Healing Country - Mine Rehabilitation

In Australia mine rehabilitation is not discussed much in mining circles- It doesn’t make money and shareholders/executives exert great pressure to reduce its costs and scope to the bare minimum. The regulator has little interest and no resources or authority to drive change. The only people with real “skin in the game” are the Traditional Owners (TOs) and they are inevitably excluded from every stage of the decision-making process. Ohh they are included in “consultation”, at least by our larger corporates, but that is about as far as it goes. RioTinto demonstrated this in spades at both the closure of ERA’s Ranger mine and Argyle Diamonds in the Kimberley.

In the September issue of Mining Review Australia there is an article about the 80,000 plus disused mines in Australia. This was a typical mining look at the issues and not once did it refer to the TO’s of that land or what their issues might be. Likewise the DEMIRS webpage https://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/Abandoned-Mines-Program-29296.aspx similarly does not recognise Native Titleholders as anything let alone a key stakeholder in this process.

Mining engineers in Australia are well trained and skilled in safely extracting resources from the ground but they have little interest or real understanding of what’s required to return country to the way it was before mining commenced. What’s more, they generally have little contact or understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture or the importance that they place on country. Those who develop the final closure plans were never present many years ago when mining commenced and as the legislative requirement is limited to consultation, near enough is deemed to be good enough by the regulators. I fact in many cases they are just glad when the final mine operator actually attempts some sort of rehabilitation as there are many areas throughout Australia where the last operator simply vanished and left the liability for the state government to consider. A recent case where the WA government stepped in to rehabilitate the abandoned Ellendale mine site on Bunuba Country in the Kimberley did not engage any of the local mob and utilised Liberty Industrial (British company) and the local MACA contractors to undertake the work.

TO’s on the other hand are very invested in restoring their country. They often describe the process as ‘Healing Country’ rather than rehabilitation. It’s a personal, cultural and almost visceral thing for them. The usual excuse from miners is “they lack capacity” or “don’t have the skills” needed to undertake this work. I guarantee that if I engaged Jakob Stausholm (CEO of RioTinto) that he also wouldn’t have the skills required to undertake the work safely or productively (Jakob is an economist by trade) – but I am sure that he could engage some good people who do have those skills! So can local TO’s if given support and guidance. The alliance model of contracting, often used in large, complex civil construction, is the model that we should be using to bring TO’s in to the tent, at the highest level, to manage the restoration of their country.

By comparison when the State Government road authority either upgrades a major road or builds new one through farming country those impacted by their work are consulted and they determine how fences will be re-established, what quality they will be, how long a fence can be down whilst construction happens and demand and get, many other concessions from both the road authority and the head contractors. They will also be fully compensated for any land that they lose or lose access to.

Traditional owners receive some compensation if the mining lease was granted post 1994 for the loss of amenity and ability to access country - Note its not compensation for the billions made in extracting minerals or other resources although the High Court is being asked to consider that for the first time in the current Yindjibarndi v FMGL case.

What would a decent and fair approach to healing country look like? To start with it would be described right at the beginning of the agreeing to destroy country process – it would be conditional on the grant of the mining lease. It would include the TO’s as equal partners in all decision making (note: not just consultation) around healing country. It would set out the role that TO businesses would play in restoring country – not just offer a 10% price concession on hard dollar contracts at the very bottom of the contracting food-chain.

In most mining operations, rehabilitation/restoration should be happening as soon as mining areas are worked out and not a cost that can deferred to pump up annual profits, share prices and bonuses. It should be a process that is continuous with ongoing mining. It starts with mine planning that goes beyond short term optimisation of resource extraction which is the current norm. Good mine planning needs to consider how best to use the land from beginning of operations to its eventual restoration. The trouble is that those tasked with developing and approving mine plans never expect to be around and be held to account for the last part of this journey.

After bungling the ERA closure in the NT, RioTinto followed exactly the same process at Argyle. They consulted and consulted with various groupings of TO’s but that had no real impact on the people doing final designs, developing the scopes of work or contracts. The usual offer of some commercial consideration of TO businesses was made but RioTinto never invited the traditional owners into the tent and said “this is your country – how can we work together and manage this process together, to heal your country”. They have a number of mines in the Pilbara that are rapidly coming to the end of their commercial life – will they do anything different??

The University of Queensland hosts the Sustainable Minerals Institute (funded by the major mining companies in Australia) and its website says:

? Impacted people have the right to be involved in decision-making about matters that affect them.

? Involving impacted people can improve the quality of mine closure decision-making processes.

? Indigenous perspectives are often missing from mine closure planning.

? Stakeholder engagement is a long-term, reciprocal and dynamic process that relies on listening as much as providing information

Whilst it all sounds good, when you read on it translates this into the need to talk. But we have seen everywhere that talking is not the answer – it’s the preferred strategy of miners to distract stakeholders whilst they get on with doing what they want!

The Goldfields is littered with small, abandoned mines and TO’s here have largely been excluded from any compensation for destruction of country, as the majority of mining leases are pre-Native Title Act. I haven’t seen any of the new Lithium hopefuls in this area offering anything more than a fraction of 1% of royalties in their Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUAs) as compensation and they are silent on restoration. IGO will close their Nova mine is a couple of years – will they be the ones to set a new standard in working in partnership with Traditional Owners to Heal Country?