Project Introduction

This three-year ARC Linkage project has Rio Tinto and the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) as Industry Partners and a number of Indigenous representatives and community organisations as project collaborators. The project team has established a collaborative and complementary focus on development and sustainability, the role of Indigenous regional organisations, Indigenous community perspectives, and company perspectives especially relating to corporate social responsibility. Fieldwork in 2004 was undertaken in the Pilbara in Western Australia, the Gulf Region in Queensland, and Kakadu National Park and with three mining companies.

Project Overview

Considerable research over the past decade in health, employment, life expectancy, child mortality, and household income has confirmed that Indigenous Australians are still Australia’s most disadvantaged group. Though this is the case for a variety of historic, structural and cultural reasons, Indigenous Australians residing in communities in regional and remote Australia are disadvantaged also because of those regions’ limited formal economic opportunities. This relative lack of opportunity—at least compared with urban areas—has been accentuated by that raft of changes labelled ‘globalisation’, as a greater embrace of the market in the last decades of the twentieth century has adversely impacted on regional Australia. Liberalisation of the market is a global trend: ironically, the reduced availability of government funding for regional development, especially but not only in developing nations, compounds what some might identify as the moral responsibility of mining companies in remote areas to participate in the provision of social services once provided by the state.

Australian Bureau of Statistics’ data show that in these areas of economic decline Indigenous people represent a growing share of the regional population, but for cultural and other reasons they are also unlikely to migrate for employment. At the same time, there is a growing view that excessive dependence on welfare and government programs can have negative social impacts, especially if associated with inter-generational inactivity. There are current calls under the broad contested rubric of ‘mutual obligation’ for government, business and communities to jointly address the problem of regional under-development. Such calls emanate both from Government inquiries, like the McClure Committee, and influential Indigenous leaders, like Noel Pearson. In its final report to the government in December 2000 the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation identified the need for a National Strategy to Address [Indigenous] Disadvantage and a National Strategy for [Indigenous] Economic Independence.

Such calls are not new and date back at least to the 1970s when part of the argument for land rights legislation was the potential beneficial impact of restitution of land as a factor of production. However, even then it was recognised that land returned to Indigenous communities had limited commercial value unless it was mined. Indeed, it was the de facto property rights in minerals provided by land rights legislation in the Northern Territory that was recognised as the means to lever regional economic opportunity.

Historically, a number of mining agreements have now been made between mining companies and Indigenous community or regional organisations. In the early 1980s, there was a degree of optimism that such agreements, many with significant financial benefit packages, would make a difference to the marginal economic situation of Indigenous beneficiaries. However, existing research indicates that for a complex set of reasons, Indigenous economic status has changed little – dependence on government remains high and the relative economic status of Indigenous people residing adjacent to major long-life mines is similar to Indigenous people elsewhere in regional and remote Australia. This unexpected outcome was clearly demonstrated in the Kakadu Region Social Impact Study (KRSIS 1997): as the above mutual obligation controversy indicates, it is partly a reflection of Indigenous community organisations’ incapacity to both cope with the impacts of, and take advantage from, large-scale operations. On the other hand, such organisations and the people they represent may have ambivalent responses to the potential cultural assimilation implied by their increasing integration into a market economy and its monetisation of many aspects of social life. A third key factor, however, is also the attitudes and responses of both mining companies and governments, and their inability to comprehend the extent of historic Aboriginal disadvantage and strain on the social fabric of societies so radically affected by colonisation.

In the last decade there has been a concerted effort by some major mining companies to address aspects of this regional development problem. Rio Tinto, one of the two proposed industry partners for this project, is one innovative leader. According to the intentions expressed in policy statements (see, for example, the Rio Tinto booklet The Way We Work released in 1999), concern has shifted from a commitment to minimise the negative impacts of the resource development footprint combined with good community relations, to a cautious recognition that good corporate citizenship might require companies to be the catalyst for sustainable regional development in the absence of any other commercial opportunity. Notwithstanding policy development within Rio Tinto itself, this corporate policy shift has been influenced by a number of other factors including:

• The enhanced recent focus on Indigenous issues precipitated by the Mabo High Court judgment and the subsequent Native Title Act 1993 with the leverage that the right to negotiate has bestowed on Indigenous parties
• The Bougainville crisis and more recently the environmental disaster at Ok Tedi, which have starkly demonstrated the complexity of issues circling around national sovereignty, democratic governance in post-colonial nations, and local community and business autonomy
• Improved global communications and globalisation that have made mining companies more accountable transnationally and have made competitive advantage partially dependent on proven community relations
• A poor track record in Australia (although the role and responsibilities of mining companies in delivering socio-economic outcomes for Indigenous communities remains contested).  

Concomitant with the increased power to trade that globalisation has brought ‘multinational’ capital, a growing international interest is focused on how such companies might demonstrate a commitment to socially sustainable development. Views on the issue vary profoundly: more cynical analysis argues that profit-seeking companies operating in a cut-throat global environment under current circumstances are intrinsically unable, if not also unwilling, to consider the ethical requirements of profit sharing beyond that which gains them a licence to operate (Castoriadis 2001). Even amongst those who are convinced of the potential such flawed global corporations might contribute to the quality of life of local stakeholders, debate continues over what corporate social responsibility might entail, how its impacts can be assessed, and who might be entrusted with its regulation and enforcement. Recognition is growing, however, that corporate citizenship means more than the distribution of a local ‘benefit package’ as measured in monetary terms, which has often been regarded as the primary spin-off from a long-life mining project. For example, recent research emerging from the Mining and Energy Research Network at the University of Warwick, UK is attempting to provide a more holistic and comprehensive analytical framework for assessing the impacts and contributions of mining companies, although much of its preliminary findings have not yet been published.

This research project seeks firstly to investigate both the history and effectiveness of the corporate citizenship of a number of large mining companies, in particular Rio Tinto. It will assess existing agreements with Aboriginal people and Rio Tinto’s community development programs, as well as their success in indigenous capacity building. It will also examine the incorporation or otherwise of socio-economic considerations in the closure plans for mines. It seeks, secondly, to propose means to improve communications between mining companies and community organisations, improvements that are essential to facilitate mutual cultural understandings (of Indigenous prerogatives, and commercial realities) and associated empowerment that is essential to ensure collaborative sustainable development effort. The monitoring of mutually acceptable social impact indicators is one way such communication can be enhanced. Research will be largely based on a series of case studies that seek to identify community relations ‘best practice’ principles that can be utilised both by companies and Indigenous community organisations. Best practice principles will be identified through the following questions:

• What are, or should be, mining company strategies to build community capacity to deal with impacts of mining?
• What role have national or state governments played?
• What role do regional representative organisations, like land councils or native title representative bodies, play?
• How do local communities or their organisations involve themselves in capacity building, and how might partnership with mining companies facilitate this?
• What are the key factors that explain successful intervention, and how are economic and non-economic flows – e.g. environmental agreements, sacred site protection – to Indigenous groups monitored?
• What are the key factors that explain differential Indigenous responses?  
• What more should companies and government agencies do to develop the capacity and sustainability of local Indigenous institutions, and how are they preparing organisations to continue after mine closure?
• Can best practice ensure that the tendency for regional Indigenous political division and conflict associated with large-scale mining projects be overcome?
• Will enhanced community institutional capacity facilitate enhanced sustainable regional development?