GINA'S GUILLOTINE TANTRUM: Why billionaires should expect more revolution jokes
(4 min read | Media Commentary)
The ABC didn't broadcast a hit piece. It aired four minutes of surreal, low-budget student satire.
The short film, 'A Very Relaxing Video' by contestant Kate McGuinness on Race Around the World, depicted a cartoonish, French-Revolution-style uprising against the ultra-rich. It climaxed with a voiceover asking viewers whether, come the revolution, they'd hide under the bed or shove a stick up Gina Rinehart to turn her into a sausage roll.
It was crude. It was juvenile. It was gross. But, above all, it was a piece of class satire about what happens when wealth inequality reaches a boiling point.
And Gina Rinehart's response? Reaching straight for the legal hammer.
Australia's richest person put the ABC board and management "on notice", threatening civil and criminal action, demanding apologies, content removal and corporate blood – all over a four-minute comedy clip.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗰𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝗶𝘀𝗲
Here is where the hypocrisy becomes impossible to ignore.
Back in 1984, Gina's father Lang Hancock sat down for an interview on national television and openly proposed sterilising Aboriginal people through the water supply to "breed them out" if they weren't contributing to "civilised" society.
Historians and commentators have described this proposal as advocating genocide.
Gina Rinehart has never condemned those words. Not once. In forty years.
When Indigenous netballer Donnell Wallam requested not to wear the Hancock Prospecting logo in 2022, Rinehart didn't take the opportunity to say, "My father was wrong." She simply pulled her $15 million sponsorship and walked away.
Think about that priority list: A reality TV contestant makes a joke about a stick and a sausage roll, and Rinehart mobilises her legal army. Her own father advocates wiping out First Nations people on camera, and she offers four decades of silence.
"𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱𝗻'𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿..."
The inevitable defence always gets raised: Lang Hancock said those things decades ago. Gina didn't say them. Why should she have to answer for her father?
That argument collapses the moment you look at how dynasties work.
Gina Rinehart didn't just inherit a surname – she inherited the empire, the power and the fortune built on that foundation. You don't get to claim all the prestige and billions of the Hancock name while pretending the ugly parts of the family legacy don't exist.
She has had forty years to utter three simple words: "He was wrong." Silence is an active choice.
This isn't about guilt by association; it's about moral consistency. Rinehart demands public grace and corporate apologies for a comedy skit that hurt her feelings, yet offers zero empathy to the Indigenous Australians deeply insulted by her family's history.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗱𝘆 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝘁
If Australia's wealthiest person wants to understand why young people are making revolution jokes on public television, she doesn't need to sue the ABC.
She just needs to look around.
She should look at a housing market that has locked out an entire generation. She should look at regional communities left with polluted groundwater while private mining operations export billions overseas. She should look at the extreme heatwaves and fire seasons linked to fossil fuel expansion – where the real cost of corporate inaction is measured in human lives.
She should look at the 36,000 Australians who died from heat-related causes between 2006 and 2017 while she complained that cleaning up her pollution was too "expensive". She should look at the 429 people who died prematurely from smoke during the Black Summer fires while she continued digging up fossil fuels. And she should look at the projected 14.5 million global deaths by 2050 if nothing changes – deaths her industry is actively making more likely with every tonne of coal and gas it extracts.
But she won't look at any of that. Instead, she is suing a national broadcaster over a four-minute comedy skit. Meanwhile, her own father's words – a deliberate, non-comedic proposal to wipe out Aboriginal people he deemed "no good to themselves" – remain something she has never once condemned.
The joke wasn't the threat. But Gina's response – using her billions to crush a satirist while ignoring her father's genocide advocacy – is exactly why the guillotine jokes are only going to get louder.
* Opinion: Commentary based on public broadcasts, media reports and legal correspondence published in the public interest.
The ABC skit was crass – but it was clearly aimed at the billionaire class. Gina suing the public broadcaster over a crude joke while remaining dead silent on her father's calls for Aboriginal sterilisation says everything. Which one is the actual disgrace?
The ABC skit was crass – but it was clearly aimed at the billionaire class. Gina suing the public broadcaster over a crude jok… See more
Cheers to everyone actually reading the article before commenting – there's been some genuinely thoughtful back-and-forth in here, and we appreciate it. A few things that keep coming up: "Why should she answer for her dad's words?" She doesn't have to answer for what he said. But she has chosen not to answer for forty years. She's had every opportunity to say "he was wrong" – and she hasn't. When you inherit an empire built on that name, you inherit the baggage too. You don't get the billions and pretend the ugly bits don't exist. "But it was violence against women!" It was a cartoonish French Revolution reference – a stick up the bum, not a gendered attack. Crude? Gross? Yep. But a genuine incitement to violence? Come on. If we're calling for censorship every time someone makes a bad joke, we're opening a very dangerous door. "She does heaps for Indigenous communities!" Philanthropy and tax-deductible donations are great. But they don't erase the fact that she's never condemned her father's genocidal proposal. Indigenous Australians have been waiting forty years for her to say three simple words: "He was wrong." That silence is a choice. "This is just left-wing propaganda." If pointing out hypocrisy is propaganda, sure. But the facts are what they are: a tacky ABC skit gets a billionaire lawsuit. Her dad's proposal to sterilise Aboriginal people gets four decades of silence. That's not politics – that's a public record. "He didn't mean all Aboriginal people – just the 'no good' ones." The qualification doesn't change the nature of what he proposed. He still advocated for forced sterilisation of a group based on race and his judgment of their "usefulness". Historians have called it genocide advocacy. Carving out exceptions for "assimilated" ones doesn't make it less genocidal – it makes it selectively genocidal. To those bringing genuine arguments – whether you agree with us or not – cheers. That's how proper debate works. To the ones calling us cunts, dickheads and scumbags: you're not winning anyone over.
Cheers to everyone actually reading the article before commenting – there's been some genuinely thoughtful back-and-forth in h… See mor
The resources she inherited belong to the Australian people
Race Around The World is one of the best programs on free to air TV, giving inspiring film makers a voice, and hosted by Australia's favourite former radio queen Zan Rowe.......Gina just single handedly boosted it's ratings ten fold, by throwing all her toys out of her pram. The satire writes itself 🤣🤘🏽💥
Race Around The World is one of the best programs on free to air TV, giving inspiring film makers a voice, and hosted by Aust...
But she laughed along at Pauline's song moBut she laughed along at Pauline's song mocking others. … See more
Gina and Pauline are now in pre-production for a new season of Racist Around the World.
No comments:
Post a Comment