At least it’s now official, via the AFR:
Vanessa Guthrie makes a quick apology. She’s 15 minutes late and in an instant I’m remorseful.
Guthrie, the first woman to chair powerful industry lobby group Minerals Council of Australia, had suggested we catch up for lunch at a restaurant opposite her West Perth office.
…As the head of the Minerals Council of Australia, Guthrie must manage the diverse group stretching from iron ore to uranium to precious metals to coal. They have different agendas and different ways of operating. But it doesn’t stop the entire sector coming under fire when one section of it is taking the heat.
Take east coast coal for instance. “It is severely under attack from social activism. It needs all the help it can get. But it means that the rest of the minerals industry gets somewhat tarnished by the coal debate and I think unfairly,” Guthrie says. “I think coal is under attack unfairly so, even though I am a very strong advocate of clean energy and renewables, but coal has a role as does uranium and nuclear power.”
She is concerned about a growing wave of “social activism” that wants to stop development – from mining to construction to infrastructure. She’s annoyed because she argues if most Australians assessed their personal wealth, most of us would have generated at least some of it from the mining sector.
I ask her if she feels the anti-mining activists are a little like vegans who wear leather shoes? She smiles and nods.
“Every social activist uses a mobile phone and tweets. Where do you think a mobile phone comes from?” she asks. “Sixty-one minerals are in a mobile phone. Sixty-one different elements that the world mines to produce mobile phones are in there. Without mining you wouldn’t have an iPhone. And how do you think it gets powered?”
She is frustrated that from behind a keyboard false claims can be made and assumed by many as truth.
“Most people go and get their information from Twitter or Facebook today and once it’s been tweeted it’s the truth apparently,” she says. “Somebody tweets that we at Toro are polluting rivers and killing babies, well there is nothing I can do about it. The fact that things get tweeted with no integrity, no facts, no research behind them frustrates me.”
Social media is perhaps helping fuel a worrying trend for populist politics.
She’s annoyed the prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has reneged on plans to change the GST distribution that is woefully unfair, saying he’s playing populist politics. So too, she says, is Nationals WA leader Brendon Grylls over his plans to slug BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto with higher taxes.
“The state’s economy and people’s futures are really being played out in populist politics on all sides. Grylls’ plan doesn’t fix the problem because it causes the GST to get worse!”
Partly true. Roughly half the revenue would remain in WA. And what is so wrong about WA collecting a more reasonable share of iron ore royalty so the entire nation can benefit, hmm? Pilbara mining margins are currently above 200%. Those are preposterous private profits for a non-renewing and publicly owned resource. The big miners are radically under-taxed.
Then again, I suppose MB is a “key board warrior” of sorts. Though I like steak and wear a nice suit when it is appropriate.
The post-truth most apparent here is not the rise of internet crusaders, it is the proliferation of corporate propaganda creating false binaries for its own benefit. We don’t know if the Minerals Council is directly behind MB’s own permanent set of mining astroturfers, but we know that they most certainly exist. Likewise, co-ordinated mining public relations campaigns aimed at changing policy have done far more damage to Australian national interest than a few online hippies have ever managed. I don’t recall the latter ever successfully toppling a prime minister so they could pay less tax.
Meanwhile, the big miners are wasting no time:
Rio Tinto is preparing to sack up to 500 workers ahead of the March State election, a move likely to exacerbate tensions between the State’s biggest miner and WA Nationals leader Brendon Grylls.
And there’s always one happy to put himself ahead of the national interest:
The WA Liberal Party is set to pre-select a 33-year-old BHP Billiton manager from Newman to try and knock off Nationals leader Brendon Grylls in his Pilbara seat.
Mark Alchin, the superintendent of health, safety and environment at BHP’s Mt Whaleback mine, was the only nominee when the deadline for applications passed at noon.
Dr Alchin has a PhD in environmental science from Curtin University and a bachelor of applied science from Queensland univeristy, according to a CV posted on LinkedIn.
He has worked for BHP in health, safety and environmental rehabilitation roles, and previously worked for the Department of Agriculture in Meekatharra and Kununurra.
I wonder if he’ll bother resigning from BHP? Perhaps keep both jobs and deploy the Minerals Council commenters to argue that he’s independent?
Cue 3d1k, Xo…
