Article by Nick McGowan, courtesy of Quadrant Online.
If you are anything like me, I know how you’ve starting your mornings for the past 13 days. By grabbing your phone and checking Australia’s medal tally and place on the Olympic ladder through bleary eyes: 18 golds. 14 silvers. 13 bronzes. We have broken our previous record of 17 golds from 2004 and are currently third on the Olympic ladder.
What’s more, our champions come from a relatively miniscule population of 26 million people, compared to America’s 346 million (which occupy the 1st spot) and China’s gargantuan 1.4 billion (which sit in the 2nd place).
While no one deserves greater credit for this success than our athletes, there is one Australian whose contributions to Australian sport must be acknowledged: Mrs Gina Rinehart AO.
Mrs Rinehart stepped in to support Australian sport in 2012, when Australia had one of its worst Olympic performances. Ever since, she has been sponsoring Australian sports – particularly swimming – to the tune of $10 million dollars per year. Over the last decade, Mrs Rinehart has invested more than $100 million in our young people, making her the biggest single supporter of Australian sports in living history.
But it is not just that Mrs Rinehart sponsors sports, it is how she has chosen to do it. Mrs Rinehart insists on sponsoring the athletes directly, which has allowed more than 90 Australian athletes to focus solely on improving their sport without having to worry about a day job.
What’s more, Mrs Rinehart demands accountability from sporting bureaucracies to ensure that the money she donates actually goes to the athletes and not disappear down some middle-management black hole.
In 2021, when through a chance encounter with a parent of a swimmer, Mrs Rinehart discovered that some swimmers were not receiving their sponsorship money within reasonable time, she demanded answers from Swimming Australia. Unsatisfied by their response, she eventually pulled all her sponsorship money and moved it across to another sporting body, Swimming Queensland, which was willing to offer greater accountability and transparency in how it was spent. If this doesn’t show that Mrs Rinehart is in it for the athletes and not the photo-ops – I am not sure what would.
Yet, the Left hates Mrs Rinehart with particular viciousness, despite hers being a unique female success story in an industry dominated by men. It could not just be that she is unbelievably rich and a mining magnate. We have others in both categories, and they have been more or less embraced by the Left. Andrew Forrest can do no wrong – in fact, he’s treated with a sage-like reverence.
I have always wondered why the rage against Mrs Rinehart burns so bright – and the answer came to me while watching our swimmers smash their way to victory in Paris, race after race, gold after gold. The Left basically excels in bullshit – it wants to be judged on the warmth and fuzziness of its words and stated objectives, but not the hard, measurable outcomes of its actions.
On the other hand, Mrs Rinehart seems peculiarly immune to the Left’s emotive spin. She is, and has always been, a woman of action who expects excellence and accountability – in herself, and everyone else around her. Hence her love for sports, a world where ultimately nothing matters but hard competence, and where the final ledger can never lie.
In a world where the Left judge everyone by what they say, Mrs Rinehart has never lost sight of the value of letting her actions speak for her, and in this case, allowing the actions of the athletes she sponsors to speak for an entire nation.
Success, as they say, is the best revenge. You go, girl!
