Discussing the eye-watering fortunes of the world’s richest people always hits a nerve, but in a year where the global pandemic has upended local businesses and seen countless Australians file for JobSeeker as the unemployment rate increases at alarming speed, news of such fortunes hits even harder.....
While there’s no denying that 2020 has been an incredibly tough year for Australians grappling with new working conditions, shorter hours or a market with few job prospects and opportunities, for those who were already in the 1 per cent, things have been far from a struggle. The publication of the Australian Financial Review’s annual Rich List proves yet again that for those who are considered Australia’s richest, such fortunes have only gotten bigger, even as the rest of the country suffers. And when it comes to those who really benefited, it was the Australian miners who struck serious gold.
Coming out on top this year is mining magnate and heiress Gina Rinehart. The executive chair of privately-owned Hancock Prospecting more than doubled her already staggering wealth over the last 12 months to see the total reach a jaw-dropping $28.9 billion. Such a sum sees Rinehart take out the top spot on the Rich List, something she’s done for years now as not only Australia’s richest woman, but the country’s richest person. Rinehart inherited Hancock from her late father, with the company specializing in mineral exploration and extraction.
As Business Insider reports, Rinehart owes much of her 2020 success to Hancock’s Roy Hill mine which “paid out its first-ever dividend this week, after extracting one billion tonnes of iron ore over a period where the price of it keeps shooting higher as the world goes on an infrastructure spending spree.”
The rise in iron ore prices also saw Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest reach second place on the list, as his fortune almost tripled from last year to reach $23 billion. At one stage, Twiggy was earning $500 million per week, according to AFR Rich List editors Michael Bailey and Julie-Anne Sprague.
Business Insider writes that both Forrest and Rinehart are “joined by no les than10 other Australians tied to WA mines. They collectively doubled their own wealth to make the top 200 list, and are estimated to control a fortune of nearly $80 billion.”
See the top 10 richest Australians for 2020 below
1. Gina Rinehart - $28.89 billion (up from $13.81 billion)
2. Andrew Forrest - $23 billion (up from $7.99 billion)
3. Anthony Pratt and family - $19.75 billion (up from $15.57 billion)
4. Hui Wing Mau - $18.06 billion (up from $10.39 billion)
5. Mike Cannon-Brookes (Left) - $16.93 billion (up from $9.63 billion)
6. Scott Farquhar (Right) - $16.69 billion (up from $9.75 billion)
7. Harry Triguboff – $14.42 billion (up from $13.54 billion)
8. Clive Palmer - $9.18 billion (up from $4.9 billion)
9. Frank Lowy - $8.30 billion (down from $8.56 billion)
10. Kerry Stokes - $6.26 billion (up from $5.69 billion)
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