Gina Rinehart’s companies acknowledge mining is essential to net zero, yet her public attacks on renewables and Pauline Hanson’s anti-climate agenda clash with the reality that mining projects increasingly depend on clean energy.

There is a very interesting post on the website of Hancock Prospecting, the mining giant that has helped make Gina Rinehart the richest person in Australia, and which provides a platform for her strident views on how the country should be run.

“Mining is essential to achieve net zero,” the headline reads.

And the article follows: “Mining is critical to securing the minerals essential for everyday life and essential to be able to build renewable energy projects. The first step in the supply chain to create solar panels and wind turbines and EV batteries begins with mining companies like Hancock, Atlas and Roy Hill.

“Hancock Prospecting believes it is important to follow the science. We are 100 per cent compliant with all legislation and regulations established by the government targeting a reduction of emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero by 2050.”

That all sounds laudable, but it is certainly not the message that Rinehart is sending out in her public appearances. And it is certainly not what Pauline Hanson, the leader of the surging One Nation political party that Rinehart openly backs, wants you to believe.

Rinehart regularly attacks net zero, demands it be scrapped and decries “toxic” solar panels, which with wind turbines and battery storage are “destroying large parts of our environment.” Hanson and her party attack the science, and think the whole climate thing is a hoax.

On Thursday, at the Hancock-sponsored and Murdoch-media backed Bush Summit event in Townsville, Rinehart lamented the use of spare land for renewables – rather than as launchpads for Elon Musk’s space rockets or a Taiwan computer chip factory.

“We have land out near Prairie designated for toxic, asbestos riddled, bird- and bat-maiming, bird- and bat-killing wind towers. What a waste,” Rinehart said, according to notes of the speech published on the Hancock Prospecting website.

Hanson, who had flown from Canberra to Townsville to attend the event to introduce her party’s backer to the audience, had taken up the same theme the previous day at the National Press Club.

“One Nation will end this renewable energy bribery – grants, tax incentives, concessional finance, even the........

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