•  Gina Rinehart, 67, is Australia's richest woman worth $31billion in May 2021
•  Warns the country could fall from prosperity into poverty like Sri Lanka
• "Alluring political words of ''free this'' and ''free that'', more taxpayers' money for this or that, helped to turn once-prosperous Ceylon, prosperous with its tea plantations and other agriculture, into a country which couldn't support itself with food"
• “its people faced hunger, loss of free speech, consequent damaging riots, property damage, unhappiness, police and military, and a country name change as it struggled with the results of its socialist path.”

 Australia's richest woman Gina Rinehart, worth $31billion, has warned Australia is on the same track as Sri Lanka and Argentina in falling from prosperity to poverty due to a big-spending, regulation-heavy government. The mining magnate, who is the country's richest person with a net worth of $31billion, urged Australians to be 'on guard against the 'ruining effects of socialism' in order to preserve the nation's wealth, the Daily Mail reported.

'For generation after generation, we have wanted to hand down a better country for our children,' she wrote in her essay obtained in advance to Daily Mail Australia.

'Sadly for this generation, I believe this is now at risk, which the younger ones amongst us, in particular, should not want.'

Mrs. Rinehart urged the Federal Government - which last year oversaw a record $167billion budget deficit, largely due to heavy spending to offset the crippling effect of Covid lockdowns - to show more fiscal restraint in the years to come.

'Alluring political words of ''free this'' and ''free that'', more taxpayers' money for this or that, helped to turn once-prosperous Ceylon, prosperous with its tea plantations and other agriculture, into a country which couldn't support itself with food,' she wrote using the British colonial name for Sri Lanka which became independent in 1948.
'Instead, its people faced hunger, loss of free speech, consequent damaging riots, property damage, unhappiness, police and military, and a country name change as it struggled with the results of its socialist path.'
Mrs Rinehart, whose wealth soared by $2.2 billion in the six months to May this year due to surging iron ore prices, also cited Argentina - which was the world's tenth wealthiest nation per capita in 1913 but now suffers political instability, inflation, and a 42 per cent poverty rate - as a cautionary tale of big government.