Top director spurned Thiess corruption whistleblower

Top Australian businesswoman and ABC board member Dr Kirstin Ferguson failed to protect a whistleblower who personally alerted her to a corruption scandal inside the nation's biggest mining services company, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Instead, the whistleblower was forced out of Thiess in 2014 and a confidential internal corruption inquiry report, that included bribery claims involving Thiess and a top Indian politician, remained buried.

More than half of NSW sees coal and CSG negatively: poll

A majority of the NSW public now views coal and coal seam gas mining negatively and want it to be more tightly regulated, a new poll has found, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Ongoing polls have detected a recent spike in wariness amongst NSW voters about mining.

About 57% of voters surveyed said they thought coal and coal seam gas mining had a negative effect on NSW communities.

About 1200 people were surveyed by telephone via Reachtel on March 14.

That proportion is higher than previous gauges of public opinion on the same question, such as a 2013 EMC poll which recorded that a majority of respondents believed mining had a positive impact.

Arrium shares suspended from ASX trading

Two United States private equity firms are hovering with a potential buyout proposal for cash-strapped Arrium as the company's desperate board secured an extra week to try and hammer out a deal with its angry banking syndicate, to avert a likely break-up of the business, according to the Australian Financial Review.

Argand Partners and Cerberus Capital Management have continued to crunch the numbers on a full buyout offer after initially making a $1 billion-plus buyout proposal for Arrium's profitable Moly-Cop mining consumables business earlier this year.

They haven't yet made a formal offer to the Arrium board on a buyout for the entire company, but have been fine-tuning as Arrium's plight worsened in the past few days.