SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Washington: In January 2021, with the world still in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration was a muted affair. Crowds were restricted, people were masked and the traditional inaugural balls and parties were not held.
In 2025, proceedings have been upended again, this time by frigid weather which led Donald Trump to move the official swearing-in ceremony indoors. The vast majority of ticket holders won’t fit inside the Capitol rotunda, including a slew of high-profile Australians from the worlds of business and politics who had been expecting to attend.
Among those in Washington for Trump’s return to power are Gina Rinehart, Anthony Pratt and Teena McQueen.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who was a guest at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on election night, was on the guest list, as was packaging mogul Anthony Pratt, who recently announced he had been granted a Green Card and was moving permanently to the United States.
Pratt is due to attend the Vice President’s Dinner at the National Gallery of Art on Saturday night (Sunday AEDT), a black-tie event with J.D. Vance and several incoming members of the Trump cabinet. He will then attend a “candlelight dinner” with Trump at the National Building Museum the following evening.
There was no word on whether Pratt would revive the hot-pink frock coat he donned for last year’s Met Gala in New York, but the billionaire said it was an important time for his firm, Pratt Industries, in the US.
“We have 70 factories in America, and under President Trump’s leadership, we will invest billions more to create thousands of American manufacturing jobs,” he told this masthead. “We’re proud to support the president’s agenda to reindustrialise America.”
Rinehart did not respond to inquiries but Australian PR consultant James Radford, who represents Rinehart and was also due to attend the inauguration, said Trump’s return to the White House showed Americans were crying out for strong borders, defence and economic growth.
Anthony Pratt (centre) at this year’s Met Gala.Credit: Getty Images
Trump “will reward nations that back his agenda and engage with confidence [and] Australia must be among them”, the former Hancock Prospecting employee said.
They’re likely to be joined by former Liberal Party vice president Teena McQueen, who is now on Rinehart’s payroll and was recently filmed lunching with Rinehart and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson in Thailand.
Rinehart and Pratt won’t spot fellow Australian billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, who is in Davos, but they might see James Packer, who recently dined at the same table with Trump, Elon Musk and Packer’s business partner, Brett Ratner, at Mar-a-Lago. Footage of the encounter was reportedly uploaded to Instagram by Packer’s girlfriend, Renee Elizabeth Blythewood.
Alongside Musk, Australia’s attendees can expect to rub shoulders with some of America’s most wealthy men, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Former Hancock Prospecting employee James Radford, Sam Bjelke-Petersen, Gina Rinehart and former Liberal Party vice president Teena McQueen at a Trump rally in Virginia.
In a farewell speech to the nation this week, Biden warned that the coterie of the super-rich coalescing around Trump was an oligarchy “of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead”.
The business elite will also be joined by a large contingent of political types, both serving and former. Foreign Minister Penny Wong will represent Australia alongside ambassador Kevin Rudd, as will foreign ministers from Quad group nations India and Japan. But whether they would make it inside the rotunda was still unclear as of Saturday night local time.
It is unusual for world leaders or ministers to even be invited to an inauguration, but Trump is nothing if not unorthodox. He also extended an invitation to China’s President Xi Jinping. “We like to take little chances,” Trump said in December.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison, who posted a photograph of himself and his wife, Jenny, celebrating New Year’s Eve with the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago, has returned to Australia and said he had commitments.
However, former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, who has relocated to Washington for an executive job with BHP, was eyeing off one of the inaugural balls. Former ambassador turned lobbyist Joe Hockey also flew into D.C. on Thursday, where he is partly based.
The inaugural balls are as much a part of the occasion as the swearing-in itself, with three official and many unofficial parties taking place. The Republican Committee of Harford County in next-door Maryland is even hosting “The Deplorable Ball”.
Ralph Babet, the United Australia Party senator and MAGA enthusiast from Victoria, is in the US and posting regularly about Trump’s ascension. He posted a photograph from Miami on Thursday but a spokesman was not sure if he planned to head to Washington.
News Corp did not respond to inquiries about whether Rupert or Lachlan Murdoch would attend.
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