GINA RINEHART SAYS NONVIOLENT CRIMINALS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO PAY TO STAY OUT OF JAIL

Paul Toohey News Limited Network Septemb er 06, 2013 

The world according to Gina ... no clean energy programs, pay to stay out of jail and a national mining day. Source: News Limited

SEMI-reclusive billionaire Gina Rinehart says politicians should sell all taxpayer-funded art and decor, reject clean energy programs, and let nonviolent criminals pay to stay out of jail.

She also called for a national day to celebrate mining.
Mrs Rinehart declined an interview with News Corp Australia on the eve of the election, but her executive assistant forwarded her latest article from Australian Resources Investment magazine, which carried her views.
In the article, "Learning from my Europe trip", Mrs Rinehart told of a driver she encountered in Amsterdam, who claimed the Dutch people regretted going down the path of clean energy, such as wind power farms.
"He said people in Holland now wished they hadn't incurred these cleaner power burdens, and wished they'd stayed with the old," she wrote.
The driver complained clean energy meant higher taxes and the loss of old-industry jobs.
Mrs Rinehart said the same thing could happen in Australia.
"Shouldn't we be letting people know there is no money falling from heaven?" she wrote.
Mrs Rinehart, who did not overtly back an Abbott government in the article, said she admired Ireland's 12.5 per cent company tax rate (compared to Australia's 30 per cent rate, or 28.5 per cent under Mr Abbott) and wrote favourably of Hong Kong's 15 per cent top personal tax rate.
She wrote of the "madness of a coal-exporting country like ours charging itself the most expensive power in the developed world, thanks in part to taxes and renewable energy targets".
Mrs Rinehart said Australians did not want ministers and government departments buying artwork with public money, and asked: "How much could be raised to go toward essential services if all the taxpayer-funded art and decor in government offices was sold?"
She also said Australians did not want new prisons and noted new "humane" prison programs in Texas, saying they could work here.
"Let them pay to get out of prison or not enter prison (a new source of revenue), and let them be part of the taxpaying workforce," she wrote.
She wrote if criminals could not afford this, they could pay in other ways.
They could "agree to give up their votes" or surrender their passports, though what this would achieve was not made clear.
Mrs Rinehart also called for a "national mining and related industries day" so Australians better understood the contribution of these industries.
She did not suggest it should be a national holiday.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/gina-rinehart-says-nonviolent-criminals-should-be-allowed-to-pay-to-stay-out-of-jail/story-fni0xqrc-1226712014720