One Nation senator, Pauline Hanson, has breached Senate rules, declaring another flight taken on billionaire Gina Rinehart private jet more than two months late.
Guardian Australia revealed on Tuesday that Senator Hanson had failed to declare a flight provided to Senator Hanson to travel between Melbourne and Sydney last October.
Senator Hanson was gifted the flight after an event at a private agricultural college in Geelong last year, which she had attended for the official opening of a new building partly funded by Rinehart.
Senator Hanson updated the register of interests to include the flight on Tuesday, in breach of the Senate rules which state any change in a senator’s interests should be notified to the registrar within 35 days. It is unclear what time the declaration was made, but it was dated on Tuesday.
Hanson had failed to declare the flight in line with parliamentary rules for senators’ interests, which require that a declaration is made of any sponsored travel or hospitality received where the value of the sponsorship or hospitality exceeds $300.
The Senate rules state that any senator who “knowingly fails to notify” an alteration within the 35 day timeframe is “guilty of a serious contempt of the Senate and shall be dealt with by the Senate accordingly.”
However, to determine if a senator has committed such “a serious contempt”, they must first be referred to the Privileges Committee for inquiry and report.
Asked at a press conference in Adelaide on Tuesday whether she had received any flights or transfers from Hancock Prospecting to or from the 19 October event, Hanson initially said: “No … if you are going to try to say that I am being funded by Gina Rinehart, the answer is no.”
Asked again if she received any flights or transfers to or from the event, Ms Hanson replied “I can’t remember.”
On Monday, the Guardian sent questions to One Nation and Hancock Prospecting about how Senator Hanson travelled to and from the event.
Hancock Prospecting referred questions to One Nation. One Nation initially said they would come back with a response but had not done so by midday on Tuesday.
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The Queensland senator had attended the opening of Nicholas Hancock House at the Marcus Oldham College in Victoria on the invitation of Australia’s richest person.
Hancock Agriculture chief executive, Adam Giles, told the Guardian that he believed Hanson flew on a Jetstar flight into Avalon airport to attend the event, however it is understood that the senator left Melbourne on Rinehart’s Gulfstream 700 later that day.
Publicly available flight tracking information shows that Rinehart’s jet travelled from Perth to Sydney on 19 October, stopping briefly at the Melbourne airport in Essendon the same day, a distance of more than 3,000km. It is unclear if Rinehart was on the plane at the time.
Rinehart did not attend the Geelong event, which was the official opening of an $11m student accommodation building for the agricultural business college named “in honour of both sides of Mrs Rinehart’s family.” Rinehart had donated $2m to the project.
Giles attended and delivered a speech on the mining magnate’s behalf, apologising that she could not be there in person.
At the event, Senator Hanson was introduced as a “dear friend” of Rinehart, along with the then-head of the WA Pastoralists and Graziers Association, Tony Seabrook. Hanson thanked Rinehart for the “kind invitation” to attend the opening, and spoke about her love of the land and her support for the farming sector.
“My job as a politician is to ensure that what this country was built on – not only agriculture but the mining sector – that we ensure that we do have that because it brings so much money into the country to provide for the services that we need, to keep our country viable and profitable,” she said.
The panel discussion focused heavily on the need to abolish policies aimed at achieving net zero carbon emissions, but Senator Hanson also spoke about the need for lower taxes.
“My God we are overtaxed in this country and if it was One Nation, we’d get rid of payroll tax [and] a lot of these other taxes that we have,” she said.
The night Hanson arrived in Sydney, she spoke to the former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce – a longtime ally of Rinehart – about his possible defection to One Nation.
“I said: Barnaby, it’s your decision, the offer is there, it is up to you now what you want to do about it, that is how I left it,” Hanson told Sky News on 20 October about the phone call the night before.
Guardian Australia reported in December that Hanson had failed to properly declare that Rinehart had flown the Queensland senator and her chief of staff, James Ashby, to Florida to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, where she also stayed at the mining magnate’s $66m Palm Beach mansion.
On the day of the Guardian’s report, the party stated that it had incorrectly updated the register on 16 December. It resubmitted forms to properly declare the return flights and hospitality on 30 December.
As of midday on Tuesday, no declaration had been published regarding the 19 October flight.
