Gina Rinehart v Andrew Forrest: Rivalry between Twiggy and Australia’s richest woman laid bare in MinRes deal

Their rivalry is legendary — a modern Australian version of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison’s fight for domination, with iron ore taking the place of electricity. Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest have for years jostled for position as Australia’s wealthiest person, nipping at each other’s heels on different rich lists as the vagaries of world markets revalued their businesses. Their fortunes were made in the Pilbara, but that is the only thing they have in common. Drunk on Greta Thunberg’s Kool-Aid, Forrest has positioned himself as a socially progressive climate-change crusader. He is a warrior against slavery, protector of the world’s oceans and proud father of a non-binary child who uses the pronouns they/them. Rinehart is an unabashed conservative who doesn’t hide her scepticism about climate change any more than she does her adoration for Donald Trump. She despises government intervention and has railed against gender ideology in schools. He hates her belligerence over environmental causes. She detests his position, asking how a man can reconcile his call for the heads of oil and gas companies be put on spikes with his decision to build an LNG import terminal at Port Kembla. They rarely go public with their rivalry, but blind Freddy can see it (literally) on display. RM Williams versus Rossi Boots. Akubra versus Driza-Bone. Harvey Beef versus Bannister Downs Dairy. Always competitive, they are two people united by just one commonality: making money. Lots of money. The AFR Rich List puts Rinehart’s wealth at $40.61 billion. The splitting of the Forrest family’s holdings after Nicola and Andrew’s marriage breakup means the man even school children call Twiggy is now worth “just” $17 billion. There’s not much you can’t do with $17 billion, especially when the wealth is so liquid. Forrest and Rinehart’s piles may be dwarfed by the fortunes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, but few people on earth have the kind of cash flow that these Australian mining titans enjoy. Royalty cheques worth billions of dollars arrive every six months like clockwork. We’re talking cash. Not stock. Not options. Not deferred short-term incentives. Actual folding. A torrent of cash the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the newspaper barons of the 19th and 20th centuries set up their printing presses. Rinehart was this week the recipient of the lion’s share of the $4.05 billion dividend generated by her rain-maker iron ore mine, Roy Hill. The $2.8 billion distributed to Rinehart’s company, Hancock Prospecting, was clearly burning a hole in her pocket. She didn’t blink on Thursday when she paid more than $1 billion for the oil and gas assets owned by fellow rich-lister Chris Ellison — a transaction that brings us back to her rivalry with Forrest. Respected energy analyst Saul Kavonic has pointed to a “non-monetary upside for Hancock”. In a mischievous note sent to clients of research company MST Marquee, Kavonic observed that some of the exploration tenements Rinehart will control “might just overlap with some of Andrew Forrest’s land holdings”. Kavonic was referring to Forrest’s Minderoo Station, nestled in the heart of the Pilbara south of the coastal town of Onslow. Forrest is fiercely protective of the 230,000-hectare property that his ancestors owned for 120 years before his father sold the debt-laden and drought-ravaged land at the turn of the century. Forrest brought it back into the family fold 15 years ago and has since been fighting companies who have attempted to explore for minerals on it. He locked horns with Ellison over a haulage road Mineral Resources wanted to build, saying the trucks would disturb his cattle. Forrest now faces the possibility of a far more determined neighbour. Gina Rinehart could apply to drill oil and gas wells next to the spiritual home of the would-be father of green hydrogen. “Surely Hancock wouldn’t want to interrupt Forrest’s peace and quiet with some noisy rig crews to develop evil oil and gas on his land?” Kavonic asked rhetorically in his research note. “The prospect could be so tantalizing for a rival WA billionaire, perhaps that was worth the deal price on its own.”