Profit trumps ideology: Gina Rinehart is printing money on her green bet

1 month ago 5

Opinion

October 14, 2025 — 3.32pm

For decades Gina Rinehart has bristled at the claim of inherited wealth being the cornerstone of her success. But even her staunchest detractors cannot deny her investment nous when it comes to positioning herself at the epicentre of mining’s new grail, rare earths.

Thanks to her investments in these minerals, Australia’s richest person has become a whole lot richer. This year alone her wealth has reportedly grown by $3.5 billion on the back of rare earths.

In fact, US president Donald Trump’s pain – on the back of China’s imposition last week of extra restrictions on critical rare earths – is only furthering Rinehart’s financial gain.

Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person, has bet big on heightened global demand for rare earths.

What makes this all the more ironic is that Rinehart is as close as Australia gets to a flag-waving climate denier, and the appeal of rare earths is tied to the role they are going to play in powering the clean, green revolution – from electric vehicles to green energy storage.

For Rinehart, who is also Trump’s biggest Australian fangirl, profit appears to trump ideology.

China is the biggest supplier of rare earths in the world, and its recent flexing of muscles has put a rocket under the share price of a host of local companies including Arafura Rare Earths, which is up 64 per cent in five days, Lynas Rare Earths, which shot up around 13 per cent over that period, and critical minerals miner Iluka, which has similarly popped.

Hancock is the largest shareholder in lithium producer Liontown, Lynas and Arafura. And in the past 24 hours, she has made another play – a 22 per cent investment in ASX-listed St George Mining – which boasts rare earths and niobium resources in Brazil but is not yet in production.

She also owns an 8 per cent of US rare earths group MP Materials, and was followed on to the share register by the Pentagon – a move which sent MP’s share price and the value of her investment even higher.

Rare earths are a major subset of the critical minerals – which Australia has in abundant supply, and which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will look to use as leverage in his upcoming negotiations with Donald Trump.

Australian critical minerals producers have been urging the prime minister to move quickly to create a stockpile. Most of the world’s supply of critical minerals comes from China, and choking the supply to the US has become a weapon in the arsenal of resident Xi Jinping in his response to Trump’s trade war.

When Beijing placed extra curbs on supply of those minerals last week, the US responded with threats to increase tariffs on Chinese products. It sent shock waves across global markets, requiring Trump to make lots of soothing noises to cool down an escalation in the trade fight between the two superpowers.

Albanese is expected to lobby Trump by arguing that Australia’s critical minerals strategic reserve can be a reliable, non-Chinese source of rare earths for the US, and thereby soothing tensions between the two nations over tariffs on steel and aluminium.

The Australian government has also followed Rinehart’s investment lead – using its sovereign National Reconstruction fund to take shareholdings in Liontown Resources and has also put money in the Arafura Rare Earths Nolans Project.

Rinehart made her $40 billion fortune on the back of the West Australian iron ore deposits discovered by her late father Lang Hancock. As history tells, she inherited a nearly bankrupt company but had a couple of very valuable cash-generating partnerships with Rio Tinto.

Her critics maintain she has merely ridden the iron ore price wave since, but regardless of whether one agrees with her ultra-conservative politics, she should be credited with cleverly developing and growing her father’s legacy.

You don’t have to like her, but her investment strategy in critical minerals appears bang on the money.

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