Gina Rinehart has emerged as the money behind Bruce McWilliam’s near-10 per cent stake in Southern Cross Media, the media group that owns Network Seven, Triple M and publishes The West Australian. Documents filed with the ASX on Wednesday morning showed that McWilliam’s holding has been mostly financed by a company associated with Rinehart and Hancock Prospecting.
McWilliam built the stake in a company valued at $278 million, and Rinehart is now treated as a substantial shareholder because she holds an interest in his shares and security over them. If the agreement signed in April falls apart, she can take control of the shares. The filing showed that 94 per cent of McWilliam’s near-47 million shares in the company have been paid for by Rinehart, a level of backing that has fuelled speculation the pair may be planning an eventual takeover of Southern Cross Media.
The move lands in a familiar part of Rinehart’s media history. She previously held a 15 per cent stake in Fairfax Media before its merger with Nine, and sold those shares in 2015 after failing to gain three seats on the board and control over editorial output. She has also previously been a significant shareholder in Network Ten.
Rinehart’s reach across the sector has never entirely gone away. She remains closely linked to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Sky News Australia as a major advertiser and a friend of several on-air hosts, and she also holds shares in Fox Corporation in the United States. That makes the Southern Cross position more than a simple investment: it sits inside a long-running effort to shape Australia’s media landscape, even as the company is expected to change its name in due course and realign its power base to Seven.
The tension in the filing is the same one that has trailed Rinehart for years. She has money in the company, security over the shares and a route to control if the deal unravels, but the structure also shows that McWilliam still formally owns the stake for now. The question is not whether Rinehart has influence; it is how quickly that influence turns into direct control.
