Gina Rinehart on Australian Story: Did ABC become PR machine for our richest citizen?

HER kids slammed it as a “PR exercise”, but a rare, interview with Australia’s richest citizen, Gina Rinehart, posed an interesting question: Should we take more pride in her achievements?

GINA Rinehart has submitted to a rare, in-depth TV interview on the ABC, which her estranged children have slammed as a “public relations exercise”.

Australian Story aired the first of its two-part special on Australia’s richest citizen on Monday night.

The documentary prompted Mrs Rinehart’s two oldest children to write to ABC managing director Mark Scott to call for an investigation, according to The Australian.

“Gina Rinehart is of course entitled to explain and defend her conduct through the media if she so chooses,” lawyers wrote on behalf of Mrs Rinehart’s children John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart.

“However, can it be in the ­public interest or consistent with the obligations of the public broadcaster to apply public funds to this end?”

So, was the episode a puff piece for one of Australia’s most rich and powerful people?

The episode charted the rise of the Hancock mining dynasty and painted Mrs Rinehart’s father Lang Hancock as a pioneering businessman with great vision.

Mrs Rinehart was portrayed as his loyal and hardworking protege, poised to assume the responsibility and largesse that came with running the family business, Hancock Prospecting.

The episode included glowing — and even defensive — accounts of Mrs Rinehart’s achievements in creating the $13 billion Roy Hill iron ore mine, in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.

Family friend and prominent Australian businessman John Singleton said Mr Hancock had the vision, and Mrs Rinehart made it real.

“Gina’s great strength, where she’ll go down in history, is she took her dad’s big dreams and made them big realities,” Mr Singleton said.

“She built the big mine, she financed the big mine, she made the dream come true.”

Gina Rinehart’s close relationship with her father Lang Hancock helped her to become a savvy and determined businesswoman.

Businesswoman and friend Imelda Roche leapt to Mrs Rinehart’s defence, saying that she was “workaholic” who deserved kudos.

“It puzzles me why Australia doesn’t take more pride in her achievements,” she said.

Mrs Rinehart talked of her close relationship with her father — “we spent an inordinate amount of time together — and said he would have been proud of her.

“My father would have great feelings about what I’ve done,” she said.

The episode, however, did address some criticisms of the family, including Mr Hancock’s racist views towards “half-caste” Aborigines, who he said should be wiped out by feeding them contaminated water that would sterilise them.

It also aired footage of an episode of Q&A in which journalist David Marr mocked Mrs Rinehart’s “towering ambition”, which made her “greedy as all get out”.

Episode two of the Australian Story profile will focus on the more contentious parts of her story, including her father’s marriage to Filipino-born socialite Rose Porteous and Mrs Rinehart’s bitter court battle with her children over the family trust.

Was the Australian Story episode a PR exercise or a fascinating profile of an important Australian? Comment below or join the conversation on Twitter @newscomauHQ.