Traditional owners blast Rio Tinto's record on reforms

Perth Now

01-05-2025

Iron ore giant Rio Tinto says it is committed to remedying the past after it was criticised for failing to modernise an agreement with traditional owners.
Rio Tinto pledged to reform its business practices after it blew up the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters in Western Australia in 2020 for an iron ore mine.
The event sparked public outrage and led to a government inquiry and the exit of the company's chair and chief executive.
At Rio Tinto's Perth annual general meeting on Thursday, Deanne McGowan of the Robe River Kuruma Aboriginal Corporation said the group had failed to update its agreement with traditional owners of the lands containing Mesa J mine, where it had mined for 30 years.
"You have paid us for three years," Ms McGowan said, adding the mine had been excluded from an agreement 20 years before when Rio Tinto had told elders it planned to close it.
"And here we're now ... 17 years of payments that Rio has cheated us at Mesa J."
The lands belonging to the Robe River Kuruma group do not include Juukan Gorge but are in the same Pilbara region in Western Australia.
"Our country is dying," Ms McGowan said.
"Our culture and our heritage at Middle Robe lies in ruins."
Ms McGowan criticised the seven gigalitres of water the miner took for its coastal operations each year.
"Rio Tinto's past is our present and until you remedy your past, it stains our future together," said.
Rio Tinto chair Dominic Barton said his company was committed to reaching a new agreement and resolve issues with the traditional owners.
"We've had a number of conversations and we'll be having after this meeting as well, but there is a very, very strong commitment to work through these issues with you," Mr Barton said.
"We acknowledge and recognise that this mining activity ... has been having a severe impact on water and we are very committed to trying to be able to help rectify and improve that."
The company had invested $395 million in a desalination plant that would be operational in 2026, the chair said.
Also at the meeting, shareholders rejected a review to consider unifying the company's dual listings on stock exchanges in London and Sydney.
Hedge fund Palliser Capital had lobbied shareholders to keep only the group's spot on the ASX, claiming the dual listing had eroded $US50 billion ($A78 billion) in company value.
"It is never easy for a small shareholder to take on the likes of a corporate giant like Rio Tinto," Palliser founder and chief investment officer James Smith said.
"However, we simply could not accept Rio Tinto's anomalous and illogical findings that unification offers no advantages whatsoever, when almost every other DLC in the world has unlocked multiple significant benefits through a simplified structure."
Rio Tinto PLC, the group's UK-incorporated entity, is also traded as an American depositary receipt (ADR) security on the New York Stock Exchange.
- with Reuters