Coalfinger

That was a hell of a thing the producers did to Daniel Craig at the end of the last James Bond movie. It spoke to a profound level of confidence, did it not?

As in, “Yeah, we got this. We got this so hard.”

And yet, here we are, still awaiting a new 007.

Where does such confidence come from, then?

It comes from knowing that whoever steps into Bond’s polished, plain-fronted Highbury’s—fashioned by the shoemakers Crockett & Jones’ from the finest black calves’ leather and fitted with their patented rubber ‘City’ sole—the never-ending franchise already has its next Bond villain.

Indeed, its greatest villain.

Gina ‘Coalfinger’ Rinehart.

Madame Coalfinger’s infamous speech this week to the regional heads of the Special Executive for Counter Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion Queensland Resources Council was less an audition for the role than a full-throated, scenery-chewing performance of it.

Blaming climate change legislation and social welfare for the country’s inability to pay for its defence budget was peak Rupert Murdoch Eliot Carver, but blaming immigrants for the housing shortage and suggesting war veterans and students could simply work more and “pay income tax like the rest of us on their work earnings” was pure, flame-throwing Hank Scorpio.

I can only imagine the delighted ‘squee’ of Barbara Broccoli when she realised that casting Gina in the role of the next megalomaniacal billionaire to threaten all human life on the planet would mean a significant cost-saving on having to pay the Screen Actor’s Guild day-rate on hundreds of extras. Rather than having to hire professional actors to play the role of minions and henchmen, Gina would come to the set with a vast network of her own disposable lackeys.

No need for inconvenient, perennially-striking screenwriters either. The plot for Bond 28 is already written, with Gina channelling Hugo Drax to blind entire populations through the violent worldwide eye-rolling occasioned by her suggestion that she pays income tax just like anyone else.

Her contempt for suffocating environmental regulations and green tape is possibly a little too reminiscent of the Quantum Corporation’s plot to steal Bolivia’s water supply, but if Madame Coalfinger can keep a straight face while complaining about the disgraceful lack of school textbooks paying the “proper homage to iron ore”, then a little plotline recycling should surely not trouble her.

I have faith, however, that Gina is capable of much, much more than this.

While previous Bond villains have schemed to blow up the world, very few of them were bold enough to contemplate enslaving it through, er, mindfulness. Or, as Twitter’s @doctormcdougall put it, “Minefulness.”

“Please take every opportunity you can… to remind everyone of the essential contribution of mining,” Gina instructed her minions this week. “Please don’t let a day go past without devoting, at the minimum, fifteen minutes each day to spread the mining message.”