Labor True Believers, Political Analysis and Satire

15/06/2026

Rinehart Backs Musk’s SpaceX with Reported $1 Billion Investment

By National Herald Staff Writer

Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart has made a major bet on the future of space technology and artificial intelligence, with her company, Hancock Prospecting, reportedly investing more than US$1 billion (A$1.4 billion) in Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The investment, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, would make Hancock Prospecting one of the most significant Australian investors in the private aerospace giant, although the company has declined to confirm the exact size of its stake.

In a statement released on Monday, Rinehart said Hancock Prospecting had secured a “significant” investment allocation following SpaceX’s latest share offering.

The mining magnate praised Musk’s leadership and vision, describing SpaceX as a unique business with strong long-term potential.

“Elon has done what very few people in history have done – he has not just imagined the future, he has built companies capable of delivering it, and helped to keep American technology at the forefront,” she said.

“We see SpaceX as a rare business: led by a truly exceptional person, technically exceptional and operating in sectors that are crucial, and with long-term potential.”

Rinehart said Hancock Prospecting was attracted by SpaceX’s achievements in reusable rocket technology and its Starlink satellite communications network, but also highlighted the company’s growing involvement in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Hancock Prospecting chief executive Garry Korte revealed that Rinehart and Musk had met on several occasions and said the company was exploring opportunities for future collaboration.

Korte said Hancock already uses Musk’s Grok artificial intelligence platform and would welcome discussions about supplying critical minerals needed for advanced technology infrastructure.

“We look forward to potentially working with SpaceX as a supplier of critical minerals for its advanced technology infrastructure,” he said.

If reports of the US$1 billion investment are accurate, the SpaceX stake would become Hancock Prospecting’s largest known investment in the United States, eclipsing its existing holdings in rare earths producer MP Materials and an Invesco Nasdaq index fund, both estimated at around US$700 million each.

The move signals a strategic expansion beyond mining and into the rapidly evolving sectors of space exploration, communications and artificial intelligence, areas increasingly viewed as critical to future economic growth and geopolitical influence.

It also reinforces the growing ties between Australia’s resources sector and emerging technologies, particularly as demand for critical minerals continues to rise.

SpaceX, valued at an estimated US$2.1 trillion (A$2.97 trillion) in recent secondary market transactions, remains one of the world’s most valuable private companies.

For Rinehart, the investment represents a high-profile endorsement of Musk’s vision and a clear signal that Australia’s richest person sees the future of mining and technology as increasingly interconnected.

15/06/2026

The One Nation Reality Check Is Coming

Recent polling showing a surge in support for One Nation has generated predictable reactions across Australia’s political landscape: alarm on the left and celebration on the right.

But the real story is not Pauline Hanson.

It is a political system that increasingly appears incapable of responding to the concerns of voters who no longer believe meaningful change is coming.

The current numbers are unlikely to hold until the next federal election in 2028. With two years still to go, preferred prime minister ratings and party support figures remain highly volatile. Yet whether One Nation’s support rises or falls over that period is almost beside the point.

The more significant question is why so many Australians are willing to consider a party that has spent decades thriving on grievance, resentment and perpetual opposition.

It is tempting to explain One Nation’s rise solely through the issues it relentlessly prosecutes: housing affordability, immigration, cost-of-living pressures, distrust of institutions and frustration with the major parties. Those factors matter, but they are symptoms of a deeper problem.

Australians are losing faith in the ability of the political system to improve their lives.

The Liberal Party, once the natural home of conservative voters, remains a shadow of its former self. Struggling to articulate a vision beyond opposition for opposition’s sake, it has ceded much of the protest vote to One Nation, which has successfully positioned itself as the primary outlet for disillusionment and anger.

The Albanese government also bears responsibility for creating the conditions in which One Nation can thrive.

After securing one of the largest election victories in modern Australian history in 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appears to have mistaken public support for change as an endorsement of caution. Incrementalism, initially an electoral strategy, has become a governing philosophy.

Reform has been slow, fragmented and too often abandoned at the first sign of resistance.

The lesson the government seems to have drawn from its electoral success is that voters wanted stability above all else. But history suggests that governments which stand still eventually move backwards.

There are clear parallels with the Coalition after its surprise victory in 2019. Scott Morrison interpreted that result as a personal endorsement and a mandate for the status quo, only to discover that political goodwill can evaporate quickly when governments fail to address mounting pressures.

Albanese risks falling into the same trap.

While governments focus on managing headlines and refining messages through focus groups, voters are looking around and asking why so little seems to be changing.

That frustration helps explain the striking result of this week’s Resolve poll, which showed Pauline Hanson leading Albanese as preferred prime minister.

Such figures are far from predictive and should not be overinterpreted. Yet it remains extraordinary that a sitting prime minister, with all the advantages of incumbency, finds himself trailing a politician whose appeal rests almost entirely on opposition and outrage.

The reality is confronting: a significant proportion of Australians are willing to consider Hanson not because they believe she offers solutions, but because they have lost confidence in everyone else.

Yet One Nation’s contradictions continue to receive far less scrutiny than those of other political movements.

Hanson presents herself as a champion of ordinary Australians taking on powerful elites, while maintaining close relationships with wealthy donors and taking advice from some of the country’s richest individuals. For a movement built on anti-establishment rhetoric, this contradiction rarely attracts sustained attention.

Nor is the party’s broader agenda subjected to the same level of examination routinely applied elsewhere.

Its positions on climate change, immigration, reproductive rights and minority communities are often reduced to culture-war soundbites rather than serious policy analysis. When challenged on details, Hanson frequently pivots back to grievance and outrage — a strategy that continues to attract media attention and political dividends.

This is why her appearance at the National Press Club matters.

For decades, Hanson has benefited from a media environment that too often treats her as a political curiosity rather than a serious political figure whose claims, alliances and policies warrant rigorous examination.

If she believes she is ready to lead the country, she should be subjected to the same level of scrutiny applied to every other political leader.

The rise of One Nation, the collapse of trust in institutions, growing hostility towards immigration and deep frustration over housing affordability are all symptoms of a broader breakdown between voters and the political establishment.

For decades, politics operated on an implicit social contract. Governments did not need to solve every problem, but they needed to convince people that the system broadly worked in their interests.

Increasingly, Australians no longer believe that it does.

Stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, deteriorating public services and a political culture dominated by short-term media management have left many voters with a simple conclusion: political leaders either cannot fix these problems or do not want to.

Australia is beginning to resemble trends visible across the United States, Britain, Canada and parts of Europe, where traditional divisions between left and right are being overtaken by a new divide between establishment and anti-establishment politics.

Even major international crises appear unable to restore confidence in political leaders.

Historically, periods of instability have generated a “rally around the flag” effect, with voters gravitating towards governments for reassurance and stability. Yet as conflict escalates in the Middle East and global economic uncertainty grows, many Australians remain deeply sceptical.

Competence, experience and credibility no longer carry the weight they once did.

That is the real danger facing Australia’s political establishment.

When voters lose faith in institutions, they do not necessarily become more ideological or better informed. They simply stop caring.

And when people stop caring, they become willing to take risks.

In that environment, protest parties and professional peddlers of grievance do not need to offer convincing solutions. Whether they are capable of governing becomes almost irrelevant.

The greatest threat to Australian politics is not that voters have discovered a better alternative in One Nation.

It is that growing numbers of Australians have decided they no longer believe in the alternatives they already have.

National Herald

15/06/2026

Bring Back the Housing Commissions: It’s Time for Governments to Build Homes Again

By The National Herald Editorial Team

Australia’s housing crisis is no longer a looming problem. It is here, it is growing, and it is affecting millions of Australians who simply want a secure and affordable place to live.

For decades, governments have relied on the neoliberalism claim that that the private market would deliver the homes Australians need. Housing commissions were dismantled, public construction programs wound back, and governments increasingly shifted responsibility to private developers, investors, and community housing providers. The theory was that the market would provide enough housing if governments simply stepped aside.

The results are now impossible to ignore.

Home ownership is slipping further out of reach for young Australians. Rental vacancies remain critically low in many regions. Homelessness is rising. Essential workers are being priced out of the communities they serve. Waiting lists for social housing stretch into years and, in some cases, decades.

The experiment has failed.

Australia needs a bold return to a proven model: state housing commissions that directly build, own, and manage public housing.
Following the Second World War, housing commissions across Australia constructed hundreds of thousands of homes. These agencies were not perfect, but they achieved something today’s system has struggled to deliver large numbers of affordable homes built quickly and at scale.

Housing commissions provided secure accommodation for working families, pensioners, veterans, people with disabilities, and low-income Australians. They helped create stable communities and supported economic growth by ensuring workers could afford to live near jobs and services.

By contrast, the current approach leaves housing supply heavily dependent on private developers whose primary obligation is to shareholders and profit margins. There is nothing inherently wrong with private enterprise making a profit. However, expecting profit-driven businesses to solve a social housing shortage is unrealistic.

Developers naturally build where returns are highest. Investors seek maximum yield. Banks finance projects that offer the greatest commercial rewards. The outcome is predictable: luxury apartments, premium housing estates, and speculative investment properties often take precedence over genuinely affordable housing.

Meanwhile, governments spend billions of dollars each year on rental assistance, subsidies, grants, and emergency housing measures that treat the symptoms of the crisis rather than addressing its cause.

Imagine if even a portion of that expenditure were redirected into publicly owned construction programs.
State housing commissions could directly employ planners, project managers, tradespeople, apprentices, and maintenance staff. Governments could use public land more effectively, purchase materials in bulk, and build homes based on community need rather than market demand.

Importantly, public housing should not be viewed as welfare housing. It should be viewed as essential national infrastructure, just like roads, railways, schools, hospitals, and water systems.

No one argues that private enterprise alone should provide all roads or hospitals. Governments understand that certain services are too important to be left entirely to market forces. Housing deserves the same recognition.

Re-establishing housing commissions would also provide economic benefits. Large-scale public construction programs would create jobs, support apprenticeships, strengthen domestic building capacity, and provide greater stability during economic downturns.

Critics will argue that governments cannot build efficiently. Yet many of the same governments successfully deliver major transport projects, schools, hospitals, and defence infrastructure. If governments can build tunnels, bridges, and rail networks costing billions of dollars, they can certainly build houses.

Others will claim that public housing estates created social problems in the past. There is some truth to that criticism. However, modern housing commissions need not replicate the mistakes of previous generations. New developments can incorporate mixed-tenure housing, quality urban design, green spaces, transport links, and community facilities.

The lesson is not that governments should stop building homes. The lesson is that they should build them better.

Australia faces a choice.

We can continue relying on a housing system that has delivered record prices, record rents, and record waiting lists, while hoping conditions somehow improve.

Or we can recognise that housing is a public necessity and restore governments to their historic role as builders of homes.

The private sector will always have an important role in Australia’s housing market. But it cannot be the only player.

For too long, governments have stepped back while the housing crisis has accelerated. It is time for them to step forward once again.

The answer is staring us in the face.

Bring back the housing commissions. Put home construction back into public hands. Build the homes Australia needs.

15/06/2026

A right mess: how mining, media and political interests are combining to influence public debate in Australia

(Denis Muller, Pearls and Irritations)

One Nation’s surge has exposed a new alignment of media, mining and political interests on the Australian right, with Gina Rinehart, Lachlan Murdoch and Pauline Hanson now central to how that contest unfolds.

Mining billionaire Gina Rinehart is bankrolling the acquisition of a 9.5 per cent stake in Southern Cross Media by Bruce McWilliam, who worked for Murdoch’s News Corp for nine years and is also a former Seven Network executive.

This venture is costing Rinehart $26 million. It does not buy her a direct stake in Southern Cross, but if McWilliam cannot uphold his side of a security deed he has signed with her, she could take control of it.

Southern Cross is one of Australia’s biggest media organisations. It owns the Seven Network, 7news.com.au, the Triple M and Hit radio brands, a raft of regional radio stations, and West Australian Newspapers.

The Rinehart-McWilliam-Murdoch axis is a formidable force, part of a new combination of media, political and mining interests, reminiscent of that which formed the Liberal Party in the 1940s. The other key figures are News Corp chair Lachlan Murdoch, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Liberal Party director Tony Abbott.

This is the lens through which it is instructive to assess the media’s coverage of One Nation’s rise since the Farrer by-election on May 9.

To see the parallels with the 1940s, we need to join a few dots.

Rinehart is a benefactor to Hanson. She recently bought her a light aircraft worth $1 million.

She is also a benefactor to Lachlan Murdoch. Her company Hancock Prospecting is sponsoring Sky News, owned by Murdoch’s News Corporation, to the extent of a little over $1 million for a Sky event in Dubbo called the Bush Summit.

Lachlan Murdoch is chairman of News Corporation. In 2023, he appointed Tony Abbott to the board of the News subsidiary, Fox Corporation, a day after Rupert Murdoch announced his retirement. In May this year, Abbott was elected unopposed as federal president of the Liberal Party.

Lessons from the 1940s

The parallels with the 1940s can be seen in volume two of Sally Young’s magisterial two-volume history of the Australia media, Media Monsters, where she describes the machinations that led to the formation of the Liberal Party.

The right was in disarray. Robert Menzies’ comically ill-named United Australia Party had been trounced by Labor at the 1943 election. In the aftermath, Menzies was re-elected leader but made it a condition that he had the right to form a new party.

He was backed by an entity called Collins House. This was a collection of companies connected by networks of powerful business figures who dominated mining and manufacturing. An influential figure was Lachlan Murdoch’s grandfather, Keith Murdoch. As managing director of the all-powerful Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) newspaper group, he provided a vital connection between the Collins House group and the most senior level of politics.

The HWT and other major media proprietors of the day anointed Menzies and his proposal for the new Liberal Party, at a dinner of Collins House magnates in Melbourne in 1944.

The difference between the political circumstances of the 1940s and those of today is that today there are two right-wing political parties contending for supremacy: the Liberal Party and One Nation.

Rinehart seems to be having a million quid each way on which will prevail. By contrast, if the recent coverage of One Nation by The Australian is any guide, Lachlan Murdoch has already cast his vote decisively for the Liberal Party.

The media sober up

For a fortnight after One Nation’s historic win in Farrer, the media, including News Corp media, were intoxicated by the attendant excitement and controversy: the shredding of Liberal Party support; Hanson’s ambition to be prime minister; the possibility of a Liberal-One Nation coalition.

Then, led by The Australian, the media began to sober up. On 23 May, its editor-at-large, Paul Kelly, wrote that the Nationals, Liberals and One Nation were locked in a bitter competition with “life or death” consequences.

From that point on, The Australian applied the blowtorch of journalistic scrutiny to One Nation, and The Age and Sydney Morning Herald swiftly followed.

With its customary disregard for journalistic ethics, The Australian made a point of reporting that One Nation’s South Australian parliamentary team was looking like a “rainbow coalition”, one of its MPs having come out as gay with a partner who was an Indonesian Muslim.

But then it got into some serious public-interest journalism. For two days it pursued the party over its handling of r**e allegations against an adviser, Sean Black.

It accused Hanson of shirking her parliamentary duties by being absent from 88 per cent of Senate estimates hearings over the past decade. It also drew attention to the fact One Nation had failed to lodge audited financial records for three years in Queensland, and disparaged its policy proposal for citizen-initiated referendums.

On 3 June it drew on all this to publish a thundering editorial. One Nation was drifting further out to the fringes. It would be divisive and disruptive. It had appeared to lurch into blind confusion. Hanson was “not fit in any sense” for the role of prime minister.

On 6 June, it led page one with a full-frontal attack, carrying the self-revealing headline: “Hanson hit”. It said Hanson had been caught out misleading voters, raising further questions about her capacity to be prime minister.

The Age and SMH were by then taking up the theme.

Suddenly Hanson was reportedly not sure if she would pitch for the prime ministership. She had admitted having had to close down party branches that had been “infiltrated by extremists”. She had insisted she would not be influenced by Rinehart despite having adopted one of Rinehart’s key policies. In other words, she was all over the place.

On 6 June, the paper’s political and international editor, Peter Hartcher, described her as a firebrand provocateur who specialises in grievances without solutions and turns to scapegoats instead – Asians, First Nations people, Muslims. He pointed out that Hanson had answered “no” when asked by another journalist whether she could think of any error that Donald Trump might have made since taking power.

The same day another Age/SMH commentator, Paul Sakkal, wrote about what he called the collection of right-wing forces barracking for Hanson: openly white supremacists, people who rallied alongside neo-Nazis, supporters of the so-called sovereign citizen Dezi Freeman, who had killed two policemen. “A serious governing party cannot retain these relationships.”

A right mess

The big question after all this is how the forces brought together through the new media-politics-mining combination will resolve the obvious tensions involved in creating an effective force on the right of Australian politics.

Murdoch, through The Australian, has clearly signalled his contempt for One Nation, and already has Abbott on his team through Fox Corporation.

Rinehart, with her substantial holdings via McWilliam in Southern Cross Media, could go either way: backing Hanson or the Liberals. And her record indicates she would use her power to influence editorial decision-making to support her choice.

In 2012 she became the largest shareholder in the Fairfax company, with 14.99 per cent. However, she refused to sign the company’s charter of editorial independence, and as a result was refused a seat on the board. She sold out in 2015.

Her history in refusing to sign the Fairfax charter is a strong indicator she would want the option of using her position on any media board to influence editorial decisions.

The old Fairfax newspapers, The Age, the SMH and the Australian Financial Review, are now owned by the Nine Entertainment Company, and stand outside the new cabal. A crucial question is whether they might prove to be a countervailing force.

One Nation set off this earthquake in Australian politics, but how the media play into the aftershocks will be a significant factor in the shaping of the new landscape.



Republished from The Conversation

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.

15/06/2026

15/06/2026

Golding