The ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Mining Magnate Cozying Up to Trump
Rhiannon Hoyle and Julie Steinberg
8 min read
Gina Rinehart, in a hat that reads ‘Reliable electricity lovers for Trump,’ poses with Tiffany Trump at a Halloween party this year at Mar-a-Lago. - Hancock Prospecting
In rooms of sequins, blond hair and red MAGA hats, Gina Rinehart still manages to stand out at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago parties.
On Halloween, the mining magnate was photographed at the Palm Beach, Fla., club in a wide-brimmed red hat with a “Drill, Baby, Drill” sign draped around her neck, posing with Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany Trump. Five nights later, Rinehart was back at Mar-a-Lago—this time in a white ball gown and Trump brooch—to watch the U.S. presidential election results and eventually celebrate her host’s victory.
The next day, Australia’s richest person got a coveted sit-down with Elon Musk, a newly influential figure in Trump’s orbit—and one of just several dozen people on the planet with more money than her. Rinehart said in a statement that they discussed issues pertinent to the U.S. and Australia: free speech and the need to cut both government waste and national debts.
Rinehart’s enthusiastic embrace of Trump, and her efforts to export many of the MAGA ideals to Australia, is the latest twist in a life marked at various turns by pugnaciousness and generosity.
At home in Australia, where Rinehart primarily lives on the west coast in Perth, she is a polarizing figure. The executive chairman of closely held Hancock Prospecting is seen as an icon by many in the mining sector, particularly women. She rarely gives interviews, often has bodyguards and is known for being skeptical of outsiders. But she’s also game for a fight.
Now 70 years old, Rinehart famously tangled in court for a decade with her father’s third wife and onetime maid over his estate. Rinehart accused her stepmother of somehow being responsible for her father’s death, a claim rejected by the findings of an inquest. She is in a long-running legal dispute with two of her four children over their rights to valuable mining assets.
Calculations of Rinehart’s wealth vary. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates her net worth is around $18 billion, while Forbes pegs it at roughly $30 billion.
Gina Rinehart and Elon Musk talked at Mar-a-Lago the day after the U.S. election. - Hancock Prospecting
A spokesman for Rinehart said she wasn’t available for an interview.
Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock, is widely credited with discovering a bounty of iron ore in the Pilbara—a thinly populated region of Western Australia—in the 1950s. Today, half the world’s iron-ore exports come from that region.
A legendary and controversial figure in Australian business, Hancock once considered using nuclear bombs as a cheap way to blast open mines in the Outback. His reputation was tarnished by remarks that drugs should be used to sterilize some mixed-race indigenous people.
Tensions between Rinehart and her father spiraled for a time. In letters between the two that later became public in court, she told him he had become a laughingstock. He called her slothful and vindictive.
Rinehart, who spent part of her childhood on a cattle and sheep station in the Australian Outback, took over Hancock Prospecting after his death in 1992 and built it into Australia’s top closely held company by revenue. Her interests now span mining, energy, retail, agriculture and real estate.
Rinehart—or Mrs. R, as many of those closest to her say—typically shuns bankers and is closely involved in every deal or investment her company makes, say people who have done business with her. In a rare attempt to draw attention, several years ago she had many of her company’s locomotives and dump trucks painted pink, in a tribute to breast-cancer patients and research.
She is currently pouring billions into a broad suite of bets on energy and critical minerals including lithium and rare earths, staking a claim to commodities expected to be in demand as the world decarbonizes and electrifies and as the West seeks to diversify supply chains away from China.
Rinehart began investing in Brazilian Rare Earths, a company developing a very high-grade deposit, before it went public in Australia late last year. Her holding has been an invaluable stamp of approval, says Chief Executive Bernardo da Veiga. Other investors “look at it and say ‘Well, you know, she’s in there. There must be something to it.’ And it just differentiates yourself from others.”
She has also single-handedly thwarted deals in the mining industry. Last year, Hancock built a nearly 20% stake in Australian lithium company Liontown Resources, spoiling a plan by Charlotte, N.C.-based Albemarle to buy that business.
Now she appears to be establishing more of a beachhead in the U.S. She took a meaningful stake earlier this year in MP Materials, a Nevada-based mining company that develops rare earths from an operation in California, and recently boosted it to more than 8%.
Pink trucks owned by Hancock Prospecting at its Roy Hill operation in 2016. - Hancock Prospecting
Rinehart’s U.S. ties go back even further. Her second husband, the late Frank Rinehart, was an American lawyer 37 years her senior. They married in Las Vegas and she lived with him and her children in the U.S. for a time in the 1980s. Last year, companies linked to Rinehart’s family were behind two property purchases in Florida.
When she does speak publicly, Rinehart tends to advocate pro-business policies and inherited her father’s knack for stoking outrage.
In 2012, she questioned how miners in Australia could compete with those in Africa, where people, she said, were willing to work for less than two Australian dollars a day. Labor unions called her “out-of-touch and coldhearted.”
Rinehart has also encouraged Australians to spend less time drinking and socializing, and more time working.
This year, she received a lifetime achievement award from the Atlas Society, which promotes the philosophies of Ayn Rand. In a recorded interview for the award ceremony, Rinehart said she first read Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” when she was 13. “The values that were in that book—I haven’t shied from,” she said.
Those close to her say she’s magnanimous. She is known to randomly hand out gifts of 100,000 Australian dollars, roughly $61,300, to employees at Christmas or on her birthday.
She is a key benefactor for Australia’s Olympic athletes, most notably its storied swimming program, and hosted some of the country’s medalists on a luxury glass-topped riverboat on the River Seine during the Paris Games this year. One Australian swimmer called her an almost “godmother figure.”
Rinehart emerged as a supporter of Trump during his first run at the White House, toasting his ambition to cut taxes and reduce what he sees as overregulation—policies she has long campaigned for Down Under.
Gina Rinehart, center, sat with Australia’s former Liberal Party vice president, Teena McQueen, left, and U.K.’s Brexit cheerleader Nigel Farage, right, on election night this year at Mar-a-Lago. - Hancock Prospecting
“I think Gina would regard Donald Trump as what the world has been waiting for,” said Michael Yabsley, a former Liberal politician who worked for Rinehart in the late 1990s.
On election night this year, Rinehart was seated with Toni Holt Kramer, a founder of Trumpettes USA. Together they watched the returns roll in. Nigel Farage, the U.K.’s Brexit cheerleader, and Australia’s former Liberal Party vice president, Teena McQueen, also sat with Rinehart.
Rinehart and Holt Kramer met around 2018, during Trump’s first term in the White House. Rinehart flew in for her husband’s birthday party a few years ago, and they have seen each other in Palm Beach. “She is a unique woman who sees things, not the way they are—the way they should be,” Holt Kramer said. “She’s very bold and very, very brave and very, very strong, and she really wants the best for Australia.”
In remarks sent after the election to various media outlets, Rinehart congratulated Trump, saying: “I do hope Australia watches you and learns as they see that cutting government tape, cutting taxes and cutting government wastage lifts people up, and lifts living standards.”
Where the two disagree are tariffs. Rinehart has stressed her own longstanding opposition to tariffs, while Trump has proposed to aggressively raise them.
She has long warned of dark days ahead for Australia unless it lowers taxes and reduces red tape to make it easier for companies to operate. Australia, where it is compulsory to vote, is due for its own national elections next year.
“In the U.S., the super-rich are celebrated. The American Dream champions talent, drive and immigration success stories,” said Richard Gannon, a resources-industry adviser and former investment banker. “This resonates with Mrs. Rinehart, because it too is her own family origin story.”
