If Australia’s current political environment were a Bond film, we have reached the point where the villain feels comfortable enough to explain their entire dastardly plan to a restrained 007.

Gina Rinehart’s most recent public intervention into Australian politics not only had her saying the quiet parts out loud – let’s give away Queensland land to Israel for their weapons industry, and then find some Queensland islands to gift the world’s first grifting trillionaire, Elon Musk, she said it happily, pre-planned and in front of cameras.

Unlike a typical Bond villain, Rinehart had no quippy one-liners before escaping in a submarine. Instead she just forced some of the current most influential players in Australian politics to make bulldozer noises for her amusement, before presenting her current favourite, Pauline Hanson, with a toy orange bulldozer.

None of this should be surprising – Australia has always given away things for free to powerful vested interests (just look at our fossil fuel contracts). For Rinehart to suggest giving away sovereign Australian territory to foreign interests is just business as usual.

And Hanson, who – before adding stunts to her list of whinges – was a huge fan of stunting for power, having not only draped herself in the Israeli flag in the parliament (the obvious hallmark of a “proud Australian”) but attaching herself to any status quo establishment power that........

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