Rinehart’s full house beats four of a kind in Kidman poker

Illustration: Rod Clement

Billionaire Gina Rinehart’s success at Kidman & Co poker against a quartet of Australian cattle barons recalls the encounter in Las Vegas between Kerry Packer and, appropriately enough, a Texas cattleman.

The Texan, so recall the Packerologists, was filthy as a lone star hog that Packer was getting favoured treatment at the table.

“Do you know I’m worth $US70 million?” said the cattleman, contemptuously.

“I’ll toss you for it,” was Packer’s legendary reply.

Rinehart’s version in Kidman two-up was less pithy — but just as emphatic.

“I stand behind the bid and should FIRB or PRC approvals not be achieved, then Hancock will proceed with the acquisition on a 100 per cent basis,” said Rinehart in a statement announcing her $385.5m counterbid, which will now go ahead with, or without, Port Adelaide fan Gui Guojie, the Chinese property billionaire.

It was a stark reminder of the negotiating tactics of the super rich.

Within hours, the earthy quartet had tapped out. Quite sensibly, too. Would you get into a bidding war with someone worth $6 billion?

Howdy, neighbour

The wealth imbalance between Gina Rinehart and her rival all-Australian opponent, the Buntine, Brinkworth, Harris and Oldfield families, certainly rings true with the Kerry Packer in Vegas story.

But the tone is completely differently — at least, it was when the four families (the BBHO partners) announced they were tapping out.

“Each of the BBHO partners wishes the Hancock consortium well and, should they be successful in completing the acquisition, we look forward to welcoming them as neighbours,” they said in a statement.

And we understand that yesterday at least one of the patriarchs — Viv Oldfield, Tom Brinkworth, Sterling Buntine or Malcolm Harris — had called Rinehart to wish her the best with her acquisition, and to ­personally invite her, next time her helicopter was flying over his expansive patch of Australia, to pop in for a cuppa.

Stokes the mentor

Team Mariah Carey has struck back with a jarringly different account of what ended her engagement with James Packer.

Using LA gossip website TMZ, “Mariah sources” have painted a picture of Packer as “mentally unstable” — allegations strongly denied by team Packer.

Down Under, it’s a very different inside story.

The local version says that wise heads, including Kerry Stokes, counselled the end of the relationship. The TMZ backgrounding seems to prove their point.

The 76-year-old Seven billionaire has long acted as a father figure for Kerry Packer’s son.

In August, the gaming mogul was a personal guest of Stokes at the Rio Olympics his Seven network was broadcasting.

And just over a month before the Olympic reunion, Stokes was spotted on Packer’s icebreaker Arctic P, consoling the clearly distressed Packer. Speculation at the time suggested the talk was related to his Fantasy fiancee.

Stokes was far from alone among Packer’s most trusted sources of counsel who suggested caution with the pop star, who has spending habits to make Rose Porteous seem thrifty.

While the end is a relief, the demise of Packer’s fourth engagement — after Kate Fischer, Jodhi Meares and Erica Baxter — is far from a source of happiness.

And with 18 Crown staff, and a further 10 connected junket organisers, detained, he could use the support.

Balnaves presses on

Only eight more sleeps till Neil Balnaves steps down as the chairman of Ardent Leisure. Almost there.

The 15-year-long Ardent chairman is many things — smart, generous, charming.

But, to go by this week, it would seem he’s also terrible at knowing when he might not have all the answers. And when it might be best to consult others.

In the days after four people died at Ardent’s Dreamworld theme park on the Gold Coast, Balnaves, in the most tragic circumstances, seems to have become a cautionary tale for the dangers of a single person becoming too dominant in a listed organisation.

It seems it was a Balnaves “Captain’s Pick” to go ahead with Thursday’s AGM.

And to keep CEO Deborah Thomas’s awkward bonus on the agenda.

And to discuss the company’s commercial performance.

And to reopen the theme park before the funerals were held for its four dead customers.

Still, perhaps one little bit of good news to come out of Thursday’s AGM was Balnaves’ insistence that, despite the week’s tragedy, his departure on November 6 will go ahead on schedule.

We’ll have to wait to see how incoming chairman George Venardos performs in the role, how Thomas will work with the new chair and whether their communications advisers Newgate stay on for the ride.

First one to blink

It seems it won’t be long until either someone swerves or there is a bloody collision in the game of legal chicken being played by One Nation’s bank-hating senator Rod Culleton and former Wesfarmers director Dick Lester.

The King & Wood Mallesons lawyers representing Lester yesterday drew attention to their creditor’s petition in the Federal Court of Australia against Senator Culleton over a sum of $205,536.50, plus interest and costs. The matter will be heard in Perth on November 21 — the first day of the final fortnight of parliament in Canberra.

Lester’s lawyers also said they would oppose the proceedings in the Court of Appeal that Culleton has lodged in recent weeks.

Culleton, ever the optimist, remains confident that he will carry the day. “COC is prepared to take Dick head on,” Culleton told us this week, embracing — in his inimitable way — the Culleton Oversight Committee, which was created by our colleague Richard Gluyas.