Pauline Hanson and her chief of staff, James Ashby, flew to Florida on Gina Rinehart’s private jet in October, but the One Nation senator is yet to declare the sponsored travel or answer questions about whether she may be in breach of parliamentary rules.
Guardian Australia can reveal the One Nation senator and her staffer travelled with Rinehart on the mining magnate’s Gulfstream 700 on 27 October, with publicly available flight tracking data showing that the aircraft travelled from Brisbane to Perth before flying via Osaka to Palm Beach.
The trio arrived in the United States on 29 October.
While in the US, Rinehart and Hanson attended CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) where the One Nation leader criticised both of Australia’s major parties and praised the Trump administration for deporting immigrants, bombing alleged drug cartel boats and supercharging mining projects.
It is unclear whether the trip was gifted to the One Nation senator from Hancock Prospecting or from Rinehart personally.
Under parliamentary rules for senators’ interests, a declaration must be made of any sponsored travel or hospitality received where the value of the sponsorship or hospitality exceeds $300.
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The rules state that any change in a senator’s interests should be notified to the registrar within 35 days of that alteration occurring.
Hanson’s register was last updated in August.
Neither Hanson nor One Nation responded to questions about the travel or whether it complied with parliamentary rules relating to declarations.
During the trip, Rinehart and Hanson attended Donald Trump’s Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. It is unclear if Ashby also attended what Hanson described as a “lovely” event at the president’s Florida home.
Rinehart is a known supporter of Trump and his policies, having been a member of his US-based female support network, the Trumpettes, since 2016.
She has also invested heavily in US stocks, with a $4.7bn portfolio including investments in Trump Media & Technology and the government-backed MP Materials.
It is understood that Hanson also attended a separate party at Rinehart’s Palm Beach mansion, held in support of the conservative lobby group Moms of America.
In a Sky News interview with Andrew Bolt on 2 November, the Queensland senator said she had been invited to speak at the CPAC Florida event – tickets for which cost between $5,000 and $25,000. Hanson and Rinehart were pictured seated next to each other at one of the conference’s events.
“It will be my first speech overseas. I’m very pleased to have been invited to speak at it because I think it’s very well attended,” Hanson told Sky News.
“It’s very important to me to be there on behalf of Australians, speaking on behalf of many Australians at this conference.”
Bolt said Hanson’s US visit suggested her success had received “international attention”.
Speaking about her boost in the recent Newspoll, which showed her picking up about four percentage points in voter support, Hanson said this was due to the major parties failing to commit to policies addressing migration and climate change.
She called for Australia to withdraw from the Paris agreement and criticised the ambition to meet a target of net zero carbon emissions – views that closely align with those of Rinehart.
“My concern is for the Australian people, their lifestyle, their standard of living, their way of life. I want to see our country prosper and we cannot do it under net zero.”
Hanson also warned that there was a risk that “we’re going to lose our biggest … employer of people in this country and what gives us revenue into the country is the mining sector”.
The private flights for Hanson and Ashby coincided with one of Rinehart’s most senior executives, the former NT chief minister Adam Giles, publicly backing One Nation.
In comments made to the Weekly Times, Giles, who heads Rinehart’s agricultural business, said he had donated to One Nation and was “encouraging my friends to be donating all they can … to support One Nation”.
“Australians have been suffering and will increasingly do, under the left-leaning policies of net zero, we have been living under the immigration ponzi scheme trying to hold our economy together without fixing the problems, excess government tape, regulation and taxes and big, wasteful government,” said Giles, who led the Country Liberals from 2013 to 2016.
Rinehart’s longtime friend Barnaby Joyce recently defected to One Nation from the National party.
Hanson and Joyce marked the new alliance by cooking Wagyu steak from Hancock Agriculture’s beef company 2GR on a sandwich press in Hanson’s Parliament House office.
Last month, Ashby downplayed suggestions that Rinehart would financially support One Nation, telling Nine Newspapers: “I haven’t seen any money from her”.
After the landslide defeat of the Liberals under Peter Dutton at the last election, Rinehart suggested the party had not followed Trump’s lead enthusiastically enough, declaring there was a need to return to “common sense and truth”.
Her company, Hancock Prospecting, has formerly offered considerable financial support for the Liberal and Nationals. Before the last election, Hancock Prospecting donated $500,000 to the Liberal party.
Under financial disclosure laws governed by the Australian Electoral Commission, Hancock Prospecting or Rinehart personally would be required to declare any in-kind financial support provided to the senator or the party if the value exceeded $17,300.
Rinehart has been critical of Sussan Ley’s leadership of the Liberals, but is also known to oppose the party’s rising conservative warrior Andrew Hastie, given he testified in defamation proceedings against the SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith.
Rinehart has criticised the “relentless attack” on Roberts-Smith, who in 2023 was found, on the balance of probabilities, to have committed war crimes while deployed in Afghanistan. Roberts-Smith has always denied the allegations.
Neither Rinehart nor Hancock Prospecting responded to a request for comment.
