Meet Gina Rinehart; Australia’s richest person, after her wealth rocketed from 2 to 9 billion dollars last year.

The only child of mining magnate Lang Hancock, Gina grew up on a 24-billion-tonne iron ore deposit in WA, ditched uni after a year of economics and joined the family company..

At 21, Gina announced a plan to revolutionise open cut mining by using nuclear explosions. The plan was scrapped, but 20 years later she mused: “It’s a pity it didn’t happen”.

Rinehart became famous for her feud with Rose Lacson. Hired to look after her aging father, the Fillipino housekeeper married him. When Gina tried to intervene, her father cruelly rebuked her: “Allow me to remember you as the neat, trim, capable, attractive young lady … rather than the slothful, vindictive and devious baby elephant you have become. I am glad your mother cannot see you now". A few months later he removed her as a director of Hancock Resources.

Lang died in 1992. Rinehart spent 14 years brawling with her step-mother, the remarried Rose Porteous, over the estate. Lang’s body was cremated, but with Gina hoping tests would eventually prove Rose killed him, his heart, kidneys and liver were locked up in Perth mortuary where they remain to this day. The coroner found he died of natural causes.

While Rinehart successfully expanded the family company, she remained publicity-shy, bullet proofing her cars and office windows, and retaining former SAS men as bodyguards.

In 2010 she went public, protesting Labor’s proposed mining tax. Australians for Northern Development and Economic Vision, the lobby group she founded, includes her corporate strategist, John McRobert, who used to advise Pauline Hanson, and climate skeptic Ian Plimer. Rinehart had also funded British skeptic Lord Monckton’s 2010 tour of Australia.

In November, she bought stakes in Channel Ten and Fairfax Newspapers. Family friend Ron Manners explained that Rinehart “would like her voice to be heard”.

What does that voice sound like? Rinehart published her 7-point-plan for Australia in March. It includes: cutting taxes on mining, loosening environmental regulations and bringing in cheap migrant labour from Asia, an act she says would be “humanitarian”.

She is reportedly behind Channel Ten’s decision to give Andrew Bolt, Australia’s most vocal climate change denier, his own TV show.