Article by Carly Douglas, courtesy of Herald Sun.
Australia’s wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart, says Victorian children are being taught “propaganda rather than facts” and to “hate” Australia as she calls for a major shake-up to the national curriculum.
In a powerful address to the Herald Sun’s annual Bush Summit on Monday, Ms Rinehart called for mining to be introduced into high school curriculums, saying the education system was failing to teach students about the sector that “underpins” our economy.
“Can you believe that in the entire high school economics and business curriculum mining, coal, and iron ore do not receive even a single mention?” she said.
“Mining provides not only jobs that pay more on average than the national average of salaries and wages, but massive export earnings, the largest of any industry, and taxation revenue too.
“Yes, without the billions in taxation revenue mining provides, providing for 65,000 police and 210,000 nurses each year, Australia would simply not be the same.”
The executive chairwoman of Hancock Prospecting said “woke” causes were replacing “logic” in classrooms.
“Some years ago the Victorian government adopted the slogan ‘The Education State’ on car licence plates, so 622km away from Canberra let’s tackle what I think should be another important priority of our government: fixing our national curriculum,” she said.
Ms Rinehart said the country’s children and grandchildren were “being let down in their school” and were being “taught propaganda rather than facts”.
“They are taught that it is wrong to say there are two genders, indeed even told off if they say that,” she said.
“Schoolchildren are anxious that the world will end and they will die, some think within five to 10 years.”
Noting that Australia was struggling to attract defence personnel, Ms Rinehart questioned why children would want to defend Australia when they are being taught “not to like, even to hate” the country.
She also took aim at government “red tape” and added costs and delays to doing business, saying many in agriculture worry if the industry “can even survive”.
“But it’s not just businesses that are hurt, given these expensive government burdens, there’s less money available for wages and staff benefits, less money available for employing more staff, less for training and retraining, less for donating to charities or for research,” she said. “And it worsens if expansions or new projects are delayed or lost thanks to government tape and slow approvals, as all of the above gets even worse.”
She said the Minerals Council of Australia had estimated that Australia was missing out on some $68bn in investment because major mining projects were “increasingly put in the too hard basket because of the challenging investment environment in Australia”.
