By Duncan Murray
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart flew One Nation leader Pauline Hanson around Europe and paid for her tickets to a luxury fashion show while she was there.
Senator Hanson’s flights from London to Sicily via Rome, and back again, were all funded by Mrs Rinehart, the senator’s parliamentary register of interests revealed after being updated on Tuesday.
However, Senator Hanson reported paying for accommodation, meals and daily expenses herself during the July 11 to 16 trip, as first reported by Fairfax outlets.
Senator Hanson drew criticism after she and Mrs Rinehart were sighted at a luxury Italian resort and attending a Dolce & Gabbana fashion event in Sicily.
Questioned when she returned to Australia, Senator Hanson did not go into detail on how the bill was split, but insisted taxpayers had not paid for the luxury weekend.
“It didn’t cost the taxpayer one cent for my trip overseas. Not one cent,” she told a Seven West Media event.
Senator Hanson, who was also gifted a private plane by Mrs Rinehart in April, defended her billionaire friend, who inherited Hancock Prospecting from her late father, saying she had “done it tough”.
“She had to borrow everything and was flat out in the very start to pay the bills. She’s built up that company,” she said.
On Monday, Senator Hanson lost an appeal over a Federal Court finding she had made a racist remark towards deputy Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi.
In response to a post on social media soon after the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, Senator Hanson told Senator Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan”.
In his initial decision handed down in 2024, Justice Angus Stewart ruled the post was “seriously offensive” and a “strong form of racism”.
Senator Hanson said she was disappointed by Monday’s outcome and was considering lodging a final appeal in the High Court.
“Public discussion in Australia has become almost totally silenced by laws and rules which prevent ordinary people expressing their personal views in case some small part of our society takes some sort of offence or feels hurt or ‘distressed’,” she said in a statement.
“This has never been, nor ever should be, the Australian way.”
Senator Hanson has 28 days to lodge an appeal with the country’s highest court
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It doesn't matter where Pauline Hanson goes on holiday or who pays for it. So what, Gina Rhinehart is a friend and it's nobody's business but theirs although Pauline did declare the expenses. It's because Gina's a billionaire that makes the other parliamentary dipsticks jealous. Other members of Parliament have gone on holiday with friends I'm sure who have paid for dinners and other things which they haven't declared and it certainly doesn't affect the way Pauline does her job for the Australian people.
It’s not the ‘Australian Way’ to hobnob with millionaires and claim to be looking out for the interests of the working class. Methinks ‘something is fishy in the state of Denmark’ (In this case the Australian Senate.) I wish I had done it tough like Gina R !!!!
Nothing comes for nothing on the political stage and whilst it might not have cost the Australian taxpayer a cent it still looks like a political ''donation'' by Australia's richest woman to buy influence that could be to her benefit. Gina Rinehart my be uber wealthy, but she doesn't throw her money around for the sake of it. There has to be a return in it for her somewhere along the line.
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