Gina: a real life Succession story, episode 8

Off Duty | The Guardian Investigates

The Guardian

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At 13, Gina Rinehart read a book that would help shape her worldview – Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The novel’s capitalist underpinnings promote the idea that people should strive to be their best industrial selves. In this episode, we explore how these values are playing out in Rinehart’s life today, including her proposal to build a coalmine in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. And we hear how author and environmental campaigner Tim Winton views her efforts to prevent an overhaul of Australia’s environmental laws

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The Guardian.
0:09.6	Do you think there would be enough money in the universe
0:13.0	to make a person like Gina Reinhardt feel secure?
0:21.6	I mean, billionaires have extraordinary political power and in watching Gina Reinhardt
0:29.1	exercise that power is a formidable thing.
0:35.9	Over the past six episodes, we've spent a lot of time talking about Gina Reinhart's past,
0:41.6	her upbringing and how her and her family have moved through the country and the world,
0:47.2	how they've changed it for the better and for the worse. We've heard from her supporters and her
0:52.4	detractors, her friends and her family.
0:56.0	We heard about how her family are said to have started the iron ore industry in Australia.
1:01.0	Her family legal sagas and her support of Australian athletes.
1:07.0	But in this episode, we turn to what Gina and her company Hancock prospecting are doing now.
1:14.5	It's quite incredible to watch a billionaire at work. I mean, they have more resources than other people.
1:21.3	They have more access to political power than other people. And they use all of these tools.
1:30.2	They're just trying to be their best industrial selves.
1:34.0	Everybody else is getting in their way.
1:35.9	I can see why that narrative would be appealing to somebody like Gina Reinhardt.
1:43.0	From Guardian Australia, I'm Sarah Martin, and this is Gina, a podcast series about Australia's
1:50.2	richest person.
1:52.6	It's sad, but we've seen this story before.
1:55.7	I mean, this is Citizen Kane.
1:58.1	There are figures from Homer.
	...

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