#Auspol #GinaRinehart #SussanLey #Liberal #Labor
#NetZero
Jason Koutsoukis. The Saturday Paper 23 Aug 2025
‘Long may she reign’: How powerful is Gina Rinehart?
“Back in March, when Coalition strategists still gave themselves half a chance of winning the coming election, Gina Rinehart asked to meet Sussan Ley.
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“When Dutton became leader two years earlier, he quickly fell under Rinehart’s sway, flying to Perth just days after taking the Liberal leadership and later adopting much of her policy wish list – especially on nuclear power, public service cuts and attacks on “wokeness”.
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In a blistering opinion piece this week in Rupert Murdoch’s metropolitan tabloids, she denounced net zero as a threat to industry and the basic functions of daily life. She branded the Paris climate accord as “living standards-destroying”.
wrt Labor:
“The optics were clear: while Rinehart has not sought a private audience with Albanese, her companies have a reserved seat under his imprimatur…
It is a neat division. As a political actor, Rinehart is kept at arms-length – no private audiences, no privileged channel to the prime minister or the kind of closeness she enjoyed with Peter Dutton. As a business owner, however, her company is treated like any other major player in the resources sector…”
The mining companies, [former treasurer] Swan recalled, never grasped the democratic fact that Australians owned the resources being dug from the ground…
“As Rinehart presses her campaign against net zero while doubling down on her Trump investments, the question for both sides of politics is no longer whether she matters but rather how much longer they can afford to let her set the terms of the debate.
If she succeeds, she won’t just be shaping the Coalition’s platform – she’ll be pulling the centre of Australian politics further to the right than it has been in a generation.”
