Australia’s Richest Person Gifts Jet to Far-Right Party Head

Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has donated a plane to Pauline Hanson, the leader of the country’s hard-right One Nation Party.

In a social media post on Wednesday, Hanson unveiled the plane and said it would enable her to visit more areas across the country as One Nation drums up support ahead of 2028 federal elections.

The brand new Cirrus G7 jet was gifted by a Rinehart-owned company, a spokesman for Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd. told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Hanson’s social media post also outlined A$2 million ($1.4 million) from four donors. This included A$500,000 each from Adam Giles, chief executive officer of Rinehart’s Hancock Agriculture and a former chief minister of the Northern Territory, and Ian Plimer, an executive director at Hancock Energy.

“We have a lot of additional fundraising to undertake between now and the cut off in December to combat the uni-party ahead of the 2028 federal election,” Hanson wrote on social media.

Iron ore billionaire Rinehart, a major donor to the center-right Liberal Party, has repeatedly called for Australia’s conservative politicians to embrace Trump-style politics.

In a statement made after the last federal election, in which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Party won resoundingly, Rinehart called for people to “stay and fight for understanding of the changes Australia needs,” and to look more closely at the “common sense and truth” in the US.

Earlier this week, Rinehart called for stricter limits on who can be let into the country. “Our immigration procedures must only allow immigrants who have been thoroughly checked – including their phones, iPads, laptops and social media,” she said in a speech.

“I think Pauline Hanson is a wholly owned subsidiary of Gina Rinehart,” Albanese’s treasurer, Jim Chalmers, said in response to questions about the plane. “And we know this because whenever Pauline Hanson’s asked to vote in the interests of Australian workers, she instead votes in the interests of Gina Rinehart.”

Hanson’s longtime anti-immigration party has seen a recent surge in popularity. In a January Newspoll, One Nation usurped the main center-right opposition for the first time.

Hanson was suspended from the senate last year after appearing in the chamber in a burqa, which she wants to ban in Australia. One Nation has been largely confined to the senate, as the preferential voting system makes it tough for minor parties to win seats in the lower house, where government is decided.