Source : the age
West Australian Greens MP Sophie McNeill triggered a fierce debate in the state’s parliament on Wednesday as she lashed the influence of the nation’s richest person in politics while demanding Labor cut ties with Gina Rinehart and her company.
McNeill moved a motion in parliament on Wednesday afternoon, taking aim at Rinehart for donating to right-wing lobby group Advance Australia and calling on Labor to stop accepting donations from billionaires and fossil fuel companies, and to end cash-for-access forums like Labor’s business roundtable series.
The motion prompted a strident defence of the mining magnate from Rinehart’s largest company Hancock Prospecting, which said its chair was one of Australia’s biggest taxpayers.
McNeill singled out Rinehart’s nearly $900,000 donation to Advance, which she said supported the lobby group to campaign aggressively against climate action and spread anti-immigrant and Islamophobic disinformation during the last federal election campaign.
“Western Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of her personal fortune to stoke social division to try to pit Western Australians against each other,” she said.
“That is because billionaires like Gina Rinehart want us to point the finger at each other instead of at billionaires like her and her obscene wealth.
“They want us to blame hardworking migrants rather than the very people who are benefiting from this broken system that we have.
“Advance would not be able to promote this hate and flood social media with these lies and disinformation without these donations.”
McNeill pointed out Rinehart had interests in fossil fuel companies like gas producer Senex Energy and Perth Basin producer Warrego Energy, and said supporting Advance’s anti-climate change campaigning hurt everyday West Australians and improved the wealth of those with fossil fuel interests.
In response, a Hancock Prospecting spokesman told this masthead the WA Greens were a far-left political party and described McNeill’s motion as “extremist and baseless” while taking aim at McNeill’s targeting of fossil fuel companies.
“It should also be noted that Ms McNeill’s motion is factually incorrect in relation to her ‘fossil fuels’ smears,” he said.
“The vast majority of Hancock Prospecting’s business is iron ore mining and iron ore is not a fossil fuel – it is a naturally occurring mineral from which iron is extracted.
“It is used to make steel, not energy. A key fact you would think all WA MPs should know!
“If WA pursued the kinds of extreme policies this MP is pushing, we’d be broke, have no reliable energy, and half the state would be unemployed.”
Rinehart’s company Hancock Energy includes ownership of 49.9 per cent of Queensland gas producer Senex and full ownership of Warrego Energy.
The Hancock spokesman defended Rinehart as one of the country’s biggest taxpayers and employer in high-paying jobs through projects like Hope Downs and Roy Hill, which also spent millions with contractors.
“Mrs Rinehart’s unprecedented business success in what remains a male-dominated industry means that Hancock Prospecting has long been one of the largest private taxpayers in the country,” he said.
“It would only take Ms McNeill a few short moments to look at our most recent annual statement, which shows clearly that Mrs Rinehart, through Hancock Prospecting, has paid almost $15 billion in taxes in just the last four financial years and $23 billion over the past decade, supporting our hospitals, roads, police, emergency services and more.”
The spokesman also listed the millions Rinehart’s companies donated to organisations like the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Olympic squads, veterans, hospitals and health agencies like Solaris Cancer Care.
During the debate, McNeill’s Greens colleagues Jess Beckerling, Tim Clifford and Brad Pettitt lashed the influence of billionaires in politics as One Nation MP Rod Caddies leapt to Rinehart’s defence.
“This is a smart woman who has taken a company that was in a bad state to being the richest woman in Australia. Is she the richest woman? I do not even know because I do not pay attention. In my view, it is awesome of this woman,” Caddies said.
“We know that property developers donate massively to Labor. But Hon Sophie McNeill still just chose to attack Mrs Rinehart.”
Labor’s Stephen Dawson ignored the Rinehart, immigration, and climate change aspects of the motion, instead focusing on the recent election donation reforms his party made.
However, he interjected during One Nation MP Philip Scott’s speech after Scott said One Nation had never attacked migrants for wanting to come to Australia for a better life.
“I think you have. I think you leader [Pauline Hanson] actually said, ‘Send Asians home’, at one stage … she said, ‘We’re being swamped by Asians’,” Dawson said.
McNeill then pointed to Hanson’s recent comment that there were “no good Muslims”.
Meanwhile, Liberal MP Tjorn Sibma said he did not think the welfare of the people of Western Australia was in any way advanced by the debate.
“What did we learn from the episode? I learned from the episode that the Greens (WA) are ideologically opposed to One Nation and Advance, information I knew prior to entering this chamber and I think the majority of people knew before listening to this debate,” he told parliament.
The motion failed, with just the four Greens MPs and Animal Justice Party MP Amanda Dorn in support.
McNeill said it was shameful that the government voted with One Nation.
“Today’s vote just goes to show you who the major parties and One Nation are really working for because it is not the hardworking Western Australian families who they claim to represent, it is billionaires and big corporations,” she said.
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Hamish Hastie is WAtoday’s state political reporter and the winner of five WA Media Awards, including the 2023 Beck Prize for best political journalism.Connect via X or email.
