Gina Rinehart portrait saga: largesse comes at a peculiar cost for Australia’s swimmers

Many things have been said about Gina Rinehart, Australia's richest person, and not all of them positive. But in the world of Australian swimming, superlatives comes thick and fast. According to Cate Campbell, a four-time Olympic gold medallist, Rinehart "saved swimming". Her sister, fellow Olympian Bronte Campbell, describes the billionaire as a "unique patron". To Swimming Queensland's chief executive, Kevin Hasemann, Rinehart is Australian sport's greatest benefactor since "Santa Claus".

And so the news that the Olympic gold medallist Kyle Chalmers and his colleagues had campaigned for Rinehart in relation to portraits she disliked by the artist Vincent Namatjira was not surprising, even if its timing - when all eyes are otherwise on preparations for Paris 2024 - was unexpected. To understand why Hasemann and some of Australia's top swimmers would go into bat for Rinehart on a matter entirely unrelated to the pool, one need only look at the financial hold the mining magnate has over the sport.

Rinehart has long sponsored swimming in her home state of Western Australia. But after the Australian team's unsuccessful London 2012 campaign, where the Dolphins collected just one gold medal and were embroiled in the "Stilnox six" scandal, sponsors began to abandon the sport at a national level. In stepped Rinehart.

In the subsequent decade, Rinehart has poured somewhere between $40m and $60m into swimming, considered by some analysts to be the largest individual contribution to an Olympic sport anywhere in the world. She has also made substantial contributions to rowing, beach volleyball and artistic (synchronised) swimming.

Two years ago Rinehart's mining company, Hancock Prospecting, became a major partner of the Australian Olympic Committee in a deal that runs until 2026. At the same time she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for her distinguished service to sport. Rinehart has hinted at extending her support through to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics (and called for enough super yacht berths at Queensland marinas to better facilitate her visits).

Some of this funding was orthodox sponsorship via a deal with Swimming Australia. Hancock Prospecting's logo became commonplace at elite swim meets around the country. The company still sponsors several major championships. But Rinehart's support for swimming has also been unusual in her direct-to-athlete funding, which expanded after a falling-out with the peak body.

Through the "Hancock Swimmer Support Scheme", Australia's swimmers receive salary-like payments across three tiers: for top Olympians, those on the cusp of the national team and younger athletes with potential. Australia's best swimmers reportedly received $32,000 directly from Rinehart in 2021. This would be supplemented by Swimming Australia funding and commercial endorsements.

"These athletes would not have been able to accomplish what they've accomplished without Mrs Rinehart," Hasemann told the ABC last week (unlike Swimming Australia, Swimming Queensland has remained on good terms with the benefactor). The sports administrator has described the direct-payment scheme as "the lifeblood of performance swimming in Australia".

The salary funding model has now been enhanced with a medal incentive fund, which sees swimmers paid $20,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze. World records fetch a bonus of $30,000.

There is no doubt Rinehart's support has kept Australian swimmers in their professional careers - so perhaps the ringing endorsements, and the willingness to lobby over Namatjira's painting, should come as no surprise. The freestyle swimmer Shayna Jack freely admitted last year that "more athletes would retire well and truly before their 30s" if not for Rinehart's financial input. It is no exaggeration to say that Australia owes several Olympic medals to Rinehart's dollars.

But the direct-to-athlete funding, bypassing the governance structures of the peak body, has led to a particular closeness between the sport's benefactor and the recipients of her largesse. In 2021 Rinehart travelled to Cairns to farewell the Dolphins before they flew to Tokyo for the last Games, despite the pandemic-related restrictions in place at the time.

After their success in Tokyo, a number of swimmers recorded a video acknowledging the support of "Mrs Rinehart" - a copy was uploaded to her website. Rinehart even designed earrings for Australia's female athletes in the sports she supports, made by the jewellery company Paspaley. Male athletes received laptops.

The billionaire attended last year's world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, where she appeared in an Instagram post alongside Chalmers' mother. Rinehart seems to delight in the success of those she supports - her website's news page is filled with updates about Australia's swimmers and rowers.

But there is another side to her involvement in Australian sports. In 2022 she famously withdrew funding for Netball Australia after players expressed concern about wearing the Hancock logo. The company was founded by Rinehart's late father, who once suggested that Indigenous people in Australia be sterilised to "breed themselves out". Rinehart has never disavowed the comments.

Questions have also been asked about the impact of Rinehart's views on the climate crisis - she has previously said she does not believe in global heating, has dismissed climate science as "propaganda" and funds one of Australia's most prominent climate-denying thinktanks. All of this sits uneasily with the increasingly climate-aware positions of Australian sports and athletes.

When players receive a substantial salary direct from Rinehart and her companies, where does the benefactor's influence stop? Certainly not at supporting a campaign against the National Gallery, it seems - Chalmers told the Nine newspapers that the Namatjira portrait had been "the talk of the swimming pool" at the national championships.

But what about the swimmers who did not put their name to the letter about the portrait, said to be signed by 20 swimmers? Do those who declined put their future funding at risk? What if Rinehart asks for athlete support on her political views, or her views on climate? At what point do athletes draw the line?

Rinehart has been extraordinarily generous in her support for Australian Olympic sports, particularly swimming. Her outlay is likely to bring medals at the Paris Games in two months' time. But, as the portrait saga shows, that largesse comes at a peculiar cost. There's no such thing as a free lunch.