Gina Rinehart says some of her children do not appreciate her efforts that saved her father’s company and built the value of a $5 billion family trust at the centre of their bitter dispute.

Australia’s richest person said her father Lang Hancock warned her that she would rue the day her late mother’s shares in Hancock Prospecting were used for the children’s benefit.

“Dad correctly said to me ‘Gina, you’ll rue the day, you know, if I let you take your mother’s shares for the benefit of the children’,” she told the ABC’s Australian Story.

• Rinehart talks about her father, family

“I didn’t agree with him at that stage but, you know, I think he was right.

“He was right because they don’t appreciate as some of them should that the efforts I went to, to have that for them and to save the company and build the company, which took a hell of an effort and which in turn increased the value of now what’s in the trust.”

Mrs Rinehart became trustee of the Hope Margaret Hancock Trust after Mr Hancock died in 1992, but control was transferred to her eldest daughter Bianca Rinehart after a legal battle.

Mrs Rinehart said she was fortunate because she grew up in a different way, with “cement floors, tin roofs, having to amuse yourselves” and properly understanding the importance of work.

“So I think that, you know, they say that if you give your children too much they don’t get the joy out of work,” she said.

“They just want the unearned things to keep falling from the sky, so I think that I’ve been the fortunate one.”

Mrs Rinehart said the company was in a very difficult state when she first took over, despite receiving iron ore royalties.

“Yes, thank God, we did have the royalties, but most of those were paying off previous disasters.”

A NSW judge in May said Mrs Rinehart had used tactics bordering on intimidation in the fight for control of the family trust.

Bianca Rinehart and brother John Hancock have also taken Federal Court action against their mother and Hancock Prospecting, seeking profits from the company’s iron ore projects.