• Gina Rinehart has once again topped this year’s Rich List, on the back of a roaring iron ore price.
• With a record fortune of $31 billion, Rinehart has more than doubled her net worth in the space of two years.
• She’s followed by Andrew Forrest, Anthony Pratt, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Scott Farquhar, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht among others.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

The country’s rich and powerful may have been reshuffled for another year, but Australia’s miners have well and truly cemented their place at the top of the hill.

The AFR’s newly-published Rich List ranks the 200 wealthiest among us, with their collective fortunes climbing to new heights during the pandemic.

For the second year in a row, mining magnate Gina Rinehart topped the list with slightly over $31 billion to her name. Incredibly, that’s $2.2 billion more than she had just six months ago, and more than double what she was valued at in 2019, when Anthony Pratt’s family topped it, off the back of the Visy family fortune.

“The commodities boom is fuelling extraordinary wealth generation among our Rich Listers. Collectively the Rinehart family is worth $40 billion, twice the amount of the next richest family on the list, the Pratts,” Rich List co-editor Julie-anne Sprague said.

It’s not shocking then to see that Fortescue chair Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest wasn’t far behind in second, with an estimated net worth of $27.25 billion. They weren’t the only ones clearly doing better than most. The collective fortunes of the top 200 came in at almost $480 billion, or $55 billion more than last year.

The top of the List was rounded out by other familiar names. The top featured Atlassian co-founders Mike Cannon Brookes ($20.18 billion) and Scott Farquhar ($20 billion) at third and fifth respectively, with the Pratt family ($20.09 billion) between them.

Meriton giant Harry Triguboff’s $17.27 billion put him at sixth, followed by miner and failed political candidate Clive Palmer, property magnates Hui Wing Mau ($11.7 billion) and Frank Lowy, and finally Canva co-founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht valued at a collective $7.98 billion.

Of course, there were some new names cracking Australia’s most elite club, albeit further down the rankings. Twenty debutants grace this year’s List, including one man behind 20 of the 30 highest-grossing films of all time.

Meanwhile, there’s another group making waves.

“This year’s Rich List features a record number of women, many of whom have built their businesses from the ground up and expanded offshore. They include Mecca’s Jo Horgan, Decjuba’s Tania Austin and Megan Wynne, a one-time occupational therapist who’s now running the $1.5 billion human services giant, APM,” Sprague said.

At the same time, tech entrepreneurs have only raced up the ladder even higher, fuelled by the global pandemic.

“The remote-work revolution is also helping fuel wealth for the nation’s technology billionaires. The fortunes of Atlassian founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar have passed $20 billion for the first time as their paying customer base rises beyond 200,000,” co-editor Michael Bailey said.

“Another Australian-made software-as-a-service gaining global ubiquity is Canva. Founders Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht cracked the Rich List’s top 10 as their simplified graphic design platform amasses a population of active users on par with the population of Italy.”

You can read the whole List in detail at the AFR.

Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.