The downside of power, privilege and philanthropy

The efforts of Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart to have two portraits of her by Indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira removed from the National Gallery Australia is a study in the use of power, privilege and patronage – and of its limits.

As this masthead revealed this week Rinehart, offended by her likeness in Namatjira’s work, approached NGA director Nick Mitzevich and NGA chair Ryan Stokes in April, demanding that the portrait be taken down from the NGV’s first major survey of Namatjira’s work.

Gallery visitors view the artwork by Vincent Namatjira at the National Gallery on Friday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The exhibition, Vincent Namatjira: Australia in colour, includes 21 images painted by the Western Aranda artist of notable Australian figures including Ned Kelly, Lionel Rose and Namatjira’s friend Adam Goodes.

Rinehart was not amused, as Linda Morris and Eryk Bagshaw reported, and since the exhibition opened on March 2, there have been more than a dozen complaints to the gallery from associates of her company, Hancock Prospecting, which have accused the NGA of “doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party” by displaying her image in an unflattering way.

Hancock Prospecting has paid more than $40 million in sponsorship to Australian swimmers, and Swimming Queensland chief Kevin Hasemann was also moved to complain, writing to Mitzivech to assert that through her philanthropy Rinehart had proved herself to be a “great Australian” and he urged the gallery to bow to her demands.

Rio Olympic gold medallist Kyle Chalmers was among the group of swimmers to lead the campaign against the portraits.

The NGV describes the show as one that takes a “wry look at the politics of history, power and leadership from a contemporary Aboriginal perspective” – and given this week’s revelations those words could not be truer.

Namatjira was difficult to contact throughout the reporting of this story because he lives so remotely and so simply. According to the AFR rich list, Rinehart has amassed a fortune of about $37.6 billion by selling resources owned by all Australians via a company established by her father, Lang Hancock, a man who once declared in a television interview that water sources should be poisoned to “sterilise” Aboriginal people so they might “breed themselves out”.

Though Rinehart’s philanthropy is negligible compared with her almost unfathomable wealth, she often deploys it effectively in her own interests. She is a generous donor to the political parties that make the laws and regulations that have allowed her company to prosper.

Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton suspended campaigning for the crucial Dunkley byelection this year to make an overnight trip across the country to spend an hour at her birthday party.

She once invited then-Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce to a gala dinner where she sprang on him a $40,000 “award” for his work as an industry champion. (In the face of growing controversy he later returned it.)

She is also known to withdraw her largesse when offended. In 2022, she withdrew $15 million in funding from Netball Australia when players questioned whether they should be wearing Hancock Prospecting branding on their uniforms, given its founder’s genocidal impulse.

“If Olympic swimmers think they have so much say over the National Gallery, maybe Vincent and I should spend more time in the swimming pool,” said artist Ben Quilty, a friend of Namatjira’s who collaborated on one of the works in the show.

It is a fair observation.

Netball Australia held out against Rinehart’s bullying and was later rescued from financial ruin by Visit Victoria.

The NGA is clearly acutely aware of the potential threat from Rinehart. It did not assist the Herald’s reporters in gathering the information in our stories. But it too held out against Rinehart, to its credit.

Swimming Queensland did not, and, as it prepares for the Paris Olympics, it must now consider how much Rinehart’s generosity will cost it.

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