Gina Rinehart’s $50 million investment in Fairfax Media would seem to confirm one of the theories regarding her sudden interest in the media sector, and blow up a few others.
For example, it now seems unlikely that the main motivation for buying into Ten Network was to make money by supporting James Packer’s turnaround strategy for the broadcaster.
Instead, by buying into Fairfax so shortly after she spent $170 million on her Ten investment, Rinehart appears to be underlining the message that she wants a bigger audience for her pro-mining sector views.
While buying 2% of Fairfax won’t get her a board seat like she has got at Ten, it does add to her clout in the business community, and probably in the political arena as well.
She now owns stakes in companies that own television, radio and newspaper networks. These are not random investments, nor are they a rather odd push to diversify away from the mining sector.
Naturally, Rinehart’s company Hancock Prospecting isn’t commenting. All we’ve got to go on is the two-sentence statement released after the Ten Network buy: ”Our company group is interested in making an investment towards the media business given its importance to the nation’s future and has selected Ten Network for this investment.”
The inclusion of the phrase “the nation’s future” is instructive, particularly when you spend some time on the website of Hancock Prospecting.
If Rinehart is trying to get an audience for her views, an article posted on the site on December 2 from Australian Resources and Investment magazine sets out those views very clearly.
Rinehart’s central argument is that Australia’s mining industry — and its wider prosperity — has been placed under threat by the Mining Resource Rent Tax, which will push investment out of Australia and towards rising mining superpowers, such as Africa and Mongolia.
While Australia’s proximity to Asia has given it a natural advantage over other nations, Rinehart argues, investments in infrastructure such as ports, ships and rail in other countries mean this “protection” is being eroded.
She argues that if the MMRT puts further pressure on investment, the future of the sector is bleak:
“Why then is our country even considering ways to further erode our competitive position and lose investment? I can’t understand the logic of doing so, not when Australia needs increasing revenue to provide for its defence, health care, increased aged population, police and other needs.
“We need viable industries and more investment to support all this and more and to provide good futures for our children.”
Rinehart has even set up a lobby group called the Australians for Northern Development & Economic Vision to push this view. You can see the list of members — including a number of well-known mining sector figures — here.
Many would question whether buying stakes in media companies will give Rinehart an opportunity to talk about her views on air or in print. I’d say no, but Rinehart’s investments are a way of making her voice clearly heard well beyond the mining sector.
Remember, it’s only a few months since Rinehart and fellow West Australian iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest had to use a much-lampooned rally on the streets of Perth to get their views on the mining tax heard, after claiming to have been locked out of negotiations on the matter.
Now that Rinehart is a media owner with multiple investments, she will be hoping her views don’t go unheard again.
its a bit more sophisticated than a truck and a megaphone,
but what works in Perth doesn’t translate to those eastern staters.
Well, a lot of Crikey readers seemed to think, earlier this year, that freedom of speech should not apply to big business. Of course it does. Unless people would rather the mining industry stay out of the public media and conduct its lobbying strictly behind closed doors?
The government has had a very good run in the media since Kevin07. Suggestions that they “didn’t sell their achievements enough” are like saying McDonalds doesn’t promote its food enough. The opposition has been almost totally ineffective, partly from sheer lack of imagination, and partly from knowing full well they live in a glass house in regard to some of the things they might have mentioned.
Somebody had to challenge a few of the more interesting smoke-and-mirrors economic theories that the government has been propounding, in hot pursuit of its runaway political agenda.
Through a twisting, turning path that leads back to (as far as I can tell) making excuses for the CPRS and their failure to pass it even after mangling it beyond recognition, the government has cornered itself into having to pretend that the mining boom is bad for Australia’s standard of living. The subtlety with which they have proved this in the minds of many Australians, is a magic trick that actually stands as their finest achievement so far.
What’s not clear to me, is how a 2 per cent stake in a TV network will help get Rinehart’s message through. I admit to being entirely ignorant of the workings of broadcast networks. Does a 2 per cent stake give you 2 per cent of the airtime? Do you get to appoint your own PR staff for 2 per cent of the journalist roles? Is a certain proportion of advertising space reserved for significant shareholders?
I’m quite serious. There’s a common assumption that anyone involved in the mass media gains the power to mass-hypnotize us. What I’d really like to know is the day-to-day mechanism of how this works. If it’s not too stupid a question.
Corporations do not have freedom of speech as they are not people but soulless machines designed to only increase profits.
Corporations can’t be allowed to dictate at what level what they pay in tax because they will always ask to lower the tax rate as to increase profits.
This is not America and if Gina’s idea is to try and make an Australian Fox News like Andrew Bolt suggested in a blog post about her buying into channel ten then …
We must not let Australian politics turn into Americas politics for this to happen would be disastrous.
Shaun, What about humans–walking talking ones with eyes and a nose and everything–who represent corporations, do they have freedom of speech?
@free, yes but those people that claim Australia will be harmed when their business faces a tax increase should be looked on with extreme skepticism also campaign finance reform is a necessary issue to look at in order to reduce the amount of say the rich have in paying our politicians.