Speech by Mrs Gina Rinehart AO Sydney Children’s Hospital (Westmead) Rinehart Kookaburra Care Centre Launch

Speech by Mrs Gina Rinehart AO

Sydney Children’s Hospital (Westmead) Rinehart Kookaburra Care Centre Launch

Wednesday 14 October 2026

Sydney

Good evening, everyone.

I would like to quote from NSW Health Minister Ryan Park’s recent letter: 

“Your $5 million contribution, made through Hancock Prospecting at the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation Gold Dinner in 2023, was the largest single pledge in 26 years of that event’s history. It has helped create something that did not exist anywhere in Australia before now.

The Rinehart Kookaburra Centre will care for children living with chronic and complex medical conditions — children who need many different specialists, a range of supports and treatments, and who often spend long periods of their childhood in hospital. The number of these children in New South Wales has grown sharply in recent years. Until now, their families have navigated a system built to deliver services rather than to support them through a healthcare journey that can last for years. This Centre changes that. It brings care together in one place, designed around what these children and their families need most.

Governments build hospitals. But the things that make a hospital more than a building — the innovation, the ambition to try something that has not been done before — very often come from philanthropy. That is what your gift has made possible here….”

“I am also conscious that your support for Australian healthcare and community life extends well beyond this Centre, and has done for many years. From next week, children and families across New South Wales will be among the beneficiaries of it.”

End quote. 

This centre is an Australian first and it is desperately needed. In the space of two years, we are advised that the number of children requiring care for chronic and complex conditions has grown from around 6,500 to almost 10,000. That is an increase of more than 50 per cent.

Behind each of those numbers is a child living with pain or discomfort, trauma or anxiety, and a family who may be struggling. With the opening of the Rinehart Kookaburra Care Centre, we hope these children and their families will find the care, support and non stop kindness they need, all under one roof.

Thank you to the doctors, nurses and support staff for the work and all you do to help these very special patients. 

The focus of today was 100% to be on the patients this centre was built to help, a good and happy occasion to see this much needed centre officially opened. Unfortunately, there has been one or more  negative reports about my donation, in the usual media. This even purported,  this $5m donation had strings  attached, when it did not. 

We are very proud that this donation has been possible due to our work in the primary industries, both agriculture and mining.

Unfortunately, some forget where your food and fabric comes from, or forget how essential mining is and what it provides for our country. You can’t have medical equipment without first mining, you can’t have knives and forks without first mining, you can’t have hospitals, skyscrapers, machinery, trains, cars, planes, bridges, ships, mobile phones, TVs, iPads, toys, and so much more without first mining. As Ive said, “When mining does well, Australia does well. But when mining doesn’t do well, nor do Australians.” End quote. 

Mining may be a dirty word in some confused areas, that nevertheless want to spend or waste the huge revenue mining currently contributes to our country. The nation’s mining industry continues as the largest contributor to tax payable of any industry, paying $432 billion in taxes and royalties over the decade to 2024-25. This revenue is critical to be able to pay for nurses, hospitals, aged care, emergency services, police, defence, veterans and more. Mining is crucial  too to enable debt repayments , which record debt is pushing  up your interest rates big time.  

And Australians living standards already declining thanks to this governments policies, would be even worse. 

There is much misleading or fake media, from the usual outlets, that  our companies don’t contribute to tax.  Hancock Prospecting is one of the largest private taxpayers in the country, having paid around $2.6 billion in FY2025 alone, and nearly $23 billion over the past decade. These taxes also contribute  to healthcare services, nurses, doctors, aged care and more,  right across the country.

Imagine how much extra tax and or government charges you would have to pay without the mining industry, or from the many people and companies reliant on the mining industry, even without Hancock’s contribution. As one commentator commented recently. why worry about how Mrs rinehart choses to spend money she has earnt, u should worry about how Albo and Chalmers spend the money you have earnt! 

But there are genuine concerns, under current government policies, investment is flying overseas, investment needed here if we want to rescue our standard of living. Unreliable, high-cost electricity, doesn’t help the average Aussie working hard and trying to make ends meet, and nor does unreliable high–cost electricity, welcome investment.

Not only are the deliberately misleadingly called “renewables” , toxic solar panels and toxic bird and bat maiming, bird and bat killing wind towers and toxic batteries, not renewable as they too require many minerals, and somehow need to be disposed of after several years life,  but they are unreliable and expensive, and billions and billions and billions more for taxpayers to fund as they and their huge new transmission lines spread across farmland, ruining farmers lives and businesses, and hence the businesses farmers support.

You may have heard, I hope you have, small and medium businesses are struggling right around Australia, and with the increasing government charges and paperwork, there are record business failures. High crime and high government charges and growing expensive bureacracies and government tape, make our country less cost competitive internationally, this should be obvious, but somehow in Canberra currently it isn’t obvious, that this is not helpful to businesses hence jobs and opportunities, and certainly not welcoming to investment.  

We are well aware that across our country, Australians are increasingly struggling, and the consequences of the foregoing.  We have never been so concerned for the future of Australians. 

I care deeply about young patients facing complex medical illnesses, which is why I made sure this donation, the largest of its kind in 26 years, went to help these special patients. Similarly,  I also care deeply  about Australia’s future, and I will continue to support responsible policies and political parties and organisations that genuinely care about the future of Australians, even if some in the usual irresponsible media circles would prefer that I did not. 

Thank you.