Barbarians at the gates

Lawyers Full-Employment Act revs-up as Rinehart rides to town … 11 Wentworth snaffles the Iron Lady's work … Five months of suppression orders secured by rosters of silks and limitless money  

Mrs Rhinoheart: giving Fairfax the fingersMrs Rhinoheart is thundering in from the wild west and the venerable Fairfax newspapers and wireless stations are in her sights. She has secured close to 15 percent of the equity for a paltry $200 million or so. 

Rumours abound, along with bold statements about the threats to democracy posed by this Wagnerian character with iron clad opinions. 

She has been advised on "media strategy" by fellow West Australian and former Packer henchman, Trevor Kennedy, who has been sidelined in the business world as a result of his unfortunate involvement with the late Rene Rivkin and squirreling money in Swiss bank accounts. 

One scenario has Rhinoheart pushing on to buy up to 20 percent of the shares and then asking to replace Roger Corbett as chairman of the Fairfax board. 

There can be no doubt that these moves represent a seismic cultural change for what has been the last of the "independent" metropolitan broadsheet newspapers in Australia. 

Independent in the sense that they are not ideologically partisan or populist like Murdoch's national daily and tabloids or as delicately tip-toeing on eggshells as the ABC. 

The thundering simplicity of the Andrew Bolts of this world is the sort of crude journalism most favoured by Rhino.

She funds Lord Monckton's climate change denial crusades.

She threw money at the anti-mining tax campaign, an uprising of billionaires so successful that it helped unseat Kevin Rudd as prime minister in 2010.

She wants to import cheap labour from Asia to work in the mines of Western Australia.

She thinks the top end of the continent should be a self-governing tax haven.

She has an unreconstructed cold war view of the world. Communists might still be under the bed, even though her vast fortune is largely derived from selling iron ore to them.

She is engaged in a bitter war with three of her four children.

She has never been reported uttering an interesting or particularly insightful remark, which that is not to say she is stupid. 

She leads a relatively isolated life, with few interests apart from mining. 

Hancock: driving forceHer inspiration and driving force has been her father, Lang Hancock. 

John Singleton, ad man and priprietor of the Macquarie radio network told Good Weekend's Jane Cadzow:

"I mean, a conversation with Gina was a conversation with Lang. They both had the same fanaticism ... If Lang paused, Gina would finish the sentence." 

Lang's favourite projects were the succession of Western Australia and the use of a nuclear bomb to create a harbour on the north west coast. 

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Gina Rinehart is justly famous as a ferocious litigator.

Former Perth lawyer Nick Styant-Browne, who acted for Rose Hancock in the decade long courtroom wars in the 1990s, estimates that Rinehart spent more than $10 million on lawyers on a series of cases against her late father's wife. 

Styant-Browne told Good Weekend:   

"She went through an extraordinary number of lawyers, including the best in the country. 

She kind of exhausted the Perth bar and then went to the Sydney and Melbourne bars. 

When she'd lose a round, she would retain a new set of lawyers to dream up some new theory to continue the fight."

Rose: witnesses paid to give evidence against herOut of the saga emerged information that Rinehart had paid potential witnesses expected to give evidence at a coronial inquiry into the death of her father. Gina had agitated for the inquest, alleging that Rose had mistreated Lang in his dying years. 

One witness had been paid as much as $200,000. There was also evidence that Hilda Kickett, who claims to be Lang Hancock's daughter, was paid to keep away from the inquest. 

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Now another splendid lawyers' picnic is being spread before us as Mrs Rhino throws money and silks at her tireless applications to keep the reptiles from reporting court proceedings into allegations she has mismanaged a family trust. 

On September 5 last year the children,  made their application to the court for relief relating to the management of the trust and for the removal of their mother as trustee. 

On that day Justice Paul Brereton in the NSW Supremes made some ex parte orders, varying the trust deed. 

On September 9 Brereton made an order under the Court Suppression and Non-Publication Orders Act NSW, 2011, "prohibiting the disclosure, by publication or otherwise, of any information as to the relief claimed, or any pleading, evidence or argument filed, read or given in, the proceedings". 

Paul McCann from Corrs had assembled Rinehart's team of Alan Sullivan QC and Edward Muston. 

Bianca Rinehart: suing motherJohnson Winter & Slattery were in it for the three Rinehart kiddies: Hope Welker, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart. At this stage JWS also "purported" to act for little Ginia, who it appears had not given instructions and was later to join her mother as a defendant.

Doc. Andrew Bell SC was briefed for the plaintiffs. 

Because JWS usually acts for Fairfax, Channel 7 and so on, it couldn't act for the media interests, so Justine Munsie from Addisons came in and briefed Sandy Dawson to intervene for the newspapers and the ABC. 

The suppression order was made under 8(1)(a) of CSNPO Act - allegedly it was necessary to prevent prejudice to the administration of justice.  

By October 7, Justice Brereton had concluded this was not a dispute covered by the terms of the deed and that there was now no basis for continuing the suppression order.  

He dismissed the defendants application for a stay of proceedings and issued an interim suppression order until the Court of Appeal had a change to look at it. 

By now the team of lawyers had expanded. 

Ginia Rinehart was now a defendant and in her corner were Gadens, Francois Kunc SC and Patrick Flynn. 

Martin Smith joined his 11 Wentworth colleague Doc Bell for the three plaintiff offspring. In fact, it was looking like an 11 Wentworth feeding fest. Bell, Kunc, Sullivan, Smith and Flynn all ply their trade from the dizzying heights of 11/174 Phillip Street. 

Hancock Prospecting also came in as an intervenor, with Corrs, David Studdy SC and Charles Colquhoun, both from 10 Wentworth/Selborne.  

Munsie: prised open the suppression regimeSandy Dawson and Justine Munsie had by now chalked-up a bit of a victory, or at least prised open a chink in the suppression caper. 

But not for long. On October 31 Murray Tobias AJA was asked by G & G Rinehart to get that Suppression Act working again. Tobias obliged. He was satisfied that the delicate flower known as the "proper administration of justice" would be prejudiced unless the press was chained. 

In the process he mentioned the "juicy parts of the dispute" between the parties.  

Perth law shop Butcher Paull & Calder had arrived in the mix for John Hancock, the second plaintiff, while Hope Welker, the first plaintiff, was unrepresented at this point.

Bar prez Bernie Coles QC and junior Peter Kulevski headed-up Mrs Rhinoheart's team for that round. 

It was back before Brereton on November 16, with Gina and Ginia asking for an order suspending the operation of the timetable in respect of pleadings, and seeking an adjournment of the proceedings until after the anticipated hearing and determination of their appeal. 

Bernie Coles was there for Gina and Kunc for Ginia with 6 Selborne/Wentworth lad David Thomas for the three plaintiffs. 

The defendants' application was dismissed. 

The big review hearing came on in the Court of Appeal before Bathurst CJ, McColl and Young on December 7. This was essentially an appeal from Tobias' decision to reimpose the Suppression Order that Brereton had lifted, but stayed. 

Bret Walker SC was added to the media team alongside Dawson and all the others were there: Doc Bell, Thomas, Coles, Kuleveski, Kunc and Flynn along with hoards from Corrs, Gadens, JWS, and Addisons. 

The CA delivered a major judgment on the importance of open justice and, in the process, overturned Tobias' suppression order. 

Kunc (left) for GiniaTwo days later, Justice Margaret Beazley stayed the lifting of Tobias' suppression order until G & G could send a posse to the High Court. 

Just before Christmas Brereton rejected an application by the media interests to vary the interim suppression order.  

These submissions required a full phalanx of briefs and support staff: Doc Dell, D. Thomas, B. Coles, S. Robertson, P. Flynn, A. Dawson, D. Studdy and C. Colquhoun. 

By January 13 another appeal bench had assembled: Chief Justice Bathurst, with Beazley and McColl. Gina and Ginia wanted a further stay of the CA review decision until a special leave application to the High Court had been decided. 

By this stage Matthew Walton SC was leading the pack for Mrs Rhinoheart and a new team from 11 Wentworth, Malcolm Holmes QC and Margaret Allars, had taken up the baton for young Ginia. 

The appeal judges refused, saying the applicants do not have substantial prospects of success in obtaining special leave from the High Court. 

Fortunately, Justice Susan Crennan in the High Court was on hand to string things along a bit further. 

On February 1 she further stayed the Court of Appeal's order lifting of the suppression order until March 9, when the application for special leave will be heard and determined.

Walton, Holmes, Bell, Walker and Ms Fiona Roughley plus another 15 solicitors were the midwives of this outcome. 

In the interim, an ingenious new assault on a different front was opened up before former Allens partner, now HH Justice Michael Ball.

Walton: ingenious new assaultBefore him appeared Thomas, Walton, Kunc Dawson and Roughley. Gina and Ginia asked the judge for another suppression order on the basis that reporting the proceedings surrounding the trust would endanger their safety. 

On February 2 Ball rejected that argument and as a result we read some email traffic from the three plaintiff children concerned that they were insufficiently funded to hire decent chefs and bodyguards. 

The word in London is that Lloyds cancelled the kidnap insurance policy as soon as its existence was disclosed. One of the usual clauses in such a policy prohibits disclosure of its existence. 

Maybe the round before Ball was a cunning ploy to get some of the children's unattractive missives into the spotlight, and exert leverage on them over the ransom insurance. 

The day after Ball's judgment was delivered, accompanied by a momentary field day by the media, Corrs sent a letter to the three plaintiff children saying that unless they supported their mother's continued insistence on a suppression order she would refuse to pay for any further kidnap insurance. 

If the story from London is true, the ransom policies were already dead. 

There was an appeal on February 8 against Brereton's decision that the proceedings brought by the children are not a breach of the deed. At least 20 lawyers were in court for that one, but the proceedings could not be reported. 

Battalions of lawyers and assorted camp followers will be dispatched to Canberra for the special leave day on March 9. 

Could we be seeing the return of the old style, secretive, media potentate, whose hired attack dogs busily crucify the lives of others?