be real hip.

We need to castrate those half-cats, daddy-o. There's the gang in West Side Story that drinks gasoline. And, yeah, that was in the 1980s that he said that, right? Yeah, 84, I think. Something like that, yeah. And it was on like government television. It wasn't like a hidden microphone. It was like a studio with a camera pointed at it.

And he was like, yeah, we need to get rid of the Aboriginals. What happened to Australianralian men huh but so we mentioned uh he um allegedly had a an illegitimate child with an aboriginal woman and i'm quoting uh from the new yorker here it's a hilda kickett um and the new yorker says that she is the member a member of what is called in australia the stolen generation which was basically aboriginal children i'll quote here aboriginal Parker says that she is a member of what is called in Australia the Stolen Generation, which was basically Aboriginal children, I'll quote here, Aboriginal children who were seized from their parents by the state with little or no explanation and raised in orphanages under an openly racist policy that was in place until 1969.

And there's this Daily Telegraph article about Hilda Kickett, and basically she talks about growing up, Lang would come by and give her gifts, and was basically essentially... Here, drink this water. a kind of decent deadbeat dad, but then essentially she didn't know about him being her father for years, and then by the time she found out, there's no money for you, Hilda. It's all for me, Georgina. Yeah, she's got to fund climate change denial or whatever other charitable project she's working on.

I heard there was like another child that Gina's mother had but then they went on a camping trip and uh oh my god well you know those dingos are a problem i like how we pitched this idea as like an episode to kind of appeal to our australian listeners but what we're actually going to do is alienate all of our Australian listeners. Like, oh, they're doing Dingo Ate My Baby and Foster's Beer Jokes. Well, listen. Because every day's a good day in Australia.

Wait, do the Outback Stakehouse. Come and say good-bye. I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie. All right. Well, anyway, so her father, Mr. Lang Hancock, again, rather controversial, killed hundreds possibly of Aboriginal and other minors with asbestos poisoning.

And random note, to the end of his life, he denied that there was any problem with asbestos. Yeah random note to the end of his life he denied that there was any problem with asbestos yeah right yeah like asbestos doesn't cause health problems and you know this kind of nonsense and then uh like daughter like father um gina reinhardt is a huge global warming denialist and uh funds those kinds of projects throughout australia and in fact helped lobby to get the carbon tax that existed in australia repealed oh really yeah wow what a piece of shit yeah you know what uh i have found no evidence of this but considering his uh close uh political ideology with uh charles limburg i'm gonna

speculate that he murdered amelia erhardt mean, he was in World War II. We don't know what they did. Yeah. She was in the area. Nobody thought about looking out for the dingo with the Lindbergh babies. All right. So basically, we mentioned Gina Reinhart was born Gina Hancock. She took the name Reinhart from an American lawyer named Frank Reinhart,

who was disbarred in the U.S. for tax fraud. Oh, my God. And that's when she fell in love. But, yeah, so we should kind of cover the estate battles because Frank Reinhart, her husband, dies in 1990, but Lang Hancock, her father, is very much skeptical of this guy, and he thinks he's maneuvering her against him

in the estate battle. Wait, so her first husband died in 1990? No, her second husband. Yeah, it was her second husband. Her first husband got divorced in 1981. Okay. Greg Hayward. Not much information about him. Oh, so Re reinhardt died in 1990 yes okay right but but uh yeah lang

suspected that reinhardt was positioning gina to try and do a hostile takeover oh yeah yeah i mean here's the thing you know a thing that you'll notice with the hancock reinhardt's whatever you want to call it is that all of them are trying to take one another's money even though it's all of their own right yeah there's a lot of like palace intrigue with the Reinhardt's like so essentially when uh Lange uh after Lange lost his his lovely lady he fell in love with his uh housekeeper housekeeper right uh named rose and then there was a legendary feud between gina and rose because gina thought that rose was going to take all the money right yes this is this actually was the stuff of uh tv miniseries and libel lawsuits house of hancock's yes so they they made a tv series well i guess we're jumping ahead um but

but basically so um lang hancock and uh gina i like to think of it as the godfather part four all the quality of part three but so uh gina and her father like got along very well and she kind of like had originally you know she kind of like worship, had, originally, you know, she kind of, like, worshipped the man and was, like. She was a daddy's girl. Obsessed with, you know, minerals and mining or whatever the fuck. There's some story about how he bought her, like, ten cars for, I think, when she was in high school or whatever the Australian equivalent is. Yeah, there's stories about. And to show her love, she filled them with rocks.

There's, like, other stories about they would travel 600 miles for groceries between the mines. Essentially, she was a daddy's girl through and through to the term, including their blood. But Rose Petraeus was a very interesting person. I was able to procure an episode two of House of Hancocks because the defamation lawsuit, is that what it's called?

Yeah, libel lawsuit. The libel lawsuit that Gina Reinhart gave them basically made it so that they couldn't release it on DVD and they couldn't stream it. Libel laws are great, aren't they, folks? And McCarthy, you said that they made it also so that she made cuts in the second episode? Right.

So here's the quote from The Guardian. She won the right to see the second episode before it was broadcast and ordered nine parts edited out of it. And then she later took legal action, quoting from The Guardian, she later took legal action against the network and subsequently the production company for defamation and uh it should just be noted like um you know for all the united states's flaws uh the first amendment and freedom of speech or whatever is i think a unequivocally good thing because um the united kingdom and australia have much more stringent libel laws donald trump for his part wants to bring stringent libel laws here so he can sue the press. And it's like, well, it's like what happens with libel laws or the courts in general is that people who have the resources to contest speech are the ones who actually end up contesting them.

And, you know, there have been stories about like in the in the United Kingdom, because it's so easy to sue book publishers there. If a book is published in the United States that somebody doesn't like, they will order a copy to be sent to the United Kingdom, and then when it arrives, sue them in UK courts for libel. So if you are listening in Australia, I'm sorry that you have become a defendant in the subsequent lawsuit that will be filed against us. I'm pretty sure that the first episode of House of Hancock has a lot more juicy dirt because the second one that I watched, I got about 40 minutes into the hour of it. And I have to say it's surprisingly accurate. More importantly, the production.

Except they made Gina like 10 times as hot. I will say that the casting on house of hancock's fucking perfect uh i don't know how many australians look like this uh billionaire family but they got the best versions that are also actors um and rose uh now portrays is like surprisingly interesting she's got her own wikipedia page and if you look at her occupations right after after uh lang died rose married his best friend yes literally five months later yeah which solid double dip right right house of hancock the wildly accurate documentary about the reinhardt family uh shows uh rose that statement just cost Yogi $10 million.

But basically it shows like Rose badgering Lang being like, because Lang was not forced, but basically Lang said, Gina, you're going to get the company when I'm dead. And Rose was saying that like, maybe you should keep like the shit you made because I don't know, you a boss son. And also, you know, that would make it so that Rose would receive a good chunk of that money. So I think what it was was the...

They're very urban, this family. Yes, they're extremely urban. What if the thing we get sued for is calling them urban? Anyway, Rose tells Lang, hey, you gotta... Basically, the show makes it seem that Rose badgered Lang so much that he had a heart attack in his sleep, and that's why he died. And there's, like, a very dramatic scene where Rose is, like, crying, and the maids are pushing her into the room to finally say goodbye to Lang. It is true, though.

The number one cause of death in Australia is nagging. She's being pushed in the room just dramatically crying and Gina's sitting in the bedroom waiting for her to come in and Rose lays on Lang because Lang's last request was like, hey, Rose, please sleep with me tonight. And she's like, how about you just take this and gives him a framed picture of herself

and the next day dies. But Gina just gives Rose the biggest stink eye. Like, fuck you for killing my dead lady. Well, a fun little tidbit there is after Lang died, Gina had several of his organs taken out before he was cremated and had them preserved so that she could make a murder case. Really? Yeah. This man has asbestos poisoning. But yeah,

no, she was like obsessed. It's illegal when Brown people do it. She was obsessed with like proving that Rose killed her father or something. I think that she did like two autopsies or two inquests to try and that's right get this determined um but uh excuse me one other uh thing was that as we mentioned they had john's been drinking fosters it tastes like shit i had one it's awful really yeah i mean they just

sold a shit beer by convincing americans that drink it when nobody in Australia drinks it. But anyway, so they were close originally. But then with Frank Reinhart and with Rose, their relationship was strained. And apparently Gina Reinhart told her father that he was a laughingstock. And I'm quoting from The Independent here, the subject of, quote, dirty old man jokes, because he took up with his housekeeper. And he apparently responded, if you won't consider my well-being, at least allow me to remember you as a neat, trim, capable, and attractive young lady, rather than the slothful, vindictive, and devious baby elephant that you have become.

And, you know, I think baby elephant is the best insult anybody will ever land on her. In House of Hancock's, the riveting biography documentary about the Reinhardt family, they show Rose injecting her butt with drugs, which I'm pretty sure they talk about in the first episode, but I couldn't find that one. But I found this quote in The Guardian of Rose talking about the addiction. She's addicted to the painkiller, Pethidine, P-E-T-H-I-D-I-N-E. And this is really great. She goes, Porteous was also in love with the doctor who supplied her with it.

Porteous suggests it was a drug-induced lust. I'm back to reality, she told an Australian tabloid. I was too busy screwing everyone. The doctors, Willie. When I was on pethidine for my back, I should have put a tattoo on one leg saying, pay as you enter, and a credit card on the other. So Rose gets around, if you know what I mean.

Rose knew how to get what she wanted. She put aside the drugs and decided to go go legit after she had been married four times she'll be a guest next week for setting her up with yogi i respect the hustle i'm just gonna say that now um yeah i'll give you that sean do you think you think rose is respectable for fucking uh laying to to to death you know there's worse ways to make a living honestly yeah i really can't judge any woman that is considered to be you know a gold digger sean you do that on the internet all the time well unless she's like a neoliberal or that's what i hacked did you yes in high school

um no i i wouldn't uh uh disrespect any uh uh gold digger or whatever just because it's like under capitalism it's like fucking horrible like would you rather have sex with this disgusting old man or work in his mines and die at 40 you know um but so anyways we should uh talk a little bit about this estate battle the first of the sub of at least two um so basically um they set off an 11 year legal battle um according from the new yorker gina was able to maneuver during uh her father's last weeks alive to have him transfer control of his personal estates main assets and royalties to hancock prospecting which was the company that gina of course inherited upon his death um and an associated trust which actually bankrupted his estate

which contributed to the subsequent financial problem she would claim that she took over also real quick when lang died uh there was a handful of charitable, what am I saying, promises? Organizations. Organizations. Basically, Lang promised to give a handful of charities some money, but once he passed away, Gina was like, sorry, we ain't got no more money. And then a few years later, we become one of the richest billionaires. Gina became Rosie Perez briefly after her father's death. As every woman does.

She was like, oh, I'm sorry, that water testing facility will have to wait. But so anyway, so... Which, bad strategic move if she wanted to follow in her father's footsteps. Oh, I guess we should mention her father was like a Western Australian secessionist, which, again, we're Americans, we don't know all the uh intricate politics we don't know and we don't care yes of australia but um from my understanding but we do know that it's fun to say that their capital would be perth um uh the western australia has a bit of a beef with the eastern australia because the east is where Melbourne and Sydney,

the two main cities in Australia, are located. And so kind of a federal bureaucracy overreach sense comes where the Western Australians want those damn elitist Easterners to stop messing with them or whatever. And so her father... Also, as an owner of several cattle ranches Gina has a lot to make from that beef.

Moving on. You're going to have to learn to say goodnight. Because every day is a good day in Australia. But anyways the point essentially was that her father was big into this Western Australia secessionist movement. And part of the reason why... They got angry because not every day is a good day in Western Australia. But so part of the reason why was he wanted to use atomic weapons like nuclear bombs to do mining, I guess.

Which is as far as like things you could use a nuclear bomb for. Not the worst, but. But on the other hand, you know that he's going to like set off the bomb and be like, all right, let's get the aboriginals in there. Yeah. And the guy that denies asbestos has bad medical effects maybe shouldn't be given nukes. Yeah. Now it's safe.

We're gonna use this nuclear weapon to clear a harbor on this aboriginal burial site. Wow, that is a very cruel JFK. Look, I didn't sign up to do accents, okay? I'm glad Sean gave a shot at the accent so I could criticize someone else's accent.

Yeah, yours is fucking terrible, but I've already showed my hand, so. I chose to do accents that weren't Australian on this episode. All right, so basically, she maneuvered to get all his personal assets transferred over to the Hancock prospecting estate or the assets of Hancock prospecting, which he inherited. And she used that mechanism to essentially fuck his widow out of major inheritance. They had like an 11 year legal battle with numerous accusations of murder, including like Rose accused her,

I believe of attempted murder for hire. Just quoting from the New Yorker, there were allegations of adultery, witchcraft and attempted murder for hire. Wow. But it ended with Rose keeping a few assets, including this like luxury mansion that her late father had built for her

while reinhardt had a total control of hancock prospecting you ever think like when she's having a hard day she has kind of a nixon during watergate moment and like holds a cocktail and asks her dad's jarred organs for advice i i didn't used to think that. I do now, though. When they look at you, they see the aboriginal killer they want to be. When they look at me, they see the aboriginal killer they are.

So, anyways, the point is, not only was she able to... I do it with the accent. Not only was she able to screw the widow out, but basically this guy named Ken McCammy, who comes up occasionally in biographies of Lane Reinhart, Lang Hancock, excuse me, this guy, Ken, he was one of the, I believe, geologists

who helped him out the most, the most. And he in fact credited a lot of his success to him, to this guy, like helping him develop all these mining prospects. And he, in his will left Ken McCammy, uh, quoting from the New Yorker here, uh, $500,000. And in fact, he, uh, credited, he credited Ken with finding the company's most valuable claims. But basically, Gina was able to use that transfer to screw him out of this $500,000 that her father left him in his will. And he was not paid a penny. And quoting for The New Yorker, he was, quote, fired.

She fired the aging prospector shortly after her father died. Wow. So it's like, not only did she inherit that money. That is some alpha-ass grub staker.

Yeah. That's, if you'll recall in the first episode, a grub staker is someone who pays a prospector their overhead, their capital to find a mine

and then pulls the profits gina is the ultimate grub staker here yeah i think so i mean the thing is is that you know lang is kind of a piece of shit but it's also a good chunk of a product of his time gina uh born with a silver spoon up her ass and is also just a terrible human being because's like, that 500 grand to that dude wouldn't have hurt her bottom line in the reality. It's horseshit. It would have bankrupted her company. Okay, all right. But yeah, no, I mean, it is just kind of fascinating.

Again, like, her father himself credits this guy with finding the company's most valuable claims, which, of course, she inherits. Right. And then fucks him out of half a million dollars just to be spiteful. Hey, Sean, there's a whole bunch of diamonds in the back room over there. We can split if you want. Oh, you're murdering me now? Okay.

How do you expect her to pay for those technical school poetry classes? Just another fun story about Gina Reinhart. Her bodyguard, so basically she becomes and remains to the best of my knowledge extremely paranoid. After her dad's death all of them get bodyguards and security cameras.

They suit up if you know what I mean. Right. So basically I do not. Quoting from the New Yorker one of the bodyguards she hired was an ex-policeman named Bob Thompson. And in 1997, he filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her. Basically, he had accompanied Reinhardt and her children to Hawaii, California, Europe, and New Zealand. Did she grab the fuzz of the fuzz?

Quoting from the New Yorker, Reinhardt, he said, wanted to marry him even though he was engaged to someone else. He said, quote, I told her over and over I wasn't interested

but she wouldn't take no for an answer. She insisted, he said, that he get an HIV test and that he tell her about his sex life, past and present. He described Reinhardt as, quote, incredibly lonely and then he dropped her about his sex life past and present he described reinhardt as quote

incredibly lonely and then he dropped the suit and disappeared reportedly after an out-of-court settlement i like how disappeared isn't we don't know what happened to him wait so the bodyguard of gina was uh he said that there was sexual harassment and then one of her daughters later on marries her bodyguard. Oh, yeah, I didn't know that, but interesting. Not the same one. He's guarding the bottom of a mine right now. He disappeared to a deep in one of

their mines. Yeah. He was last seen being accompanied by security personnel for the company down the shaft of also one thing i want to mention real quick uh in the house of hancock show when lang is like on his deathbed uh john the grandson of uh lang is is sitting by his father grandfather and laying at one point just goes, mining's a man's game,

son. You need to know this. And I, I didn't know that, uh, Gina had editing rights, but I liked Gina watches and be like, yeah,

dad would have said that. That's what's like. It was pretty sexist, especially when it came to the mining business. It was really a shame they had to shut down house of Hancock because of all that pedophilia. Um, but so anyways, yeah, just an interesting little story about,

you know, what kind of a weird, lonely person she is. But so sad. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I so feel bad for this woman worth $18 billion.

I guess we should kind of go back here because a lot of people might know her if they have ever Googled the word evil billionaire. You mean that Netflix documentary, Evil Billionaire? Yeah, but so basically she's probably most famous for saying in, I believe, around 2012, quote, if you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money don't just sit there and complain do something to

make more money yourselves spend less time drinking or smoking and socializing um so andy get on it accuse your dad's second wife of murder put his organs in a jar and while she's distracted by the jarred organs, sees all the assets. Until she gives up and marries his best friend. Just like murder several hundred Aboriginal people with asbestos poisoning in your mines and then have a not-at-all-consensual relationship with another one who's been kidnapped by the government. She also called for a wage cut to Australian mine workers so that they could

compete with African mine workers who make $2 a day. She said, such statistics make me worry for this country's future. And of course, this is a woman worth $18 billion. Did you get that trim the thing drop, Andy? Yeah.

There's a Q&A with with i don't know who the fuck this dude is but they're talking about various uh industry was it steve irwin you're right it was steve irwin it was that's the one i forgot yeah come on andy don't worry i think you got enough yeah you didn't get the one australian that australians respect found our drops man but they're talking about uh uh new ways to increase uh revenue in the mining industry and she was like that's not a knife this is a knife you actually doesn't phrase it like that that's a knife um but uh they're talking about various other markets, India and China, and she's very respectable and kind of like, yeah, we've got to see the world.

Basically, she's saying, I'm going to pay broke people in third world countries less than I'm paying Australians if Australians don't shape the fuck up. But at one point, she mentions how Australians need to tighten their belts a little bit. Some more fat there, and we need to get into that. And Gina, personally, people worth X billion, I don't know what a billion's like but... I mean, one would seem a lot. Most people in this room would top a billion, eh?

Would anyone here work one more day if they got a billion dollars? But do you ever think, with all the trauma, the trouble, the criticism, the carping, the media, that I'm off? I've had enough? Well, right now I've got a little bit of a duty on, and that's a mega project. So I'm certainly involved in that one. But you could walk away and hire someone else to do it.

I think you still have to be a bit hands-on. Do you want it? Oh, yeah, you can sell this. Oh, OK. I don't know you're going to play that one. If you could walk one, how has someone else to do it? I think you still have to be a bit hands-on. Do you want it? Oh, yeah, you can stop this. Oh, okay. I didn't know you were going to play that long. Oh, no, no. Yeah, it was just the first part. That was off YouTube.

The trimming the fat. Yeah. But you know what, though? That clip is great because he's literally saying, you don't have to do shit anymore. And she's like, well, I mean, you're right, but I can't admit it.

If you listen to the whole thing, it is Steve Irwin interviewing her and later in the interview he says you know the thing about stingrays is that the teddy bears the ocean is that what he says you can just get up and cuddle them she had a controversial plan to use atomic

weapons to wipe out stingrays but yeah no she they decided to send a message she mentioned her like big project there and that's the roy hill mine so basically um the hope downs and the hammersley hope downs is a big mind that she gets like a 50 cut of um through um uh what's it called rio tinto where it's like rio tinto does like most of the actual mining work she just kind of has this 50-50 royalties deal Hammersley's same deal and like the dream of her father supposedly was to like develop and operate entirely their own mine so that's what Roy Hill has been but Roy Hill

has been uh heavily delayed like it was supposed to open back in 2011 it still has not opened so it's like she talks about like you know 400 government permits or regulations she needs to like fill out to do mining and she you know complains about having to like deal with aboriginal tribes because there's you know indigenous rights and these kinds of things that they have to respect now that they didn't have to in the past and so it's like that's kind of like partly where some of her antipathy towards government comes from. I don't know what the accent. Comes from is like this Roy Hill project is like still not off the ground and still like tangled up in the courts.

But if she can open it, there is like, you know, there's speculation that she might become the richest person on earth because we haven't really mentioned this. But, you know, Hancock prospecting is not the biggest mining corporation in the world. It's just the fact that it's, I believe, the biggest private one where she owns 100% of Hancock Prospecting, except for what has been designated to her children through the trust. So it's like most of these other mining corporations, such as Rio Tinto, are publicly traded and owned by various institutional investors, whereas she is the richest woman in Australia because she owns almost all of Hancock Prospecting. Yeah, she was speculated to exceed $100 billion before Bezos. And people refer to her as the next richest person in the world.

But since 2012, her personal net worth went down a bit i haven't seen much about it but i think it's attributed to a number of things including the uh increase in the value of the australian dollar where when uh i thought it was because a dingo ate her baby more money for her less for the baby dingo gets a cut too when he hired the dingo i'm realizing i heard a bodyguard to protect her from dingoes guys stop fucking around i'm trying to report here i uh shut up bitch uh yeah the australian dollar i didn't realize this it was worth like a quarter of the american dollar and then it exceeded

the american dollar in the last few years oh wow and worth but that also kind of uh decreased australian exports and that kind of hurt your bottom well it should be noted uh the quote that she made in the start of that uh clip about tight australians need to tighten their belts or they have a lot of room for fat or whatever. First of all, look at yourself. Did you already make that one? I didn't say that one. You were the first one to make it. All right.

I said it off mic, but I chose to not do it on mic. But Australia has a... Statements Sean McCarthy makes about women do not represent the grub stakers. LLC. LLC. Yeah. We would like to apologize in advance.

But so anyways, the point is uh and retroactively uh australia has about a 16 an hour federal minimum wage you know and that's like a good thing for the average australian worker like i remember like i had a friend who was australian and she was like she came to seattle to visit and like she like saw that dick's hamburgers the seattle chain was like starting at ten dollars an hour and she's like well that's a garbage wage why are they posting that like why are they advertising that you can make more than that anywhere in australia um so it's like you know the sixteen dollar an hour and she talks about you know what african people making two dollars a day or whatever like that's what australians need to emulate when of course her bottom line interest is cutting labor costs

but it's just kind of like i mean it's crazy because the other thing that we should i'll just mention quickly here is that mining in australia gets a ton of subsidies so basically the new yorker article makes this point where Norway is kind of the counter example. Whereas, you know, of course, iron mining is a depletable resource, like once they extract it from the earth, it's gone. Australia, or sorry, Norway did kind of a different thing where they taxed major oil companies heavily and created, quote, the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world which is now worth more than 700 billion dollars the norwegian oil fund and they you know use that to

like redistribute to their citizens and fund this that third australia does not have similar taxes and in fact like uh prime minister kevin rudd i believe proposed this kind of taxation and it was a 30 mine resource uh rent tax on super profits right that would affect companies with annual profits of over 75 million and i think that actually it that actually got passed it went into effect it got it got watered down heavily i don't know the exact details but it was like uh to the point where i do not believe she's paid anything under it so far. Really? And I might be wrong on that, but I know it was heavily watered down,

at least according to the New Yorker. And from my research, this is why Norway has Toblerone and Australia's got Vegemite. I mean, the tax subsidies on the mining industry affect your casual calorie intake. It was really fucked up how they used Vegemite to blow up Tower 7. But basically, the point of that is like, and so another source, Australian Independent Media, says that in 2013, the Australian Parliamentary Budget Office determined that, quote, 13 billion could be saved over the forward estimates by abolishing the concessions given to miners. In 2014, the Australia Institute calculated that over a six-year period, state governments in Australia spent $17.6 billion supporting the mineral and fossil fuel industries. So essentially, mining does get these government handouts,

and they are not taxed or in any way responsible to the community the way they are in Norway. So it's like she's bitching about having to pay labor costs when in reality she's getting a huge free ride from the Australian government for extracting a natural resource that a lot of people like Henry George or whatever would argue should be shared among the community. I just want to apologize.

Toblerone is a Swiss company. It's not Norway. So sorry about that, guys. We are going to lose all of our listeners who protect the Pope. I'm sorry, guys. I'm just so sorry. We have a strong listenership in the Vatican Guard. If you're in the Vatican, please listen to Crow Stakers.

Oh, God. Jude Law just turned off his podcast. We're going to talk about the kids and the trust fund case because I got a quote from John Hancock. I want to drop, drop, drop. Wait, I got to – right before that, I've got some quick dirt I just rediscovered from my notes. Is your quote from John Hancock in huge text? Burn, I like it. Thanks.

All right, go, Andy. I don't get the reference. I'm in an Australia mindset right now. Apparently, in April of 2001, this is after going back to the the death of lang uh so there's witnesses said that uh mrs or ms poetress dressed mr hancock to death with tantrums and apparently uh ms reinhardt had paid witnesses dirt on her former stepmother and then there's another um note here but apparently one of the star witnesses for uh gina in her like attempt at getting a murder trial her star witness julian teodoro said that rose had begged him to help her kill mr

hancock but he refused want to spend the money on $16 an hour miners, but she knows how to spend her money is the point. He claimed that he would need the money for bodyguards. Wow. It is

also, before we get into the dispute with her kids, I just want to mention one other quote from her, which is particularly about global warming. She's a huge global warming denialist. The quote from Gina Reinhart here, quote, I am yet to hear scientific evidence to satisfy me that if the very, very small amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, approximately 0.83 percent, was increased, it could lead to significant global warming i have never met a geologist or a leading scientist who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change what and this is from a woman who works in mining and is around geologists presumably all day if she's doing her job. She also tried to buy,

or she bought a large stake in Fairfax Media, which is one of those. The second largest media conglomerate in Australia after Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate. She bought 18.6% of it, and she attempted to put more money into it and buy three board chairs and then get the power to fire editors she didn't like.

And Fairfax Media denied it, or denied her the ability to do that, and so then she just started dumping all the shares. Wow. Well, they say a baby elephant never forgets. It never forgives. I guess we should talk a bit about the trust battle then. So basically, as we mentioned, she has four children,

two with her first husband, two with her second. John Hancock, Bianca Reinhart, Gania, what the fuck's her name? I guess she's also Reinhart. And then Hope Welker is the fourth. Right. So basically, and again, this is according to The New Yorker, but her first three children all had similar fallings out with her. Where John Hancock apparently had to go to this Aboriginal illegitimate child

we mentioned earlier in 1992, I believe um he was sent out there um and basically gina tried to get uh this uh woman to sign an agreement saying that it was actually her grandfather not her father who like fathered her right and uh in 92 john hancock would have been like 22 years old he was born in 1976 right so flew out there, but apparently he actually got along with this woman and her husband and that he like wouldn't do his mom's dirty work. And then, you know, kind of had like a falling out and was pushed out of the company. And like a similar kind of thing happened with her second oldest child was a daughter. Bianca.

Right. And then I don't know the exact details, but a similar thing happened with the third child. And it's believed that the fourth child is the only one who still has a good relationship with her. That's right. So basically, this lawsuit came out in 2011 uh the three oldest children uh sued um to remove gina as the trustee of what's called the hope margaret hancock trust um which lang hancock her father had actually created for his grandchildren um the trust itself owns 24 of hancock prospecting um which is, of course, billions of dollars. So basically, it was set up by Lang Hancock so that Gina would control it only until it vested

on the 25th birthday of her youngest child. But Gina Reinhart decided to extend that vesting date, quoting from New Yorker, ostensibly to avoid tax consequences to 2068, when, of course, John, her oldest child, would be 92 years old. So basically she made a power play on, I believe, shortly before her youngest child's 25th birthday, she made a power play to try and get them to sign this thing

that would put her in control of the trust until 2068 um and this is my favorite part uh according to the new yorker she said quote that they faced bankruptcy if they didn't sign the documents agreeing to their god like you know of course if you don't sign over all control of the trust to me then we will be bankrupt right uh during this case uh john quoted as responding to a question about living off the family trust the fund this is a quote well it'd be nice if i was but i have all the bad things about having money and none of the good things i just i just love that there's so many bad things about living off of someone else's money

i just wish i had some of that good stuff you know like knowing how much of it i have and how much i could spend tomorrow on the shit that I don't need. I mean, I imagine there's a certain level of trauma getting raised by Gina Reinhardt. Like, I'm not in a good place to judge parenting. But if your children all sue you. Andy doesn't speak to his children. Ever. You can't prove they're mine.

Is what he says to them on a nightly basis. As I'm talking to the men. The tests are inconclusive. Look, I wasn't the government official who chose to re-educate them at an official school. But yeah, I guess

one of the bad things about being rich, I guess if, I guess one of the bad things about being rich, I guess if you're like one of the Sackler kids, would be like making shitty music or presiding over shitty art exhibits. Yeah, I think so. Being heads of charities that don't need to exist or never needed to exist. Just

cashing inheritance checks paid for with blood money. Writing horse novels on Amazon and getting poor reviews. You know, the fun stuff about being rich. Apparently, in court documents, her children called her deceitful and she called them slackers. Yeah, and one of the things I saw, she's quoted as being like, my children don't know the meaning of hard work. And it's like, who?

Kettle calling the pot black. Yeah, like, so basically, I think she was like, part of why she tried to take the trust away from them was because they like, in her view, vacationed too much or some bullshit. Like, you know, like somebody with $18 billion should never vacation. In one of the courts during legal battle, John Hancock called his youngest sister, Jania, who was the one that sided with Gina, an oxygen thief.

And boy, what a great insult. Did you know that when he signed the court papers, he wanted to make sure it was big enough that Queen Georgina could read it? So basically, from my understanding of the trust case, eventually the second oldest daughter was given control of the trust. But not before the third oldest daughter uh hope uh who lives in new york uh will have her on soon uh but she basically uh capitulated where she uh according to like emails she was writing like her mama or mem i think she called her m-e-m uh like saying like uh oh i need money because like she has like she loves she has bodyguards in new york she has like her children in private school and stuff and so basically gina cut off

her allowance until she capitulated she kept loaning money to a german girl who was at all the parties have you guys seen that oh yeah yeah i read all of that today actually you know uh the daily telegraph article basically talks about how the kids didn't realize that talking about their money in courtrooms would mean that their money issues would be in the media. So after a few months of it, there's emails that were leaked basically saying that, like, the kids at a certain point were like, hey, we know how we're suing you. Yeah, we need money for bodyguards now because everyone knows how much money we're trying to get from you. And so it's like personal emails exchanged between Australia's richest person

and two of her daughters were tendered in the NSW Supreme Court yesterday as Ms. Reinhart tried to suppress details of her family trust battle on security grounds. So, you know, it's like, it's, you know, I've been rewatching Arrested Development recently and I can't believe how many rich families implode based off of, well, you know, fucking Job got a trophy and I didn't.

Like, it's like, it's the same stupid, envious, jealousy nonsense, and the reality is, it's like, hey, all of you are well off. If you're trying to edge a person out for 10% more trust fund money, you're a piece of shit. Yeah. And my takeaway watching Arrested Development was I can't believe how many families implode because Jeffrey Tambor sexually harasses a cast member. But anyways. but anyways uh so uh i wanted to talk uh quickly about uh defamation before we get to the coup de gras here uh which i'm sure our australian listeners wherever they may be are probably familiar with the real uh room meat of the story uh the uh wonderful poem written by miss gina

reinhardt but uh just real quickly from the new yorker story as partly where i learned about this defamation stuff but basically the new yorker reporter who was going around found it extremely difficult to find australians who would talk to him on the record about gina reinhardt because she is notorious for suing people for libel and defamation as we mentioned she got this series edited and apparently has made part one utterly unavailable. That's right. The New Yorker quotes one former associate as saying, quote, I don't want to lose my house. Meaning that he meant that Reinhardt might sue him for defamation, a relatively easy thing to do in Australia.

And that defending himself against this sort of legal onslaught she's renowned for mounting would leave him destitute and again when there are libel or defamation laws and you are the richest person in australia it's relatively easy and we should also just mention that like uh she has kind of an incestuous relationship with the political process in australia she's been seen at like secret meetings with mps i believe the current uh president or a chairperson or some sort of executive director is a former Liberal Party parliamentarian. And, of course, in Australia, the Liberal Party is actually the Conservative Party, you know. And the toilets flush backwards and everything else you associate with backwards. Everything's opposite land. The richest billionaire is a woman.

It's crazy over there. And unlike in France, she's not even hot talking about the l'oreal heiress um but again we should emphasize that sean's a stick and that's why he makes fat jokes he's he's a little jealous of anyone with more than two percent body fat that's why i'm always trying to get andy kicked off the podcast i uh i just want our listeners all of them to know that all of our australian listeners are from east australia so just know we got your back east all those fucking racist western hicks by the way when we talk about australian uh racism against the aborigines we are talking about western australia racism

against the aborigines we just want to be clear on that yeah they've got all the shitty penguins uh but i guess before we get to the the poem we should explain some background she's uh financed a variety of groups in addition to her purchasing of media outlets. She also supports, you know, think tanks and anti-tax groups. In particular, one, going in from the New Yorker, Northern Australia is a campaign to persuade the country that the hot, sparsely populated northern third of the content should be declared, quote, a special economic zone. This term comes from China, of all places, with lower no taxes or minimum wage or regulation.

Wow. And, of course, her idea is to just set up her little fiefdom over there where she gets to be the anarcho-capitalist ruler slash warlord. Slash poet laureate. Who beheads people for making miniseries about her. But yes, we did mention this at the top, but demand from China has really rocketed the price of iron ore up a lot.

So most of her wealth just comes from global commodities markets and property rights. But part of her special economic zone project led her to pen this magnificent poem called Our Future. And this is, I believe, found at the bottom of a, what is it of a monument near Perth. Perth. Perth. Yeah, it's in... Wait a second. Gotta bring it up.

Morley. Okay. Which is a suburb of Perth. So she carved this poem into a monument, probably to herself. And if I could just get a few snaps, I'll read it for the assembled. Our future. The globe is sadly grown in with debt, poverty, and strife.

And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life. Their hope lies with the resources buried deep within the earth and the enterprise and capital which give each project worth. In our future, threatened with massive deaths run up by political hacks who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant hacks. 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 prosperity 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 shore. They're much cheaper. 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. If you bring that to a Rhode Island poetry slam, you will fuck. And on ABC in Australia, they actually got a professor to analyze the poem, and they got this little gem. Okay, if a creative writing student put that in front of you and said, this is what I reckon, how would you assess it on that basis? The first thing I'd tell you, well, you've got to get the punctuation right.

Wait, Andy. Andy, what did he actually say? Oh, yeah, the rest of that quote is... The dingo's on my back! And then he also had to say... That's a knife. Oh, shit! Oh, no!

Did he also plug the shrimp at Outback Steakhouse? Was he drinking anything during this? Yeah. Apparently he had a... It was a Corona. Foster's. Australian food, yeah. And then he instructed the host for some reason.

You're going to have to learn to say good day. Oh, okay. Because every day is a good day in Australia. Unless you're an aboriginal miner. Come and say g'day. I'll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you.

Alright. But anyways, thanks to Gina Reinhart and her selfless embrace of multiculturalism and giving opportunity to foreign workers. Yes, yes, yes. For no bottom line interest whatsoever. And in no way attempting to undercut the $16 an hour minimum wage in Australia.

Thanks to all of our listeners. Yeah. Checking out Grubstakers all around the globe. We're very happy you're here. Wind with that. I'm Yogi Pollywall. I'm Andy Palmer. Sean P. McCarthy.

Thank you for listening Flying in a denim bombay With a slack jaw jaw not much to say I said to the man are you trying to tempt me because I come from the land of plenty and he said oh you come from a land down under

yeah women low and men under can't you hear can can you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover Women in the land of the love Women low and in thunder Can you hear the thunder? You better run, you better take cover Living in the land of the love Living for the land of the love Can you hear, can you hear the thunder?

You better run, you better take cover Living in the land of the love Living for the land of the love Living for the land of the love Can you hear, can you hear the thunder? Can you hear, can you hear the thunder? Can you hear, can you hear the thunder? Yeah

You better run, you better take cover thunder? Better run, better take cover Women's law and men's wonder Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the thunder Better run, better take cover The thing goes for my baby.