Election 2022: Gina Rinehart backs IPA defence policy arm on China challenge

Conservative think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs will open a foreign policy and national security arm to foster broader public debate on the rise of China and Australia’s security outlook.

Gina Rinehart.

Conservative think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs will open a foreign policy and national security arm to foster broader public debate on the rise of China and Australia’s deteriorating security outlook.

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart is understood to have strongly backed the move, although her company Hancock Prospecting said it had not bankrolled the $3m project.

The IPA’s new arm, the IPA Program for National Resilience and Security, will employ up to 12 foreign policy experts and spotlight linkages between domestic policy and defence policy.

It seeks to place the IPA alongside Australia’s other key foreign policy think-tanks: the Lowy Institute, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the American-focused US Studies Centre.

“We want to focus on the importance of liberal democratic values in Australia and the relationship between Australia and our liberal democratic allies,” IPA executive director John Roskam said.

“It’s the aggressiveness of China, but it’s more than China – it’s a disruption to the world liberal democratic order, including Russia.

“We also want to inject into the debate more realism about the perilous security situation Australia faces and an understanding that we can’t disconnect energy and climate change policy from our security and defence policy.

“In the light of the election result, as much as we might have aspirations for net zero and emissions reduction, there is the risk that will damage our capacity to defend ourselves.”

Mrs Rinehart, who is believed to be the IPA’s largest donor, giving about $2m a year to the non-profit, free-market think tank, is understood to have been a strong supporter of the expanded role.

She has been a vocal critic of Australia’s defence capability and said this week that the first responsibility of new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was to defend the nation.

The chairman of Hancock Prospecting described Australia’s naval capability as inadequate and called for a stronger defence presence in the northwest of Australia, where her company’s iron ore shipments are made.

“Given the lack of defence in Australia’s northwest, despite it being the powerhouse of Australia’s economy, I also hope smart mines are urgently implemented in abundance in at least our northern and northwest (and northeast) oceans,” she said.

Mr Roskam declined to comment on Mrs Rinehart’s contribution to IPA, but court proceedings in 2018 revealed she donated $2.3m to it in 2016 and $2.2m in 2017.

In 2013, the institute presented Mrs Rinehart with a special “free enterprise leader award” and in 2016 it bestowed on her an honorary life membership, in recognition of her “commitment … to the work of the Institute of Public Affairs over many years”.