“Qld won’t bend rules for Cape Alumina” reads the headline on the ABC website. You can sense the excitement at this triumph of Queensland‘s wild rivers policy at the national broadcaster, the same outfit that is pushing the story about Jidi Jidi Aboriginal Corporation protesting against Sandfire Resources’ drilling for copper and gold on its land.
Sure, these are legitimate stories. But if you scroll back through the ABC news archives, you find a heavy weighting toward negative stories about this industry.
There is a good case why coal mining companies should not rip up huge swathes of rich farmland in the Hunter Valley, but you fail to get any sense of nuance from a broadcaster that is also going on about a handful of people saying they’ll hear more noise from a mine extension proposed by Gloucester Coal.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes; both need to be reported. But can’t the ABC whip around and find some stories about how mining is helping keep us going (and contributing toward the $1 billion a year it spends) or how – in the case of Sandfire and other companies drilling around its find north of Meekatharra – this might actually provide jobs for the local landowners?
Of course, the ABC reflects both the leftish bias at that organisation and the scent of anti-resources feeling that reporters are no doubt picking up on in parts of the Labor movement. When you think that parts of the farming industry (look at dairying, for example) are in decline and the manufacturing sector has been hollowed out, it would seemingly make sense to nurture the mining and energy sectors.
After all, it’s the metal and energy exports that are keeping the wolf from Australia’s door. But Canberra’s response? Close to nil. You can imagine the eyes glazing over in our national capital when resources issues are raised.
And there’s no better example of the hypocrisy abounding than Queensland. Happy to take all that money from the coal miners, oh dear me yes. But uranium mining? And what about the mining projects affected by the wild rivers “protection” – excuse me, but is this the same state government that won’t act on Cubbie station and its impact on the Murray-Darling river system?
It’s a worldwide phenomenon, of course.
There was a news report this week on the Church of England selling shares in London-based Vedanta Resources because it is concerned about the effect on a native tribe once that company builds an aluminium plant in the Indian state of Orissa, along with developing a bauxite mine.
No concern, apparently, about the vast employment multiplier such a project will bring to a country that has some of the worst poverty in Asia.
Over in New Zealand, the National Party-led government is facing the wrath of the Green Party, which has nine MPs in the 122-member unicameral parliament. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the green movement closed down mining in several areas, including the Coromandel Peninsula east of Auckland, a place rich in mining history.
The Key government has decided to unlock some of that land and the Greens are promising major protests. No doubt some companies have been considering investing in exploration under the new policy, but why would you bother when you face all those exciting young people chaining themselves to trees and bulldozers?
So why not go to Mali?
Australian investors have come to terms with some parts of Africa; they feel comfortable with explorers and miners operating in Botswana, Namibia and Ghana for example. Burkina Faso is clearly growing on them.
But Sahelian Africa seems to be the place of the moment. Overnight, we’ve heard Gold Fields’ west Africa chief, Peter Turner, being reported as saying that Mali is his company’s new frontier. The South African company is concentrating on the southeast corner of the country where one prospect, Komana, has returned gold hits up to 15.7 grams per tonne.
But this country is not exactly virgin territory. Mali has just displaced Tanzania as the third-biggest gold producer in Africa. According to the Economist, South Africa produced 240 tonnes last year, Ghana 80t and Mali 60t. Tanzania produced 50t, with Burkina Faso closing fast at 40t.
It is interesting that we have not seen any news reports of Australian companies experiencing any real problems in this part of the world of late. Mali has a clear mining law and reports suggest it is working quite well.
But here is the thing that really caught my eye about Mali. The French have been pressuring the Mali government to release several members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb from its jail; AQIM is holding several Europeans, one a Frenchman, and Paris wants Bamako to release the terrorists so the Frenchman can be set free. No way, says Mali.
So here is a country with a working mining law, as yet unquantified mineral resources (including phosphate), no Greens or ABC, and a government that sticks to its guns and is pro-mining.
As an exam question would put it: please compare and contrast with Australia in general, Queensland in particular.
Footnote and disclosure: The writer has put his money where his mouth is and owns shares (and took up the recent rights issue) in Oklo Uranium, which is exploring for uranium and phosphate in Mali.
