Billionaire businesswoman Gina Rinehart is building a solar farm just 10 months after she described solar panels as “eyesores”.
Shout out to our friends at Renew Economy, who picked up on the marvellous detail in a revised application to the Western Australian Environment Protection Authority for Rinehart’s Mulga Downs iron ore project in the Pilbara. Among the changes approved by the EPA was:
One of the reasons given for the approval was that “Greenhouse gas emissions are likely to decrease with the addition of the solar farm and associated ancillary infrastructure”.
The weirdest part of this is that it isn’t actually that weird. Rinehart has said in the past that she’s spent “millions” on solar and renewable measures. It’s just easy to forget, given her long record of undermining confidence in “so-called sustainable energy” projects and describing them as costly, unreliable eyesores. Let’s refresh our memories.
- August 2024: Addressing News Corp’s Bush Summit this year, Rinehart attacked what she called the government’s “foolhardy” approach to energy policy: “The truth needs to be known, the so-called sustainable energy can’t underpin our base power load requirements, the sun doesn’t always shine, wind doesn’t always blow, the additional capital to try to hook this in will be humongous.”
- December 2023: Accepting the Australian Financial Review‘s award for Business Person of the Year, Rinehart warned of “the building of vast tracts of solar panels and wind farms and electricity connections … It is estimated that one-third of prime agricultural land will be taken over”. She also referred to solar panels as “eyesores”.
- August 2023: At last year’s Bush Summit she said “Let’s not upset many farmers with bird-killing wind-generated generators and massive solar panels stretches. Bring on clean, safe nuclear energy please, Australia.”
- November 2021: In a speech posted online for National Agriculture and Related Industries Day 2021, Rinehart argued that “other than farmers with a few iron mines to help their bank balances, how on earth after so many bad years depleting farmers’ resources can those in agriculture be expected to dish out for electric vehicles … solar panels … or the greater costs added to the transport industries of new non-fossil trucks … ?”
- October 2021: Rinehart recorded a 16-minute video address for the 125th anniversary of St Hildas, the school at which she was educated. She used it as an opportunity to question climate science, cautioned students to “strongly guard against propaganda intruding on real education and rational thinking”, and encouraged them to do their own research around the question “which comes first, global warming, or an increase in carbon?” Obviously, the school cut that part out and only showed students Rinehart’s reflections on her time at the school. So, obviously, Rinehart put the whole thing up on her website. Proving that money can buy you an irony exemption, St Hilda’s science building is called the Nicholas Rinehart Science Centre “in recognition of a generous gift by old scholar Gina Rinehart and in honour of her mother and aunt who were influential in her life”.
Hancock Prospecting didn’t respond to our request for comment about where the Mulga Downs solar farm fits in Rinehart’s estimation of renewable energy.
We also didn’t get a response from the Institute of Public Affairs, which has been the recipient of millions of dollars from Rinehart over the years, and which produced the research that informed her December 2023 claim that “one-third of prime agricultural land will be taken over” by renewable energy projects.
