Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart isn’t used to being upstaged, but a persistent horse left her in a fit of helpless laughter as it continued to interrupt her speech.
Ms Rinehart was in a paddock filming a speech for the Bush Summit being held in the north-west Tasmanian town of Launceston on Tuesday when one of two horses grazing behind her approached her.
As Ms Rinehart, director of iron ore giant Hancock Prospecting, spoke about the benefits of mining to the wider community, the horse began nibbling at the sleeves of her Driza-Bone jacket.
Despite trying to bravely carry on and ignore the farm animal, Ms Rinehart eventually burst out laughing when the horse nipped at her collar, prompting a sudden cut in the footage.
On the other side of the abrupt edit, Ms. Rinehart attempted to pick up where she left off, but the horse was still interested in the back of her jacket.
“The housing crisis doesn’t stop on the mainland, I know it’s coming to Tasmania too,” Ms Rinehart said as the horse began to tug at her sleeve, prompting her to give him an alarmed look.
The mining magnate let out another laugh, but continued to speak determinedly about the benefits of mining and agriculture.
As the horse approached her, at one point the animal caused Mrs. Rinehart to lean awkwardly forward, but she kept her feet planted.
Gina Rinehart was left laughing helplessly after an insistent horse interrupted her speech on camera.
After sufficiently scanning Ms. Rinehart’s back, the horse walked to the side and suddenly appeared in the lower right corner of the screen as the video switched to pre-recorded stock footage to illustrate the speech’s themes.
When the video focused once again on Ms. Rinehart, the equine intruder had finally moved away.
In her speech, her third at the six-day Bush Summit, Ms. Rinehart urged those who value agriculture and mining to “‘Let’s let our politicians know that we don’t want to fall as an industry or as a country, we want to rise.’
“We want to see policies that don’t scare away investment, that instead lead to more investment, a higher standard of living and more money in their pockets after taxes, to spend as they wish,” he said.
The things holding Australia back are taxes, excessive regulation and bureaucracy, Ms Rinehart argued.
He said the Minerals Council of Australia had recently estimated the country was missing out on about $68 billion of investment because major mining projects had been “increasingly placed in the too-hard basket”.
Ms Rinehart said only 20 per cent of projects that debut on Australia’s top projects list are completed “while 80 per cent are abandoned altogether”.
Despite trying to bravely continue his speech, the horse refused to be ignored as he nuzzled Ms Rinehart’s back.
Despite record immigration, Ms Rinehart said there was a shortage of workers.
He said that for every million immigrants “this administration has brought in,” only “about 40,000 have been added to the workforce.”
He called on federal and state governments to cut taxes as a way to ease the cost-of-living crisis that has left people deciding whether to “heat (their homes) or eat.”
“We don’t want empty words, we want to know what taxes would be removed when GST comes into effect – payroll, licence fees and stamp duty will be removed,” he said.
“We want to hear that the federal government will eliminate its excise tax on fuel, not just reducing the costs of our cars and other vehicles, but reducing the cost of all transported goods and all goods that require fuel for processing or manufacturing.”
Ms. Rinehart’s Driza-Bone is one of the sponsors of the Bush Summit, which spans six days at six different regional locations.
Regional centres hosting the summit are Townsville in Queensland, Bendigo in Victoria, Launceston in Tasmania, McLaren Vale in South Australia, Orange in New South Wales and Port Hedland in Western Australia.