Can Gina Rinehart’s multibillion-dollar company not afford a graphic designer?

Here in the Crikey bunker, we occasionally get praise from unexpected sources. We gratefully accepted, say, the support from former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, neither of whom we have shied away from criticising, and Scott Morrison once said we were “absolutely incredible”. (At least we think that’s what he meant when he said we weren’t credible?)

Still, this one did land as a bit of a surprise.

In response to Dominic Kelly’s piece for us in March, “How did Australia’s conservative movement lose its way?”, Hancock Prospecting got in touch about the artwork, with a representative asking if it could “purchase a digital copy of the photo/cartoon” to “put on the office wall”.

Yes, that would be the Hancock Prospecting run by one Gina Rinehart, who features in the image and gets a solitary mention in the piece as a major source of funding behind the Institute of Public Affairs, a “vessel for pretending that Tony Abbott is still relevant”.

Alas, the graphic, which contains a bunch of photos we purchased from AAP, isn’t ours to sell, and it’s worth noting that our wonderful in-house designer Zennie is a long-time Greens member and was horrified at the thought.

And while the request is a testament to her fantastic work, it does raise a question: can the company run by Australia’s richest woman not afford its own graphic designer? Someone who could visually associate Rinehart with all those Liberal Party luminaries of the past 40 years, but in a way that doesn’t also partially credit her with funding the intellectual decay that has seen the party wiped from office in Australia’s mainland as efficiently as a spill from a kitchen counter?

Rinehart has $43 billion. Her daughters, via the extraordinary entrepreneurial insight of having been born, take up another three spots in the list of Australia’s nine female billionaires. Girlbosses, each and every one.

Still, times are tough, as Rinehart reminded a Queensland Resources Council function this week, what with governments’ “use of propaganda like ‘dirty mining’ and ‘evil mining’ ”. If you think she’s being melodramatic, look no further than the spittle-flecked chops of South Australian Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis who, eyes ablaze with anti-mining zeal, unleashed the following at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association national conference on Monday:

Those people who are misinformed outside, who attempt to belittle or criticise this industry, do not understand the contribution you make … The South Australian government is at your disposal, we are here to help and we are here to offer you a pathway to the future.