Gina Rinehart poses for a team photo with members of the Australian swimming team in a file picture at Brisbane Aquatic Centre. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, has fired an unofficial shot across the bow of the government – putting three of her prized cattle stations on the market in a move blamed on policy decisions.
It comes as her pastoral empire warns a controversial Queensland land tax surcharge could escalate to $1 million a year for one property alone.
Ms Rinehart’s holdings via Hancock Agriculture and Hancock Prospecting’s stake in S. Kidman & Co have listed the tightly linked stations near Roma, citing the growing tax fallout for agricultural operators from a policy originally designed to target residential property.
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Gina Rinehart bought S Kidman & Co in 2016 in a $386.5 million partnership with Shanghai Cred.
While Rinehart’s companies are Australian-owned, their one-third co-owner in S Kidman & Co, Chinese firm Shanghai Cred, triggers the foreign land tax surcharge – a Labor-era measure the Crisafulli Government has left unchanged.
Ms Rinehart bought back S Kidman & Co in 2016 – a firm with links to her mother’s father – in a $386.5 million deal with Shanghai Cred, doubling her cattle stations and adding millions of hectares to her portfolio.
Up for grabs is Rockybank, the headline Maranoa region asset and a 14,600ha premium beef and breeding operation. But the move has also triggered the sale of two smaller operations – Holyrood (4844ha) and South Maffra (1567ha) – “because without Rockybank as part of the aggregation they are no longer commercially viable to operate in isolation”, the company told The Courier-Mail.
A Hancock Agriculture spokesman said “Rockybank is subject to Queensland land tax rates, which have increased year-on-year following successive Queensland Government revaluations.”
“They are projected to approach $1 million per annum in the coming years, rendering the property commercially unsustainable to operate, with any minority foreign investor.”
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Ms Rinehart’s move is expected to add pressure on the Crisafulli government to amend the foreign land tax surcharge. Picture: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images
“This is occurring alongside the growing costs of complying with damaging and misguided federal government net zero targets and associated government tape and regulatory burdens.”
From July 1, 2024, Queensland’s land tax surcharge increased for foreign companies, trusts, and absentees from 2 per cent to 3 per cent on taxable land valued at $350,000 or more.
This comes as Ms Rinehart is reportedly boosting her political influence with conservative party One Nation – agreeing to take certain donors to Donald Trump’s estate at Mar-a-Lago and contributing $300,000 herself to its coffers.
Ms Rinehart’s cattle empire has spanned more than a dozen cattle stations across Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria, totalling close to 4 million hectares. Her holdings have included 918,000ha in Channel Country, Queensland, and she has sold around 2.4 million hectares of cattle country for roughly $200 million in recent years, including a 550,000ha Northern Territory station.
Ms Rinehart has also owned some of Australia’s largest farms, like 400,000ha in Fitzroy Crossing, WA and 384,451ha in the Pilbara, as well as smaller-scale livestock and stud farms, including a 511ha farm in Victoria purchased for $8.6 million.
The Queensland stations are expected to attract strong interest, both for their scale and because the sale underscores ongoing frustrations with the state’s foreign land tax.
*Additional reporting: Chris Herde, The Courier-Mail