Top-secret documents exchanged in a private stoush between Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart and her eldest children will be handed to rival dynasties fighting for a slice of a lucrative iron ore mine.
The order was issued by Supreme Court Justice Natalie Whitby on Monday, with Rinehart’s company Hancock Prospecting given less than 48 hours to produce dozens of files obtained in a highly charged document swap with her children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart.
Don Rhodes, left, inked a deal in 1969 with iron ore pioneers Peter Wright and Lang Hancock, right, over a valuable tenement in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
The order was made at the request of lawyers for DFD Rhodes, the company pursuing a 1.25 per cent stake of the proceeds from Hancock Prospecting’s Hope Downs mine under a 1969 deal between pioneer Don Rhodes, Rinehart’s father Lang Hancock, and his business partner Peter Wright.
Rhodes’ lawyer Kim Lendich, SC, told the court Hancock Prospecting had provided a list of files for inspection at the court’s request related to Rinehart’s private arbitration, only for 350 pages to be retracted after both John and Bianca claimed they were covered by legal privilege.
Lenditch argued the pair should be compelled to produce them before pursuing any claim to privilege, claiming any conduct to the contrary was likely “an abuse of process”.
But John and Bianca’s lawyer Adam Hochroth rubbished the move, arguing they were wrongly included after being produced under compulsion and should remain under a veil of secrecy.
“They’re documents Rhodes shouldn’t know about at all and to be asked to produce those documents would be oppressive,” he said.
“There’s no mystery as to how these documents ended up in the hands of the Hancock Prospecting parties; they were produced under compulsion and under the confines of confidential arbitration, where there was implied confidentiality.
“This is a serious application seeking to obtain documents over which my clients claims privilege, and it alleges that my clients haven’t compiled with a discovery application.”
Whitby ordered that Hancock Prospecting hand over the files within 48 hours, with DFD Rhodes and John and Bianca given another fortnight to pursue a case for or against their inclusion before a half-day hearing on September 14.
Until now, the prolonged arbitration between Rinehart and her children has remained out of the public eye courtesy of multiple deeds Bianca and John signed to deal with any disputes behind closed doors.
The row over documents represents a mid-trial twist in Hancock Prospecting’s ongoing fight to safeguard its ownership over the Hope Downs iron ore asset, a battle which has been waged on multiple fronts since 2010.
It began with a civil lawsuit at the hands of the descendants of Lang’s school friend-turned-business partner Peter Wright, who claimed royalties on what they claim is a “Hanwright” partnership asset.
Rhodes’ family company, DFD Rhodes, entered the fray in 2013 with a claim of its own over Hope Downs, which is home to four operational mines owned by Hancock Prospecting and Rio Tinto.
In 2016, Rinehart’s eldest children, John and Bianca, levelled their own bid for the sprawling mine, claiming their grandfather left the asset to them.
But Hancock Prospecting and its executive chair Rinehart maintain ownership, insisting they invested in the mines’ development after clawing them back from the state government.
Monday’s hearing comes after more than four weeks of opening submissions in the long-awaited legal showdown, which unearthed letters, contracts and meeting notes laying bare the pioneers’ claims to assets that would elevate their heirs to the top of the country’s rich-list.
The civil trial, before Justice Jennifer Smith, is expected to continue for at least another two months.
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