Billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart has lost a last-ditch bid to throw a veil of secrecy over swathes of her impending court showdown with the descendants of her pioneer father’s business partners.
Justice Jennifer Smith shut down her company Hancock Prospecting’s push for a confidentiality order over more than 16,700 pages of material on Wednesday, which would have forced the closure of the court and prevented disputed claims levelled against her by her eldest children from being aired publicly.
Gina Rinehart staunchly defends her image.Credit: Getty
The Supreme Court stoush, set to get underway next week, centres around a partnership deal inked between Lang Hancock, Rinehart’s father, his business partner Peter Wright and pioneer Don Rhodes back in the 1980s.
Wright’s billionaire descendants have been sparring with Rinehart for more than a decade over how the spoils of one of the most lucrative assets in the partnership, the Hope Downs tenement Hancock Prospecting co-owns with Rio Tinto, should be distributed.
The Rhodes family have also been fighting for a 1.25 per cent cut of those funds.
But it has also seen her eldest children, Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock, dragged into the mix, as the bid clashes with their own highly publicised disputed claims about their mother’s conduct in relation to assets their grandfather allegedly left them.
Before more than two dozen lawyers, Hancock Prospecting’s lawyer Noel Hutley told the court multiple deeds Bianca and John signed almost two decades earlier meant the pair had a contractual obligation to deal with any disputes behind closed doors.
With an arbitration with her children to rule on the deed still underway, Hutley argued a confidentiality order should remain in place until the finalisation of the case.
Rinehart’s lawyer Leigh Warnick warned the misconduct allegations put by her children had the potential to cause her significant reputational damage, referencing what he described as highly emotive language in submissions he said had been written as if to provide sound bites for the media.
He said the crux of the issue was that the children had vowed not to cause reputational damage and not to make certain claims at all.
“There would be prejudice to her personal position, her own reputation, which she has built and rebuilt through much hard work over many years,” he said.
“It affects her in all her capacities in her life, as chair of Hancock Prospecting, as a successful female business leader and as a trailblazer in the mining and agricultural industries.
“Mrs Rinehart accepts that this court is committed to open justice, but we say it is in the interests of the administration of justice to make confidentiality orders.”
But Wright Prospecting’s lawyer Julie Taylor argued what was requested went well beyond that, labelling it an unnecessary and unduly onerous regime which was not only inconvenient, but completely unworkable for trial.
She said the orders sought were disproportionate, significantly overreaching in scope and likely to impede the administration of justice.
“This is not a matter of inconvenience - any time they want to rely on them [the documents], the court will need to be closed. The court will need to be closed again and again,” she said.
“We would submit that these are unremarkable documents, these orders are not necessary to protect the administration of justice and the application should be dismissed.”
And her position was backed by Bianca’s counsel Christopher Withers, who dubbed the move a vast, blanket suppression order over information already in the public domain.
Withers told the court the suppression covered allegations already ventilated in significant detail in public court judgments and documents already tendered in open court.
If awarded, he said the suppression order would be futile, make a mockery of the court system and undermine the administration of justice.
“They’re seeking orders that would have the court closed for much of this trial, about every five minutes,” he said.
“When we look at the orders, they cover virtually everything, even matters not commercially sensitive; they’ve taken an all or nothing approach.
“What lies behind this is Gina’s concern for her reputation - everyone accepts that impact is not a sufficient justification for the making of a suppression order.
“There are no special protections for wealthy and powerful individuals who may wish to protect their reputation.
“These allegations were put to the federal court, and the world did not cave in for Hancock Prospecting.”
Warnick rejected the submissions, arguing the point was that allegations which had ceased to be newsworthy would be given a whole new currency if the family dispute were to be recycled in open court.
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