Pioneer of the
Australian Iron Ore
Industry

Alan Jones: ‘Gina Rinehart awarded miner of the Decade’ 

Gina Rinehart was last night awarded miner of the year, a bit of an understatement, by the Sydney Mining Club. I called her the miner of the century. I’ve said many times this is one of the very great Australians. It is extraordinary to contemplate what she has achieved. The Roy Hill Mine establishes her as one of the most visionary and entrepreneurial Australians, man or woman, this country has ever seen. This is an iron ore project in the middle of nowhere, the Chichester Range in the Pilbara and Western Australia, it’s 277 kilometres south of Port Hedland; it’ll produce 55 million tons of iron ore per year. The first shipment has already been loaded, the second ship arrives today, but she has built the lot.

The dredging within Port Hedland’s inner harbour has created two new shipping berths which she built – Stanley 1 and Stanley 2. 7.5 million cubic metres of material had to be dredged to a depth of six metres. She’s built a brand new airport capable of handling 737 aircraft that will be the hub for transporting workers in and out. She’s built a 344 kilometre heavy haul standard gauge railway line from the mine site at Roy Hill to Port Hedland. It will deliver five 232-wagon trainloads – each train has got 232 wagons – 32 tons of iron ore each day- 32,000 tons.

A $10 billion project, and this in a part of Australia in the Pilbara which Gina Rinehart calls her home. She was brought up there as a child doing it tough with her father on the red dirt, fixing up windmills, putting kerosene lamps on the airstrip so her father could land his often unsafe aircraft. Red dust, no water outside, no lawn, blazing heat – her mother never complained. She was encouraged to be frugal, never to waste money. Her father used to say that Gina worked like 20 men, and this is where you get with hard work.

Of course, the media can never, ever give Gina Rinehart credit. When she became chairman of Hancock Prospecting in 1992 the company was in disarray. She was the youngest person in the company, she took over the company; had no money. Those who thought they knew said Roy Hill area, nope, leave it alone. BHP had tried and failed; they were prepared to hand over the tenements, Roy Hill, after their own exploration had found nothing. But BHP had put their drill holes in the wrong place. Gina Rinehart’s team, with very little money, found iron ore.

When she took charge of the company it was under all sorts of legal threats. There were liabilities, contingent liabilities, checks were written and left in draws, they couldn’t be paid until the small royalty checks arrived to cover them. They didn’t spring out of the ground for Gina Rinehart, money. Australian media rarely gives this woman a wrap. We will never see her like again. Imagine the monster, BHP says, you can’t make a quid here, she says yes I can – I know this area, the Pilbara is my home.

And then she had to get money. She organised 19 of the world’s largest banks, including the 11 largest, to provide the money, and hence the largest debt financing agreement in the world for a largely green field mainland mineral resource project – the largest commercial deal ever done between Australia and South Korea. The largest single iron ore mine in Australia. Gina Rinehart, very modest, she gives credit to 50,000 people who had worked on the project, and now iron ore is being loaded. But the regulatory burden she faced was mammoth: over 4000 regulatory approvals had to be achieved, permits and licences, and here it is on track.

She said last night we need to stop finding reasons not to do things and pursue ways of making it happen. I was honoured that I was asked to make the presentation to Gina Rinehart, and I said many of the things I’m saying to you now. I described her as one of the great living Australians. There are few, if any, like Gina Rinehart in the world, let alone an Australian. But she keeps saying lessen the burden of government, get out of the road of those with entrepreneurial skill and let them do things. I said at this presentation last night that government has never been bigger and never been more useless. The room cheered.

Gina Rinehart is living proof that if you roll up your sleeves and you believe in yourself anything is possible. And now here’s the mine, Roy Hill, that BHP didn’t want, it used to be a cattle station, almost a million acres. The Roy Hill homestead is 18 kilometres south of the mine site. The rail system, you can’t even get your head around it, will deliver five 232-wagon trainloads of 32,000 tons of iron ore each day, all happening because of this woman Gina Rinehart.

I don’t understand why Australians wouldn’t salute such a person. She’s virtually unheralded. But there’s this beautiful song that’s been written about the Roy Hill project, great voice, and this is the song. This is the song for Roy Hill.

There you are. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. And she modestly accepted the award last night. It was supposed to be the miner of the year, I said forget it – the miner of the century, Gina Rinehart.

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