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Last November, when Pauline Hanson cooked a steak for Barnaby Joyce in her parliamentary office, barely anyone raised an eyebrow that the wagyu on the menu was from 2GR – Gina Rinehart’s beef company.

Umami-rich marbled beef from the brand, named after Australia’s richest person and her daughter Ginia, retails at more than $100 a kilogram. It is more at home in the world’s high-end restaurants than in a sandwich press.

But its presence in Hanson’s office as part of a carefully curated media stunt showed that Rinehart was already playing a part in One Nation’s expansionist push, which has been gathering pace over the past six months.

Soon after the dinner, Joyce – who is one of Rinehart’s most loyal friends in the Australian parliament – announced his defection from the Nationals to One Nation, confirming his move on radio in Tamworth in early December on “Macca’s” 88.9FM breakfast program.

“I think I almost had to declare those steaks – I didn’t realise they were wagyu, they were very, very nice,” Joyce joked.

Looking up to make eye contact with the studio camera, Hanson piped up as if in a commercial: “2GR! 2GR!”

In the clip, an impeccably made-up Hanson is wearing a blue-and-white check shirt branded S Kidman and Co – another of Rinehart’s companies. And later that day she boarded the S Kidman and Co private aircraft to hitch a ride home to Brisbane alongside her fellow NSW One Nation senator Sean Bell.

The flight was not declared in line with Senate rules until many months later, after the Guardian had contacted Hanson’s office asking about her travel arrangements that day.

The Guardian revealed that multiple flights had been gifted to Hanson by the billionaire and not properly declared, in breach of Senate rules that require the declaration of gifts worth more than $300 within 35 days.

In total, five flights were concealed over the course of nine months.

The flights – some taken on Rinehart’s luxury Gulfstream G700 – included a return trip to Florida to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference and events at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

While Hanson and Rinehart have been friends for some time – they were pictured dining together in Thailand in early 2025 – it appears that visiting the US together gave them the opportunity to fortify their political alliance, cementing Rinehart’s support for the resurgent One Nation.

Rinehart took Hanson to Mar-a-Lago where she met the UK Reform leader, Nigel Farage, whom Hanson praised as a “friend” and “true champion”.

The One Nation leader also took part in CPAC’s exclusive Circle Retreat and Gala, described as a “premier gathering for the biggest leaders in the conservative movement in America and from around the world”.

After the trip, Rinehart stepped up her support for Hanson, hosting political fundraisers, including onboard the luxury cruise ship The World, on which she owns an apartment.

At the same time the billionaire began signalling her shift in support away from the Liberals, whom she had backed under Peter Dutton, with one of her closest allies, the corporate executive Adam Giles, revealing that he was now backing One Nation and “was encouraging my friends to be donating all they can”.

“They are fighting for our country, with a long-term track record, in trying to get Australia back on track, get our culture and values back and get our country back,” he told the Weekly Times in December. Giles, the former Northern Territory chief minister, quit the Nationals after he was questioned about his backing for Hanson’s party.

At an event she hosted in December, Rinehart auctioned off a bejewelled Trump handbag and dinner with the US president at Mar-a-Lago for $300,000, convincing three former Liberal donors to switch their support to One Nation.

The Guardian can reveal that two of the fund managers – Ben Cleary and Doug Tynan – met Trump with Rinehart at Mar-a-Lago in March, three weeks after the US and Israel launched air strikes against Iran. Hanson was in South Australia for the state election on the night the dinner took place.

Despite Rinehart’s clear support, Hanson and her chief of staff, James Ashby, downplayed Rinehart’s connections to the party. Ashby told the Nine Newspapers after the Bondi massacre in December: “I haven’t seen any money from her.” Hanson, at a heated press conference in February, said: “If you are going to try to say that I am being funded by Gina Rinehart, the answer is no.”

But after seeking to minimise the extent of Rinehart’s support, Hanson is now openly gloating about her backing by Australia’s richest person.

On Wednesday, in a Trump-like social media post, Hanson took to taunting the Guardian about the latest gift from her benefactor – a brand-new Cirrus SR22 G7 plane that costs up to $2m.

“BREAKING NEWS – I’ve got a new plane, Sarah,” Hanson said in the post, directed at this journalist.

“Yes it was donated. Yes I’m super happy. Yes it’s fast. Yes it’s amazing. Yes it’s going to annoy the Guardian. Yes it means I can visit more regional towns across the country more often. Yes it’s a Cirrus G7. Yes it’s sexy. Yes I have a pilot.”

The pilot may prove to be Ashby, who has a recreational pilot’s licence – though the Australian Financial Review reported last month that he had failed a routine aviation exam.

Hanson unveiled the plane at an aircraft hangar in Rockhampton at an event hosted by Giles, who is an S Kidman and Co executive.

There she was again dressed in a Kidman shirt and was pictured in front of what appeared to be a pie-warmer full of Kidman meat pies. Hanson owns at least half a dozen Kidman and Co shirts that she now wears on high rotation. Joyce, too, sports a custom-made $500 Kidman and Co hat, ditching his trademark Akubra after Rinehart gave him the new headwear in 2024.

Two of Rinehart’s closest corporate lieutenants, Giles and the known climate-sceptic Ian Plimer, presented One Nation with two giant novelty cheques, with a third coming from one of Rinehart’s “close friends”, the stockbroker Angus Aitken, and his wife, Sarah.

The novelty cheques are a gimmick favoured by Rinehart, most infamously when she gave Joyce $40,000 in 2017. He was later forced to return it amid a backlash.

Giles and Plimer have worked for Rinehart for many years but many have questioned how each of them would have a spare $500,000 to donate to the party, asking whether this was a donation by proxy on Rinehart’s behalf.

Hanson also announced last month that Giles had “personally” given One Nation a new car.

The Guardian asked Hancock Prospecting if Rinehart or Hancock Prospecting had made any financial contribution towards the donations but the company declined to answer.

The slick social media video that accompanied the announcement suggests Hanson is no longer afraid of parading her party’s new cashed-up status as it seeks to take on Labor and the Coalition.

There are many questions about the extent of Rinehart’s involvement in the party’s expansion plans. Will she be personally involved in choosing potential candidates for the party across the country? Or is her support confined to providing the corporate support needed to go mainstream?

Australia’s political fundraising laws will be tightened in July and in December, with Hanson saying on Wednesday: “We have a lot of additional fundraising to undertake between now and the cut-off in December.”

But the Centre for Public Integrity chair, Anthony Whealy, said the revelations of Rinehart’s patronage of One Nation exposed the “state of absolute chaos” of Australia’s electoral laws.

“The net result has been that very wealthy companies and people have been able to donate large sums of money to get access, and once they get access they use that to get influence,” Whealy said.

“[Rinehart] is entitled to do whatever she likes with her money but she is not allowed to own a party, and that is what this amounts to; this is a purchase of a political party in Australia and it is done in a way to absolutely dominate and influence a party.

“One Nation’s ownership by Gina Rinehart and her friends is a very uneasy alliance for Australia because the views of One Nation, now emboldened by this colossal gift of money – and no doubt more will be coming – does not augur well for the preservation of what I would describe as true Australian values: kindness, fairness, equality, tolerance and genuine concern for others.”

Whealy added that under Australia’s electoral laws it would “be very easy to mask” a donation through a third party, while he also criticised the lack of transparency surrounding fundraisers.

This week the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, declared Hanson to be a “wholly owned subsidiary of Gina Rinehart”, warning of Rinehart’s well-known “agenda”:

“She’s flagged things like getting rid of the minimum wage and all of these sorts of things, and I think pretty frequently we see One Nation dance to Gina Rinehart’s tune.”

Giles told the assembled crowd in Rockhampton that Hancock Prospecting was there “providing the wings” for the One Nation movement. And, he declared: “The journey has only just begun.”