Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia is the world’s premier mining country, and clearly the mining industry plays a fundamentally important role in our economy and in our society. Not only does Australia play a major role as a supplier of minerals and resources to the world but also there are growing associated industries—particularly high technology industries and manufacturing industries—that derive from our expertise and our capabilities in mining. So whichever way you look at it, the mining industry is crucial to Australia’s future.

However, there is a particular aspect of Australia’s mining industry that gives us some cause for concern, and I want to raise this with the parliament today and consider how we move forward on this. Sadly, on a number of occasions Australian mining companies operating overseas have been at the centre of major controversies. They have been associated with bad environmental practices, spills and serious damage to the local environment and the interests of the local community. All of these generate bad publicity for Australia as a nation and bad publicity for the Australian mining industry and raise big questions about how we should deal with these issues as a nation.

We all recall the BHP involvement in the Ok Tedi project, the pollution of the Fly River and the serious damage to the interests of Papua New Guineans arising from that project. That was a matter of great controversy for a considerable period of time. There was the Esmeralda exploration incident in Romania. The release of cyanide tailings into the Danube in 2000 from a goldmine in Romania operated by Esmeralda led to appalling pictures on television of thousands of dead fish. The livelihoods of many locals were severely affected and it created a very bad impression of Australian mining companies.

More recently, we have had the involvement of Lafayette Mining in the Philippines. Late last year on the island of Rapu-Rapu, cyanide leaked from a tailings dam of a goldmine operated by Lafayette Mining on two occasions. It was closed down, and after it reopened a further leak occurred. The company was fined $265,000 as a result of these breaches. There was significant damage done to the interests of the local fishing community in particular. There were dead fish in the local waterway and there was a lot of community concern about the impact of this release.

It subsequently emerged from the inquiry run by the Philippines government that the company had started operating the mine before it had completed the environmental protection processes and the building that was required to ensure that the local community and the local environment were protected from the threat of release of tailings, and particularly the release of cyanide. So on the face of it, it would appear that the mining company did not pay adequate attention to the interests of the local community.

We do not need to look too far to see how important these issues are in the developing world. We have seen recently the controversy with respect to the US mining giant Newmont in Sulawesi, in Indonesia. There are claims that some locals contracted Minamata disease as a result of pollution of the Buyat Bay area from a goldmine operated by Newmont. That is not an Australian company, but it is an example of the issues that are raised by pollution from mining activities.

It is extremely important for the future of our nation and for the future of the mining industry, of which we can be justly proud, that Australian mining companies operating overseas, particularly those operating in developing nations, are operating in a way that is sensitive to the interests of the local community—that is, they are not unduly polluting their waterways and land and are not causing major displacement of local communities and serious detriment to the indigenous people.

That is a crucial issue for Australia. Although I do not necessarily propose any kind of government intervention with respect to this matter—and it is not easy to see how the Australian government might intervene—I think it is important for both government and the Australian mining industry to contemplate how we collectively can apply pressure to ensure that Australian mining companies operating overseas, particularly in developing countries, do not end up in these circumstances. Although local conditions and local laws vary and we cannot completely ignore that, we do want to maintain Australia’s good name, we do want to maintain the good name of the Australian mining industry and we do want to ensure that we are seen as good corporate citizens all around the world. (Time expired)