Gina Rinehart has spent the best part of the last two months desperately trying to keep the details of her bitter family feud out of the public spotlight, filing a series of legal actions designed to get the details of the NSW Supreme Court case suppressed.
Gina, it’s officially time to stop wasting your time and money going down the suppression route.
The ugly details of this spat – which is centred on control of a $3 billion family trust – are now so widely known that there’s no point.
We’ve read about Rinehart’s three estranged children, John Hancock, Hope Welker and Bianca Rinehart, almost begging for cash to pay for personal security and other amenities (including cooks and housekeepers).
“I don’t think you understand what it means that the whole world thinks you are going to be wealthier than Bill Gates,” Hope Welker wrote in an email to her mother.
We’ve read about John Hancock telling any would-be kidnappers that there’s no point demanding a ransom for Rinehart’s children and grandchildren.
“What more can I do than communicate to any kidnappers out there – over my dead body and you will be wasting your time anyway,” he said on the weekend. “If you think you’re going to get anything from my mother, good luck.”
And this morning we’ve read about Rinehart’s lawyers threatening to cancel ransom insurance policies that have been put in place to protect Gina’s children and grandchildren, unless the estranged kids agree to support her suppression actions.
“We can only presume that your clients’ previously stated concerns for the personal safety of their families and themselves have now completely and entirely disappeared,” the letter for Rinehart’s lawyer to the children said.
“Under these circumstances, it seems that your clients would place no value in the continuation of ‘ransom insurance’ that is currently provided to them and/or their young children.”
There is more than a little logic to what Rinehart’s lawyers are saying. If Hope, John and Bianca were really so worried about their personal safety, then suing your mother in the NSW Supreme Court and then fighting her efforts to suppress the case isn’t the best way to protect your privacy.
But the fact that the kids haven’t tried to settle this behind closed doors speaks volumes about how poisonous this battle has become.
For someone who values her privacy as much as Gina does, waking up and reading about this circus in newspapers around the country must be infuriating.
Of course, it’s in her hands if she wants to stop this mess. In a matter of hours she could simply start talking with her estranged children and come to a settlement, financial or not.
But can Rinehart do it? History says no. When Gina is taken on in court she doesn’t settle, regardless of how ugly things get.
Remember her decade-long battle with her father Lang Hancock’s second wife Rose Porteous? That is another example of a case that could have been settled, but was instead contested to the bitter end, with plenty of dirty laundry aired.
But surely this is different. These are Gina’s own children. Surely no one in this mess wants this embarrassment to continue – except maybe the media, which is thoroughly enjoying this rare insight into Rinehart’s affairs.
Rinehart has won a suppression order over the trust case until March 9. Instead of worrying about the lost cause of keeping this whole thing quiet, she should spend the next five weeks trying to settle the battle with her children.
She should, but I’d be surprised if she does.
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
