Mrs Gina Rinehart AO – RFDS VIP Launch Event Speech
Good afternoon everyone
Mrs Rinehart has asked me to deliver her speech on her behalf at this fantastic occasion to launch the new Pilatus pro RFDS aircraft.
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Hello everyone, and a very warm welcome to this happy royal flying doctor occasion.
I would like to start by thanking the Royal Flying Doctor Service, for all they do, day after day and year after year, ever since inception more than a century ago, helping our fantastic people in the bush.
Today we are here to officially welcome the new PC-12 PRO aircraft to the RFDS WA fleet, proudly funded by Hancock and the Rinehart Medical Foundation.
For more than a century, the Royal Flying Doctor Service has been one of Australia’s most essential services for those in the bush. They truly are the medical backbone of our bush!
Those of us who know our northwest, Kimberley’s and the remote beautiful parts of west Australia, understand that distance is not just a line on a map, it can mean agony as well as life or death, while anxiously waiting for medical help. The RFDS is not a ‘nice-to-have’, it is an essential and at times, life-saving service to the people who call the bush their home.
As you may know, our family has a very long involvement with regional and remote Australia. My family ancestors arrived in Cossack in the 1860s and were the first settlers to start the agriculture industry in the north. Times sure were tough for those pioneers. More than two decades later, other pioneering Australians undertook huge cattle treks from the east, and founded cattle stations, such as at Fossil Downs in the Kimberley’s. My ancestors formed the first town, in the northwest at Roebourne and the first port at Cossack.
You may be interested to know, that thanks to my dad’s persistence and endeavours to get the federal governments export embargo lifted, and then the unhelpful state government restriction on access to iron ore tenements, that from his and others important discoveries in the Pilbara, more than 2 trillion of export revenue has been achieved! And over $162 billion in cumulative royalties paid to our state government, 88 percent of the royalties being from the iron ore industry, with the rest from other regional miners.
I loved living in the northwest, but remain very aware and very concerned, that despite all the tax revenue earned from the bush going into government kitties, there is not nearly enough money spent to ensure airstrips in country areas are maintained. Nor are funds provided for enabling such airstrips to be lit so that they can be used at night, or useable for multiple aircraft, or made longer for larger planes, or money provided to seal them so that they can be useable during floods.
Our bushies don’t have the convenience of nearby hospitals, let alone adequately equipped hospitals. Without adequate airstrip expenditures, our wonderful people in the bush too often remain without RFDS planes being able to land when they are urgently required.
There is far too much government wastage. Wouldn’t it be better if some of that revenue could be directed to help planes like this to enable the RFDS to bring timely essential medical assistance, to our very special people working and living in the bush.
Country Australians who contribute so much to Australia, do not ask for special treatment. They ask and deserve to have access to essential medical services when accident, births, serious illness, or other frightening moments occur. These incidents don’t only occur during day light and don’t only occur when it doesn’t matter if the airstrip is sealed or not.
Assuming useable airstrips, this new state-of-the-art aircraft can deliver much-needed care faster, safer and more efficiently. That is why Hancock and the Rinehart Medical Foundation are pleased to fund the PC-12 PRO.
My family has long supported the essential RFDS. My mother, Hope Nicholas of Cobb and Co, who married and became Hope Hancock, helped to support the RFDS for more than a decade, including holding lovely lunches at her Dalkeith home. I feel she would have been very pleased to see this aircraft today, continuing her important tradition of helping the people of her home state.
I will always remember the ladies who gathered for this much looked forward to occasion, warmly greeting my dear mother. Most of those gathered being my mother’s lovely bush friends, most of whom had spent a lot of their lives in the north.
They well knew first-hand how essential the Royal Flying Doctor Service was to lives in the bush. Touching stories, experiences with the RFDS, happy and sad, but all very real, were exchanged during those lunches. Stories that included keeping the generator going into the night, so that the flying doctor plane could spot a lit-up homestead. Then when could hear the plane, rushing down to the station airstrip, to put Land Rover lights on both ends of the airstrip, so that the flying doctor could land and help someone in dire need during the night. Tales that included, landing on gravel country roads, the priority being the patients. I’ve done such landings many, many times with my dad. With an Auster when I was tiny, then Cessnas, then with Aero Commander Shrikes, then if my memory is correct, the Aero Commander’s turbo prop. But very sadly with the rules and regulations these days, the flying doctor no longer reaches emergencies like these. So, we urgently need airstrip upgrades.
Beautiful gatherings like my mother’s friends getting together to support the RFDS, were not unique, and I hope they long continue.
For me, it is a privilege to be able to continue supporting the RFDS.
To the doctors, nurses, volunteers, fundraisers, pilots and supporters of the RFDS, thank you.
To the RFDS leadership, thank you for your ongoing assistance to regional and remote Australians. I hope you join me in my call for better maintenance and upgrade of bush airstrips, to help save more lives, and to lessen the time bush people may be in gross anxiety or agony.
And to the people of regional and remote West Australia, this aircraft is for you. For those who work long hours, battle weather, rising costs and isolation, and endless increasing government tape, regulations and government charges, that make your life so extra difficult, but somehow keep feeding us, supplying essential minerals, supporting many businesses, continuing to build our nation, and who add hugely to our government’s tax revenue. You deserve to know that when you or your families need medical care, the royal flying dr service can be there.
May this new aircraft fly safely, and may it help many Australians in our remote and regional areas for many years to come.
Thank you and God bless the RFDS!
