Gina Rinehart slams ‘gloating’ Nine as she backs Ben Roberts-Smith

Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart has thrown her support behind Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith, who is seeking to take his defamation fight to the High Court.

In a pointed statement following the former SAS soldier’s appeal loss in the Federal Court this week in his battle against Nine newspapers, Mrs Rinehart questioned whether procedural fairness had occurred.

It emerged the company had secretly paid a disgruntled key witness $700,000 to stop her from going public with allegations against its star reporter, Nick McKenzie.

Mrs Rinehart said the decision “seems to be taken by some in the Channel 9 group as something they can gloat about.”

“When Australia is already struggling with declining defence numbers, and our defence personnel numbers are inadequate, can we really gloat about this, or gloat about winning by inter alia allegedly paying a witness $700,000 to not give important evidence to help Ben Roberts-Smith’s case,” she told The Sunday Times.

“Would this be akin to tampering with a witness?”

The witness was paid the cash for her silence after sending a series of explosive emails to Nine executives claiming McKenzie had treated her poorly, and wrongfully obtained Mr Roberts-Smith’s privileged legal advice during the case.

According to Sky News, Nine paid the witness — who remains confidential and is known as Person 17 — the $700,000 hush money shortly before the commencement of Mr Roberts-Smith’s appeal against the decision in his defamation case.

Prominent legal sources believe Mr Roberts-Smith may have a chance of success in asking Australia’s highest court to overturn a judgement that he committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

He will also seek a ruling to find McKenzie — who admitted to breaching his “f---ing ethics” in a secretly recorded conversation — acted unethically.

After three Federal Court judges on Friday unanimously ruled against the army veteran’s attempt to reverse his loss in a seven-year defamation case, Mr Roberts-Smith insisted he was innocent and vowed to launch a High Court appeal against what he called the “egregious, spiteful allegations.”

The judges are due to hand down their reasons for his decision next week.

Mrs Rinehart said she understood support for Mr Roberts-Smith had come from “many concerned Australians who believe that it is un-Australian to publicly spread rumours to demonise those who choose to be patriotic enough to risk their very lives to protect Australians and their allies.”

“One has to question whether procedural fairness has really occurred when, in addition to the important witness allegedly given significant money to not give evidence, we’re also informed that documents were allegedly not properly disclosed (and) claimed privileged information was allegedly given to Channel 9 by an ex-wife,” she said.

“Who knows what else might have happened, or not happened.”

In an email, sent to Nine executive Tory Maguire and executive counsel Larina Alick in the lead-up to Mr Roberts-Smith’s appeal against the media company in May 2023, Person 17 claimed McKenzie admitted receiving confidential legal strategies from Mr Roberts-Smith’s ex-wife Emma Roberts and her friend Danielle Scott.

Mrs Rinehart said Australia should be standing up for, and supporting, those who had “bravely risked their lives” to be treated fairly.

Defamation barrister Roger Rasmussen said the next hurdle for Mr Roberts-Smith will be obtaining special leave to appeal to the High Court.

“Special leave is always extremely difficult (to obtain) in any case because it’s not an appeal as such,” he said, adding that he had no knowledge of the case.

“You’ve got to show some special reason for why the High Court should be entertaining your application.”

The reasons may be the interest of justice or a legal point of law, which in Mr Roberts-Smith’s case would relate to the standard of proof.

Mr Rasmussen said the attention given to the case could alone be sufficient to obtain special leave to appeal.