News

Article by Brad Thompson, courtesy of The Australian.

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart rewarded workers inside her private West Australian business empire with a multimillion-dollar giveaway to mark her belated birthday in Perth on Friday.

Mrs Rinehart gave away dozens of prizes each worth $100,000 to workers across her resources, energy, agriculture and workwear divisions.

The celebration for long-serving employees who have been with her companies for at least a decade was held at an undisclosed venue that doubled as a 71st event, although there is no sign the guest of honour appeared in person. The iron ore billionaire turned 71 on February 9.

More than 450 people attended the event. In a speech shared at Friday’s party, Mrs Rinehart referred at length to comments made by Argentina President Javier Milei at the Conservative Political Action Conference held in Maryland in the US on February 23.

Mr Milei, who was pictured with Mrs Rinehart at celebrations to mark Donald Trump’s inauguration, told the Maryland conference that he supported moves to slash the public service in the US and gifted Trump ally Elon Musk a chainsaw.

“Our method is similar to that of our dear friend Elon Musk,” Mr Milei said at the conference. “To go office by office, keep in place what is working and get rid of the rest. That’s why I gave him a chainsaw.”

Mrs Rinehart started giving away $100,000 prizes drawn from a raffle system to mark her birthday in 2023.

Hancock Prospecting foreshadowed it would become an annual event, similar to a random prize draw it hosts in the week leading up to Christmas.

In 2023, Mrs Rinehart gave away 41 birthday prizes spread across the group’s companies which represented one for each year Mrs Rinehart had worked at Hancock Prospecting, first under her father Lang Hancock and, since his death in 1992, as the private company’s executive chairman.

Fewer prizes were handed out this year, The Australianhas learned, but there were dozens of winners, among them some of Hancock Prospecting’s longest-serving people.

The awards come free of what Mrs Rinehart has called “nasty tax”, meaning her companies also cover any tax payable for individuals.

The entertainment at Friday’s party included a staff choir wearing Rossi boots and Kidman-branded apparel.

Mrs Rinehart acquired the boot maker and its assets such as the Kidman trademarks in 2023 in a move aligning with her ownership of the S. Kidman & Co cattle empire run by former Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles.

Rossi boots were gifted to Australia’s Olympians in Paris in 2024.

Hancock iron ore chief executive Gerhard Veldsman told the party the company was dedicated to employee wellbeing, offering family-friendly rostering, regional flights, and generous benefits such as profit sharing and private healthcare coverage.

Under the profit-sharing scheme, bonuses worth tens of thousands of dollars lob in the bank accounts of workers at the Roy Hill iron ore mine each December.

The bonuses are usually paid to about 2800 workers at Roy Hill to mark the birthday of Mrs Rinehart’s late mother Hope Hancock.

More than $350m is estimated to have been paid out to Roy Hill workers every year since 2018, on top of some of the highest wages in Australia.

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