http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/rinehart-brings-ideas-from-the-right-d...The ore tycoon has been vilified, but Fairfax will benefit from her input.
LIKE many people who write about her, I don't know Gina Rinehart. But I think I would like to. A person who can stir so much passion and debate would, I think, be stimulating company.
The mining magnate, Australia's richest person, appears to be someone whose mere name spreads alarm throughout the left. Among the cadres of sometimes complacent and compliant journalists, she is deemed to be a right-wing ogre.
It seems that by taking a substantial shareholding in Fairfax Media (which owns this newspaper as well as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review), this one person is going to tear down society - and the media will be a tool, putty in her hands, to do just that.
The left try to tarnish her because her views are not in accord with their own.
Rinehart's views, according to people who don't know her, are on the ''far right of the political spectrum'', as academic and former Greens candidate Clive Hamilton told readers of this page yesterday. Rinehart has been vilified because she appears not to share the left's concerns about climate change and because she is advocating turning the north of Australia into a special economic zone with tax breaks.
Nothing new in that; it has been advocated for years.
Apparently she knows the businessman Hugh Morgan, who was instrumental in setting up the H. R. Nicholls Society, which advocates workplace relations reform. And Morgan, we are told, is also close to the - shock, horror - Institute of Public Affairs, which supports liberalism and a free market.
It is clear Rinehart must be a fiend, albeit via association.And some sections of the media are quick to snap up this ''conspiracy''. According to some reports, Rinehart has ''extreme views'' on Australia's economic direction and her raid on the Fairfax share register is about ''wielding influence and gaining political access in the corridors of Canberra'', rather than being the action of an investor.
Yet this is a dubious proposition. With a reported worth of $20 billion, Rinehart already has access and influence.And she has been dabbling in the media for the past couple of years. In 2010 she bought a substantial stake in Channel Ten. It is alleged, without much evidence, she was responsible for The Bolt Report, the show hosted by controversial columnist Andrew Bolt - and, of course, Bolt is anathema to the left because he refuses to bow to their orthodoxy.
Yet let us just say, for the sake of argument, that Rinehart was indeed responsible for the commissioning of The Bolt Report. That program, with its ''unorthodox view'', consistently out-rates Ten's more traditional Meet the Press. People seem to like watching The Bolt Report, where alternative views are given an airing. Can't have that, can we?
And now, by increasing her stake in Fairfax, Rinehart has again rattled the cages of the self-appointed cognoscenti, those guardians of the left who believe they, and only they, have correct policy settings for Australia - and that you should be damned if you disagree.
Certainly, it would seem Rinehart does not share the left's values, and good luck to her for that. We do, after all, live in a pluralistic society in which we should foster alternative views.
Yet some on the left seem to believe her views should preclude Rinehart from sitting on the Fairfax board if she gets the required shareholding.
What is wrong with a person with an alternative view of the world to that of the self-appointed guardians of the media sitting on the board of a media company? Nothing, I say. In fact, I say this could be damn good for Australia.
Fairfax is a company that has been ailing for some time. Its share price has collapsed.
Five years ago it was selling at about $5 a share.
It had fallen to as low as 54¢ recently and is now about 80¢ after Rinehart's foray.For shareholders in Fairfax, the value of their holdings has gone up by about 15 per cent since her move. Surely that is good news.
Instead of reading this foray as some dreadful attack, it should be embraced as a sign that one of Australia's most successful business operatives has endorsed not only an ailing business empire but also the media sector more broadly, which has also been languishing. To me, the investment, alongside her 10 per cent stake in Ten, signals there is still value in traditional media, even as the world moves to new platforms.
If Rinehart does take up a board position at Fairfax, it is to be hoped she brings the dynamism to the task that has made her what she is.
Fairfax needs an injection of new ideas.
We have already seen some: the appointment of Greg Hywood as CEO and new editors at the AFR.
But the company has long been in need of a radical shake-up and Rinehart, with her acumen and alternative view of the world, may well help provide it.
So I say, good luck to her. If she acts as some kind of lightning rod for change at Fairfax, that will surely be a good thing - except for those who feel only those in accord with their own view of the world should sit on a media company's board.
And, who knows, maybe her appointment will act as a catalyst for views other than the left's orthodoxy to be seen and read across the broadsheet mainstream of the Fairfax empire.
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