Poor, Poor Gina

Look, isn’t it time we stopped giving Gina Rinehart a hard time?

And no, I’m being neither sarcastic nor facetious.

I feel genuinely sorry for the woman.

Ask yourself, what has she got in her life that gives her pleasure?

Money, I hear you reply.

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus had this to say, “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

Setting aside the sexism reflective of his times, does that sound just a tad familiar?

Gina, one of the richest people in the world, is a woman who would have her fellow Australians’ incomes reduced; her government’s ability to help those in need curbed, in order to further increase her wealth.

Surely then, Epicurus would say she is one of the poorest among us, and thus deserving of our pity.

Even the vast fortune she already has can buy her no happiness.

She can’t buy a family that can get along with her.

Does she enjoy the incredible pleasure of giving; of reaching out to those in need?

I can’t answer that question, but I have my suspicions.

Gina’s latest idea, actually a very old idea oft regurgitated and just as often decapitated, is to create a special economic zone where she would enjoy reduced taxes, and reduced regulation.

Her desire to reduce her taxes to further increase her wealth, with the help of Epicurus, we have dealt with.

Her need to eliminate regulation is, I suspect, a thinly veiled demand that she be made free to destroy the environment in the pursuit of her impossible obsession; impossible because she will never have enough money to assuage the longing at the core of her being.

What are we to make of her contempt for the physical world, the protection of which stands between her and a few more dollars?

We might reasonably make this of it. That here is a person who has never been moved to tears by a sunset; for whom the smell of flowers and greenery holds no magic; for whom a walk in the park is nothing more than a waste of time better spent in the pursuit of cold, cold cash.

I believe that the longing at the core of Gina’s being; the emptiness that drives her, is a longing for acceptance of who she is, and not what she’s worth.

But with every public word she utters, she makes that acceptance less possible.

Gina Rinehart, the ultimate poor little rich girl.

If you have a shred of compassion, pity her.