Gina Rinehart’s epic court battle exposes rifts in billionaire family

April 15, 2026 — 6:14pm

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John Hancock has barely spoken to his mother in more than two decades.

But on Wednesday, Hancock offered up an olive branch to Australia’s richest woman, his mother, Gina Rinehart.

At the denouement of an epic Western Australian Supreme Court case which became a titanic battle between two of the state’s richest mining clans, and another gash in the relationship between Rinehart and her eldest children, Hancock announced that he wanted “to focus on the positive,” and find a way forward for the divided family.

“My primary focus for the next 21 days is an attempt at that reunification, and a return to the close family we had at various times in the last 50 years of my life,” he said.

“I hope we can finally put these events from decades ago behind us, and as a united family, celebrate and continue the contribution we have made to Australia.”

Central to the case is who gets what from the multibillion-dollar legacy of Rinehart’s father, Lang Hancock, and his business partner Peter Wright, who pioneered one of the most lucrative mining regions in the world.

Amid the Wright-Rinehart dispute, John Hancock and his younger sister Bianca Hancock were joined to the case, with the pair arguing that they should have inherited the multibillion-dollar Hope Downs site under a trust set up for them by Lang before his death. That trust has been the source of........

© The Age