Australian tycoon allowed no rest as rivals rage

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - Lang Hancock, eight years in the grave, is still not at rest.

In a macabre twist to an already Gothic tale of death, jealousy and greed, the daughter of the late tycoon who dreamed of mining ore with nuclear bombs is seeking to prove he died at the hands of a grasping, drug-addicted wife.

Gina Rinehart, one of Australia's richest people with a $A240 million ($307 million) fortune to command, has convinced the West Australian Parliament and Judiciary to open a new inquest into the death of her father.

Rinehart has never stopped believing that her Philippine stepmother, former housemaid Rose Porteous, first manipulated Hancock into signing over more than $A40 million to her, then killed him by one means or another.

Her case was given new impetus last year when, during a marathon struggle over the money Porteous inherited, Hancock's former wife admitted threatening to murder the mining magnate over a last-minute change to his will.

And in a development typical of the prolonged war between the two women, an inquest document leaked to newspapers, allegedly by a member of Rinehart's legal team, spoke of Porteous harassing and beating her husband in his last days, and of her trying to engage a hitman.

Porteous, who married a close friend of Hancock's after his death, denies the allegations and shrugs them off as yet another manifestation of Rinehart's obsessive hatred.

Content with her victory over Rinehart in the struggle for her inheritance, Porteous has maintained a typically high profile, bequeathing $A1 million to each of her two poodles, granting colourful and often bizarre interviews, and appearing most recently with a dramatic tale of her escape from a masked intruder.

Hancock, who died of cardiac failure in 1992 after taking out a restraining order against Porteous, was a legendary figure, a giant of the Outback who grew up among Aborigines and who, in 1952, discovered the world's largest iron-ore deposit. Within a decade, with his second wife Hope and daughter Gina, Hancock was earning $A10 million a year, flowing through a private company that was to become the focus of the titanic legal battle between Rinehart and Porteous.

Hancock and Rinehart were inseparable in the early years, with Gina entering the business against an earlier agreement with partner Peter Wright not to bring family into the business.

The appearance of the eccentric and extroverted Rose as a housemaid in 1983 rocked the relationship.

Hancock was a singular tycoon, a non-drinking, non-smoking man who lived modestly, shunned both society and publicity, held rigid hard-right views of life - admiring the policies of the late Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu - and who fought regularly and, it is claimed, to his disadvantage, with Sir Charles Court, successively Development Minister and Premier of WA, and the father of present state Premier Richard Court.

Rose changed this dramatically, driving a permanent wedge between father and daughter.

For a decade after their marriage in 1985, Rose's butterfly life forced Hancock into society, parties and ostentation that alienated the pair from the Perth establishment, and was encapsulated in Prix d'Amour, the garish mansion Rose had built for the couple and where Hancock was to die an embittered and grotesquely public death.

Hancock's last days were bitter.

His wife was addicted to pethidine and he had outraged both Rinehart and Rose with changes to his will, granting Gina the massive income from his iron ore business and his wife assets worth more than $A40 million.

The grim and enormously expensive battle for that money ended only last year when the court decided against Rinehart, although complex legal manoeuvrings continue.

The manner of Hancock's death has yet to be settled.

From the moment of his demise, rumours of foul play began flying around Perth.

After bitter arguments Hancock had taken out a restraining order against Rose, who was to admit during court proceedings last year to her fury at the decision to pass on his mining millions to Rinehart.

Within hours of Hancock's death, Perth's major crime squad was on the scene.

As their investigations proceeded, even more twists to the baroque tale developed as Rinehart and Rose battled for Hancock's body, then held separate memorial services at exactly the same time.

As it was, police and the state coroner found no evidence of foul play, determining that Hancock died of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

But Rinehart has never accepted this and has finally convinced coroner Alistair Hope to open a new inquest following the presentation of what he described as substantial new evidence late last year.

Just what this evidence contains has yet to be seen, although rumours and leaks suggest it may make sensational allegations.