By Aja Styles
Australia’s wealthiest miner, Gina Rinehart, and her company Hancock Prospecting plan to deliver “a knockout blow” to her children in coming weeks, which will once and for all cement the players vying for Lang Hancock’s iron ore throne.
Mrs Rinehart and her father’s multibillion-dollar legacy have been embroiled across the decades in a historic clash of the iron ore dynasties with Wright Prospecting, founded by Lang’s former partner Peter Wright.
Gina Rinehart and her company Hancock Prospecting, started by her father Lang (inset far right), is defending claims to its Hope Downs iron ore tenement in the Pilbara from Wright Prospecting, started by Peter Wright (inset left).Credit: Fairfax Media
Billionairess Angela Bennett and her nieces, Alexandra Burt and Leonie Baldock, are beneficiaries of his Wright Prospecting legacy, through their companies and trusts.
Lang and Peter’s partnership, particularly in the late 1980s, is at the centre of the contention over ownership of the iron ore riches at the Pilbara’s Hope Downs mining tenements.
The DFD Rhodes dynasty is also seeking a smaller royalty claim to Hancock Prospecting’s $1.46 billion stake over the historic mines, which it jointly owns and operates with Rio Tinto.
But it has been the additional battle with Mrs Rinehart’s two oldest children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart, that has stretched the feud across almost every court in the land, with every appeal now exhausted.
In a chambers hearing at the Supreme Court of Western Australia on Tuesday, Mrs Rinehart’s lawyer Christian Bova SC flagged a plan to legally strike out the children’s application for discovery of documents, claiming it went beyond the main action brought by Wright Prospecting.
Mr Bova said the exploration licences granted to Hancock Mining Limited for the benefit of the HPPL/WPPL partnership was a knockout blow to Mr Hancock and Bianca Rinehart.
“The children’s case depends on HML having the required beneficial entitlements to the tenements when they were first acquired and we say that those are covenant questions that could be answered so as to dispose of the need to then go on and deal with the alleged proprietary claim that the children may have,” he told Justice Rene Le Miere.
“Where the parties are in issue in the proceedings is as to whose benefits were the tenements, as the Hope Downs and East Angeles tenements, applied for and granted back in the late ’80s?
“And if the answer is as my client, Ms [Julie] Taylor’s client and Mr [Nicholas] Dillon’s client contends not beneficial to HML, then it follows that the children lose and they are no longer necessary parties to the proceedings.”
Ms Taylor is the senior counsel representing Wright Prospecting, while Mr Dillon represents DFD Rhodes.
Mr Bova was not surrendering to Wright or Rhodes’ claims, which will still be argued across the 60 days tentatively set down as starting around May in 2022, but suggested that the children were not fully aware of the agreements in place over the tenements.
And he went on to argue that the 300-paragraph submission by Mr Hancock and Ms Rinehart read more like a counterclaim that was concerned with events after the late ’80s, which would be resolved in their separate Federal Court arbitration with their mother.
“The counterclaim includes allegations in regard to Roy Hill and suggests the application to acquire the Roy Hill tenements in the name of HPPL rather than HML were part of a scheme of fraudulent design,” he told Justice Le Miere.
Roy Hill has recently become Australia’s single-largest iron ore mine and last year turned a profit; 70 per cent of which went to Hancock Prospecting.
Mr Bova claimed the siblings were “not going to be truthful” since they would go over their allegations against Mrs Rinehart as part of their whole counter defence brought before the courts, including the confidential family arbitration.
He said they made “very serious allegations”, including claiming there was a decision to revalue the assets while Mrs Rinehart headed up the family trust, with further allegations of conflicts of interest and contention over the debt reconstruction after Lang’s death and “attempt to bring in the shareholding claim”, which effectively reduced the children’s share in HPPL.
“These are all matters that will have to be addressed by way of an expert in accounting evidence,” he said, adding that was only if the children were successful at the strikeout application hearing.
“So factually this trial as it currently stands is going to go into all of these historical matters, none of which are proposed to be engaged with by WPPL, as they say that’s all very nice but irrelevant to my claim.”
Mr Bova said the discovery task currently looked to be “monumental” and could push back the trial a further three years.
“We are seeking to deal with them in a proper and efficient way,′ he told the court.
However, Bianca Rinehart’s lawyer, Christine Ernst, argued her client’s submission simply raised the question and background about why their requests for documentary evidence from Mrs Rinehart had not been provided, as ordered by the courts.
Ms Ernst said it wasn’t a new request.
“In this situation we have no discovery in, at all, and so in that sense we’re really seeking compliance with the order,” she said.
Ms Ernst also argued that the strikeout application had come late in proceedings, saying many of the issues could have been raised much earlier.
“Secondly, and this is perhaps the most important point, it appears to us that the substance of the strikeout application is an effort to re-agitate issues that have already been decided by your honour and by the Court of Appeal in a judgment in respect of which special leave was recently denied,” she told Justice Le Miere.
She said there was no evidence to suggest that making the discovery available would “considerably dissuade the progress of the trial”.
Justice Le Miere set down two days to hear the strikeout application on April 14.