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May 17th, 2013 
THE resources sector is being used like an ATM and Australia’s record debt is unsustainable, mining magnate Gina Rinehart says.
Ms Rinehart, Australia’s richest person, made the comments in a video recorded speech to be delivered at the Australian Mines and Metals Association conference in Melbourne on Friday.
Watch Gina Rinehart’s speech above
“What few seem to properly understand – even people in government – is that miners and other resources industries aren’t just ATMS for everyone else to draw from without that money first having to be earned and, before that, giant investments are made,” she says in the message.
“It is incredible that after the last six years of record commodity boom times, we now find the once lucky country in record debt, with the federal budget tipped to deliver yet another deficit, to further increase our record debt.
“This debt is simply unsustainable, especially when Australia now faces an increasing elderly population with increasing needs, and fewer workers to pay for it all. This lucky country has got to start thinking, and acting.”
Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart. Picture: Patrick Hamilton
Ms Rinehart also criticises Australian governments for heavy spending and for being “cost uncompetitive”.
“Too many of our governments seem to have had their thoughts clouded by six record years of revenue. They seemed to think the ATM would never empty, and never need refilling,” she says.
“They seemed to think we could somehow afford to be increasingly cost uncompetitive and become deeper in debt.”
She also warns Australia is heading the way of many European economies unless it takes action.
“It is as if Spain, Greece, Britain, Italy and Portugal had no warnings to give us about the similar path we are now taking,” she says.
“It is as if their struggles with unemployment, riots, increased crime, debt and a sheer lack of money for even essential services, had nothing to teach us.”
Prime Minister Julia Gillard slammed the claims as “absolute nonsense”.
“(It’s) not backed in by economists and not backed in by ratings agencies with their triple-A rating of the Australian economy,” she told reporters in Hobart on Friday.
The Eurozone economy has contracted for six consecutive quarters, while Australia has avoided recession for 21 years.
Ms Gillard rejected Ms Rinehart’s assertion that the government was using the mining industry as an automated teller machine to fund its promises.
Labor introduced a minerals resource rent tax in July 2012 targeting the super profits of iron ore and coal miners.
The tax has raised only a fraction of the original forecast revenue.
“What we are doing is taxing super profits in the mining industry because it’s Australians that own the mineral wealth in our ground and no one individual,” Ms Gillard said.
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