Australia's richest woman opened her Townsville Bush Summit address on 18 June by thanking Pauline Hanson by name. Then she handed regional Queensland a fully costed plan that reads, line by line, like One Nation's policy platform.
The speech was delivered to a News Corp audience at the Townsville Bush Summit on Thursday. Three days earlier, Hancock Prospecting had announced a $1.4 billion stake in Elon Musk's SpaceX. The combination matters. The country's most consequential industrialist used a national platform to endorse Senator Hanson by name, lay out a regional investment plan, and back it with private capital.
Rinehart opens her speech by thanking Pauline Hanson by name
The first words of the speech were directed at Senator Hanson, who introduced Rinehart at the event:
"Pauline, you give Aussies across our country, hope, never departing from values you have consistently held, cut bureaucracy, cut tape and regulations, cut government waste, and, exit the Paris Accord, a record tried overseas with very successful results, Australians first."
That's the published transcript, on the Hancock Prospecting website. The platform Rinehart credits Senator Hanson with holding consistently is the platform One Nation has campaigned on since 1996. The endorsement isn't read into the speech. It is the speech's opening line.
The plan starts by closing federal departments that duplicate the states
Rinehart's first policy proposal was structural. Close every federal department that duplicates a state one. She put the cost of three federal portfolios on the screen behind her:
- Federal Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Australian Fisheries Management Authority: about $1.576 billion a year
- Federal Department of Industry, Science and Resources: about $781 million a year
- Federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Clean Energy Regulator: about $1.338 billion a year
That's $3.695 billion a year on three portfolios alone, before counting what Rinehart called "wasteful expenditure, or the costs of delay they have caused, or the damage they have caused". Rinehart said the cuts should be a first step, not "tinker around the edges". The argument echoes One Nation's long standing call for a federal department audit and significant federal jobs reduction.
Video: Afternoon Agenda, via Sky News. Gina Rinehart interviewed by Sky News Afternoon Agenda in Townsville Queensland.
Free Queensland land for SpaceX, Taiwan microchips and Israeli defence
The Townsville pitch is where the plan gets concrete. Rinehart proposed three offers:
- Sparsely populated Queensland Crown land islands offered to Elon Musk's SpaceX at no cost, for satellite construction and launches, with water and infrastructure added
- Free land near Prairie or Townsville for Taiwan's microchip industry, to generate more jobs, charter jets and cargo ships to also bring skilled workers and their families to north Queensland
- Free land for Israeli defence manufacturers to develop and build advanced war drones, air defence systems and other defence technology onshore
The land near Prairie that Rinehart wants used for microchips and defence is currently, in her words, "designated for toxic, asbestos riddled, bird and bat maiming, bird and bat killing wind towers". The detail will land cleanly with the One Nation base. The party's energy platform has called wind subsidies a transfer from taxpayers to multinationals for almost a decade.
Rinehart's argument for the SpaceX offer was that satellite launches would be a tourist drawcard, and Australian university graduates could train near Townsville with "world leading proponents and facilities, instead of having to leave their families and go overseas".
Empty federal offices repurposed for veterans, pensioners and women fleeing violence
When federal departments close, Rinehart said, the empty offices should be repurposed as accommodation for homeless veterans, struggling pensioners, and "frightened women and children, who face horrendous unacceptable violence and rapes".
The proposal isn't theoretical for Hancock. Rinehart told the room she has personally committed $200 million to housing homeless veterans, and the first West Australian property is already full. Harvey Norman supplied the kitchen equipment and bed linens for that first home, a detail Rinehart specifically thanked the retailer for during the speech.
Hancock backs the regional vision with $1.4 billion into SpaceX
This isn't a speech that runs on rhetoric. Three days before the Townsville address, Hancock Prospecting announced a $1.4 billion stake in SpaceX, the single largest investment Hancock has ever made outside iron ore. SpaceX hit a $2.5 trillion valuation on its market debut, Fortune reported, citing the Wall Street Journal.
Hancock chief executive Garry Korte said the "generous allocation" of shares to the Australian company was a strong endorsement of Hancock by Musk. Rinehart, in her own statement, said:
"Hancock favours investing in industries led by sensible, hard-working, patriotic and exceptional people. Elon excels in every regard."
The SpaceX stake sits inside a broader Hancock pattern. The company invested almost $100 million in US defence manufacturers RTX, Northrop Grumman, L3Harris Technologies and Lockheed Martin in the first quarter of 2026. Hancock also holds a $US860 million stake in US rare earths miner MP Materials. Rinehart's 2026 wealth, on the AFR Rich List, is estimated at $39 billion, with roughly 10% invested in rare earths through Lynas, Liontown, Arafura, St George Mining and Brazilian Rare Earths.
The pattern is consistent. Hard manufacturing, critical minerals, defence and aerospace. The same industries Senator Hanson and One Nation have argued for years should be onshored.
The Townsville case: port, airport and the Coral Sea history
Rinehart's case for Townsville rests on what the city already has:
- The Townsville international airport
- The Townsville port, with around ten working berths
- A recently upgraded shipping channel that now takes vessels up to about 13 metres draft, subject to tide, and cruise ships up to 300 metres long
She also reminded the room of Townsville's role as a forward base for Australian and American forces in WW2. HMAS Australia and HMAS Hobart, under Australian born Rear Admiral John Crace, were part of the Allied force at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, which turned back the Japanese invasion fleet heading for Port Moresby. Rinehart's argument is that the strategic logic that made Townsville a base then still applies. The Indo-Pacific is again a contested theatre. North Queensland is again the closest mainland city to the action.
The contrast with Canberra's $75 million Gilmour announcement
While Rinehart was at the lectern talking about billions in private capital and four foreign industries Townsville could attract, the federal government's regional investment headline this month was $75 million of taxpayer money from the National Reconstruction Fund into a single Queensland rocket startup, Gilmour Space Technologies, announced by Industry Minister Tim Ayres.
Worthwhile or not, the contrast is hard to miss. $75 million of someone else's money against a private investment plan running into billions. The Albanese government's pitch for regional industry is a single grant to a single company. Rinehart's pitch is a federation of foreign industries, anchored by private capital, built on federal land made cheaper by closing the departments that duplicate the states.
Rinehart's platform is the One Nation policy platform
The reason this matters for One Nation is straightforward. Every major plank of Rinehart's speech is a position Senator Hanson has held in the Senate, often alone, for decades:
- Cut bureaucracy and government waste
- Lower taxes and lower red tape
- Exit the Paris Accord
- Put Australians first
- Bring defence manufacturing and critical industry onshore
- Stop subsidising wind towers on productive land
- Look after veterans, pensioners and vulnerable women
What's new isn't the policy. It's that Australia's richest woman delivered it in front of a national News Corp audience, named Senator Hanson at the start, and put $1.4 billion of Hancock capital behind the SpaceX leg of the plan in the same week. Hancock Prospecting's own publication lists her Townsville address and the SpaceX deal under the same news banner.
The plan exists. The capital exists. What Canberra has to decide is whether to let any of it happen.
