If the golden era of TV really is drawing to a close, it may well be replaced by the golden era of messy courtroom dramas featuring the children of Australian billionaires (not quite as catchy an era designation, I grant you).
Please enjoy our round-up of the various legal catastrophes currently befalling the catastrophically wealthy.
The Pratts
Box billionaire Anthony Pratt has already given us so much. Who could forget his fun (and then discreetly culled) following list on Instagram? His relentless and presumably very pricey cardboard-themed karaoke, in which he treats some of the great songs of the 20th century with the same level of care as Oliver Reed showed his liver? And of course, his on-again-off-again friendship with former US president Donald Trump — who allegedly told Pratt a bananas amount of detail about various US defence matters, which Pratt then allegedly passed on to 45 of his closest friends, including six journalists and THREE former prime ministers.
In addition to all that, Pratt and his siblings have been embroiled in a long-running battle with his half-sister Paula Hitchcock. Hitchcock is the “love child” Anthony’s late father Richard had during an extra-marital affair with horse trainer Shari-lea Hitchcock. Paula, now 27, is arguing that she is legally entitled to a chunk of the billions in the Pratt family trust, asking the NSW Supreme Court to declare her a “discretionary object” of the fortune and to void the deed of exclusion that cut her out of the inheritance as a child. The other kids are trying to get her case thrown out, arguing the pre-trial document search would be “intrusive” and “time-consuming”.
The Murdochs
In calling his attempt to redraw the terms of his succession plan “Project Harmony“, Rupert Murdoch displayed a grasp of Orwellian language that his brigade of Australian commentators seldom do. Surely there could be no better example of doublespeak than using the word “harmony” in relation to his plan to prevent any of his non-Lachlan heirs from taking the international media empire anywhere near the political centre.
The trust, as it stands, currently hands control of the family business to all four of Murdoch’s eldest children after he dies, splitting control between Lachlan, James, Elisabeth and Prudence. But according to a blockbuster report in The New York Times last month, Rupert is arguing in a Nevada court that “only by empowering Lachlan to run the company without interference from his more politically moderate siblings can he preserve its conservative editorial bent, and thus protect its commercial value for all his heirs”.
Both parties have lawyered up ahead of a case set to start in September. Little wonder one of the terms of Murdoch’s separation from Jerry Hall was reportedly that she was not allowed to pass on any ideas to the writers of Succession.
The Hancocks
But the real spice is coming from the family of Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart. Her company Hancock Prospecting is facing several challenges over royalties and ownership of the Hope Downs mine, one from the company of her father’s late business partner, Peter Wright, and one from two of her own children.
Then there was the latest instalment of poison pen letters between Rinehart and her father Lang Hancock. Christopher Withers SC, the lawyer representing Rinehart’s eldest children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart shared letters in which Hancock had “pleaded” with his daughter to “stop her barrage of criticisms” in the late 1980s.
“I would be pleased if you would leave me alone to live the rest of my life my peace,” he said in an April 1989 letter to her.
Rinehart had been particularly brutal about Hancock’s marriage to the family’s housekeeper Rose Lacson (later Porteous), who Rinehart allegedly referred to as an “Oriental concubine” and a “prostitute” and tried to have deported. Oh yeah, and what Rinehart referred to as Hancock’s “reckless and possibly ruinous” business deals with Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Which family’s cash battle will you be most ardently tuning into? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
