178 CRA (Now Rio Tinto) See current profile on Rio Tinto.
See also - the Kintyreand Rum Jungle pages and
the Mary Kathleen, RTZ, Rossing and Rio Algom dossiers.It is hardly feasible to condense the history of CRA into less than a major book. For this is the largest company within the RTZ group - itself the largest mining conglomerate in the world and, in 1989, it provided nearly a quarter of RTZ's profits (1). Measured by market capitalisation, CRA comes sixth among the world's top ten mining corporations (2).
RTZ may be the world's most criticised miner, but CRA is more responsible than any other of its units for the desecration of indigenous land and culture. For more than a decade, Rossing Uranium may have flagrantly violated international (UN) law, but Comalco (CRA 67%) has, for far longer, successfully cajoled, deceived and browbeaten legislators over a whole continent. Rio Algom may have been a bigger and more efficient producer of uranium, but CRA could be producing yellowcake long after Rio Algom's mines have closed. RTZ's smelting plants may have aroused more ire than CRA's - yet the Australian operations are bigger and more important. The parent company may be the most diversified mining company in the world (3), but CRA runs a close second.
Apart from the operations detailed in this entry CRA in the last few years has held (or still holds):
Dampier Salt - Australia's biggest producer of salt, and the world's second largest solar salt producer (4), 65% owned by CRA (5) (along with Marubeni, an old friend of both CRA and RTZ).
18% of Metal Manufacturers, Australia's leading cable group which is controlled by BICC, the British company rumoured in 1988 to be the subject of a possible take-over bid by RTZ (6).
Australia's leading experimenter in living cell transformation, so-called "biotechnology". Biotechnology Australia Pty Ltd was formed in 1977; its first commercial product, Neogard, a pig vaccine, was released for sale in 1985 (4). CRA sold 50% of Biotechnology in 1989 to Hoechst AG of West Germany (5).
90% of Capital Casting, a foundry-based business in Arizona USA, purchased in 1977 (7).
A 19.9% interest in the offshore North Herald and South Pepper petroleum prospect in Western Australia (8).
A joint venture with Mitsubishi, formed in 1985, to explore the Oaklands coal deposit in the Riverina district of New South Wales (NSW) (9).
A 1987 lease on large lead-zinc deposits in the north-west of Western Australia (WA), 150 km south of the town of Broome at a depth of more than 1000 metres (10).
The Peak gold prospect, near Cobar, NSW, containing around 4.5 million tonnes of gold and other metals at fairly high grade (11).
A sophisticated research centre in Cockle Creek, NSW, and the intention to construct another one in Perth, WA (8).
A joint venture with Battle Mountain Gold Co (USA) (which is the main partner with RTZ in the Lihir Island gold prospect in Papua New Guinea) (12) in a precious metals project in Kalimantan (Borneo) Indonesia. CRA is the major partner and operator (60%) (13).
Conzinc Asia Holdings, which carried out dredging for tin in Malaysia and manufactures aluminium products (5, 14). This was sold in 1989. CRA is Australia's most important mining company: depending on how its operations and investments are evaluated, it can also be accounted Australia's second or third largest privately-owned corporation. Its major shareholder, RTZ, holds 49%: Australian public investors hold only 40% of the share capital between them (15).
Until the mid-'eighties, CRA was returning mixed, and often poor, results from its worldwide operations (16). But a decision taken to dispose of assets "not essential to the core of its business" (17) was beginning to yield results by the second half of the decade. By 1987, it had sold its timber and Melbourne property interests, and put its Forrest Gold mines and prospects in Western Australia on the market (18). In early 1988, the new company chair, John Uhrig, was telling the annual general meeting of CRA in Melbourne that, thanks to high productivity at its major mines, cash gained through disposals and the favourable exchange rate (19), CRA was now "cashed up" and ready either for a major one billion dollar acquisition (20) or a number of smaller ones (21).
1988 was a record year for the company (22) (profits were up nearly 100% on 1987's). Borrowings went down; so did corporate taxation in New Zealand and Australia, and there were "unusual" gains through a "restatement" of net future tax liabilities at lower rates (23).
It now cast around in earnest for new ventures: not in "downstream" activities, or further diversification, however. Like its parent RTZ, which had just acquired most of BP's mineral interests, it was interested in mining. Discussions about merging with two Australian coal and aluminium companies did not prove fruitful (24), but CRA was very interested in the possibility of acquiring Consolidated Goldfields' 48% stake in Renison Goldfields - should it be marketed. The company also undoubtedly held talks with RTZ about taking-over the London parent's 49% stake in the Roxby Downs uranium-copper mine (25).
In September 1989, BP withdrew its offer of the Roxby Downs share to RTZ, after Western Mining took legal action to halt the sale. However, BP Australia apparently did not prevent a later sale (409).
CRA's origins go back to the beginning of this century. The connections between the Anglo-Australian commercial elite behind the Consolidated Zinc operations, and the mining and banking interests within the Rio Tinto company, also stretch back considerably further than the Conzinc-Rio Tinto merger effected in 1962 (27), out of which came today's Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation (RTZ). For example, in 1954 Rio Tinto acquired control of Mary Kathleen Uranium (MKU) (28) and, within the next six years, was zealously evaluating a range of Australian deposits (29).
RTZ's master plan, the brainchild of Rio Tinto's Val Duncan, honed by his colleagues Mark Turner and Roy Wright, was to "create a Rio Tinto company in each of the principal mining countries, which in turn would control a series of operations within its own territory" (30). From the start, operations and management would "as far as possible" be local, and "local participation in the equity of the overseas companies was ... essential" (30). But each regional operation would be fully backed by, and identified with, the interests of the RTZ Group in London: "... there would always be ... agreement on the aims of the individual companies and the Group as a whole" (30).
Notwithstanding the reluctant reduction of the parent company's equity in CRA to less than 50% nearly fifteen years later, the strategy laid down in 1960-62 has been relentlessly pursued ever since. CRA has always served the interests of RTZ. Or rather, as the most important and extensive mining company within the Group, CRA's investment decisions and areas of operation have usually meshed-in perfectly with those of the parent. Examples of this are numerous: the opening-up of the Weipa bauxite deposits in Cape York, Queensland, and establishment of Comalco (see below); CRA and MKU's participation in the uranium cartel; the expansion of the Hamersley and Broken Hill heavy metal fields; the opening of the Argyle diamond mine and the subsequent decision to market most of its output through the Anglo-American/De Beers Central Selling Organisation (CSO) of South Africa; carving out the Bougainville mine as an Asian-Pacific copper producer, ensuring the Group's continued dominance in world markets.
Certainly, it has not always been an easy relationship: it is sometimes possible to detect a conflict between CRA management or executives on their home ground, and the partners in London. When CRA's chief architect, Sir Roderick Carnegie, finally left the company in 1986, handing over to John Uhrig as non-executive chair, and John Ralph as managing director (31), it was speculated that he had argued with RTZ. Carnegie had wanted CRA to bid for Australia's biggest company, BHP, and Big Daddy of St. James's Square had opposed it. While Carnegie's resignation "stunned the local community", it came as no surprise to colleagues, reported the Financial Times- which also asserted that Carnegie had been the main force behind moves to reduce RTZ's equity in CRA (32).
Nor have CRA's "downstream" activities, and its expansion overseas, necessarily served RTZ's best interests. Would the parent company have flirted so closely with Krupp and Kloeckner Werke in the 1980s for example? Nonetheless, CRA (more recently its wholly-owned subsidiary CRA Exploration [CRAE]) has more tenements under exploration than any other Australian mining company; its presence in key regional countries with relatively unexploited resources (such as Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, China) must be the envy of many Australians. Such unrivalled spread of investment and expertise has served RTZ well in its own strategy of bringing markets and mines closer together (above all in the case of Japan) (33), reducing labour, production and environmental costs, and exploiting new deposits.
The doyens of 6 St James's Square (RTZ's suitably anonymous London headquarters) have consistently denied this symbiosis between the Group and its most important subsidiary. But this is not a consistent position. With a certain smugness (or studied carelessness?) RTZ sometimes lets it be publicly known that it still holds the reins. After RTZ's holdings in CRA had fallen below 49%, the London Financial Weekly commented revealingly: "When CRA had troubles with industrial action at Broken Hill [in 1986] there is no question that the men from London were very much instrumental in settling the dispute. If problems with the overseas investments do arise, they are very often matched by RTZ's cultivated diplomatic skills overseas ... Sir Alistair disagrees that the London office may at times be too far removed from operations to exercise tight control" (35).
In the late 'eighties many people were disturbed at the ruthless zeal being employed by CRA, in order to gain access to valuable uranium deposits in the Rudall River National Park (WA) (see below). It is scarcely conceivable that the decision to try and bring this project into production was taken by CRA alone. All the company's uranium production to date has served the marketing needs of RTZ. When it was convenient to RTZ's grand plan to close MKU uranium in 1963 (despite loud protests from Australia), then it was closed.
"Australianisation" is something which CRA has ostensibly been carrying out for some years. In 1979, the Prime Minister issued a call for majority ownership of the country's natural resources to be in domestic hands (36), although, a year earlier, the government made it clear that this should not deter foreign investment (37). It took another seven years before the company complied. Various share placements and rights issues had effectively brought RTZ's equity down to just over half by the mid-'eighties. For example, CRA's increase of its stake in Hamersley Iron Ore Co in 1981, and a share-placement to Showa Denko of Japan and another company, reduced its interest from 52.9% to 52.3% in 1985 (38). It was not until late 1986, by selling 16.38 million CRA shares to Australian Mutual Provident (AMP) at A$7.50 a share, that RTZ's holding then fell to 49% (36). Even so, within a few weeks, the London company was taking up its full entitlement on a 1:8 CRA share rights issue, designed to raise capital for expansions at Tarong, Blair Athol, and the Argyle diamond mines (39). Nor was naturalisation a major inconvenience to RTZ: a large part of CRA's debt was, at a stroke, removed from RTZ's balance sheet (36, 40), and the London Group now paid less for depreciation of its reserves (36) (because of differences between British and Australian accounting systems). Even before the pressure to "naturalise" became too much to bear, CRA and RTZ learned that this could be a strategy not to diminish, but actually increase control over domestic resources, for both their benefits. This would be by taking-over existing Australian-run enterprises (33) and offering CRA shares in exchange for shares in the Australian companies. "Naturalisation", as Ritchie Howitt commented in his incisive 1981 analysis of CRA (33), is "... one of a series of integrated corporate strategies aimed at diversifying CRA's resource base; increasing its political, economic and industrial power; and improving both its immediate and long-term profit prospects".
In 1977, CRA bid for control of two Australian companies with ownership of highly promising coal fields - AAR (Australian Associated Resources, which discovered the Hail Creek coalfield in Queensland) and Coal and Allied Industries (CAIL) (41). When the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) stepped in to halt the AAR take-over bid, CRA embarked on a media and letter-writing campaign, using threats and blackmail "aimed at undermining the Government's politically stable image within a week" (33). As political columnist Brian Toohey commented at the time: "... CRA has usually gone to great pains to present a public image of the good, well-mannered corporate citizen ... its recent take-over attempts, however, present a picture much more of the iron fist than the velvet glove" (408).
CRA didn't proceed with its vilification campaign, and it didn't secure AAR. But it did win, with Howard Smith, control of CAIL. It had to apologise to the Melbourne Stock Exchange for failing to inform them of the bid, and it came in for damning criticism from the press. In the Australian Financial Review, one journalist accused the company of "[breaking] the spirit of the law of the land, and on the face of it, the actual words of the law...in terms of corporate behaviour it could probably be dismissed by saying that all CRA has done is commit a traffic offense. It has treated the law in a technical way, knowing that if it is prosecuted and found guilty, it can afford to pay the fine" (43). After a temporary freeze, the bid was allowed to proceed...but nor before it was discovered that the chair of the FIRB, Sir William Pettingill, was himself a director of both Howard Smith and CRA! (44).
The only other occasion on which the government has rebuffed CRA's attempts at a takeover came when CRA (i.e. RTZ) bid for control of the Nabarlek uranium project in the Northern Territory (NT) in the early 1980s.
"Don't CRAp on our land!" was the demand made by the Aboriginal Information Centre (AMIC) on car bumper stickers produced in 1981, and distributed throughout Australia. The slogan neatly encapsulates the reality: CRA has been more responsible for encroachment on the land of Australia's original owners and the implicit denial of their land rights, than any other mining company. In the context of RTZ's worldwide operations, its Australian subsidiary stands uniquely indicted. No less than ten Aboriginal delegates, representing several major Aboriginal organizations (Aboriginal Mining Information Centre, North Queensland Land Council, Kimberley Land Council, South Eastern Land Council, Western Desert Land Council and the National Federation of Land Councils), have attended RTZ annual general meetings over the past decade,to focus international attention on CRA's activities and plans (45). CRA and Aborigines
In 1978, the first ever Aboriginal delegation to leave Australia and speak out publicly against the effects of mining, came to Britain with a brief to address RTZ about its subsidiaries' operations (see below). At the time, the US mining conglomerate, AMAX, was being attacked by Aboriginal people, trade unionists, Australian Labor Party (ALP) members, and others, for its desecration of a sacred site on the Noonkanbah pastoral station. However, CRA had itself smashed very sacred ceremonial boards at Noonkabah, and it posed a greater long-term threat than Amax, in its search for diamonds and uranium (46). The Yungngora community in Noonkanbah failed to prevent CRA from prospecting - though, out of 98 claims pegged at this time (47), only three were approved, and those were made conditional on a site survey (48). (The warden responsible for approving claims commented that Aboriginal fears were justified: "We continue to do things to the Aborigines, rather than with them") (49). Once it had proved up the Argyle diamond deposit, CRA appeared not to be so interested in Noonkanbah.
CRA was also the first mining company in Australia against which the major land councils called a boycott, for its violation of Aboriginal land - specifically at Lake Argyle, but also at Noonkanbah (46, 50).
Yet, it was Comalco (67% owned by CRA) which promoted the "Pitjantjatjara" (sometimes known as the "Comalco") model, for negotiations between mining companies and Aboriginal people, whereby a land council or community, having received detailed prospecting plans and company intentions, identifies areas in which the company may work: not only for mining, but drilling, laying seismic lines, constructing roads, water bores and camps (51). There has been justified criticism of the "model" - mainly because it concedes the right of companies to prospect and mine in situations where land rights and a mining veto have not been granted: hence, it can increase the sense of powerlessness among Aboriginal people (52, 85).
Nonetheless, it was a marked improvement on the situation prevailing through most of Australia in the 1970s and early 1980s - let alone that which characterised Comalco's own operations in Cape York province, some forty years ago.
Is it possible then, that the leopard can change its spots? Or is it more a case of the chameleon adjusting its colours to suit differing terrain? All the evidence suggests the latter. Where CRA (or Comalco) has been confronted with strong, united, Aboriginal opposition to its intentions, it will at least make a pretence at negotiations, or its protestations of innocence will be loud and clear. (No sacred sites or sacred objects will be damaged, declared Sir Roderick Carnegie at RTZ's 1981 AGM) (53). And, where the community lays down reasonable but unpalatable conditions, CRA- rather than practising deceit or force majeure - may withdraw. It did so from Oombulgurri in 1980, after the community insisted on: recognition of the Kimberley Land Council; at least three months notice of intended activities; negotiated compensation, proper training and employment; protection of sacred sites and improvement to community facilities (46, 54). But then, only the previous year, CRA had confirmed discovery of potentially the world's largest kimberlite pipe outside of South Africa, at Lake Argyle: for the time being, Oombulgurri's diamonds were not a priority (55). What CRA did to the people and land around Lake Argyle, it would undoubtedly have been prepared to do to the Forrest River people at Oombulgurri, had commercial considerations warranted. Indeed, just after CRA was beating a graceful retreat from Oombulgurri, it entered a traditional Aboriginal gathering ground at Christmas Creek and, without waiting for a sacred site survey to be completed, plunged a drill directly into a major sacred place (tjilla) called Kurungal (56).
The true face of CRA is not, then, to be judged by isolated acts of generosity (drilling for water in a parched desert community, or subsidising a Toyota), or minimal compliance with Aboriginal demands (repairing dilapidated housing at Weipa, on Cape York, in the 1970s, or supplying survey maps which are calculated to confuse as much as they enlighten). CRA is to be judged by the overall impact of the company's operations on Aboriginal communities, and its secretly-expressed intentions towards Aboriginal land and land rights.
CRA has long been a key member of the Australian Mining Industry Council (AMIC - not to be confused with the Aboriginal Mining Information Centre, sometimes known as AMICUS! by the Aboriginal people, to distinguish it from AMIC-THEM!). Although leading CRA personnel have not played such a high-profile role within the AMIC, as for example Hugh Morgan of Western Mining Corporation, it has distributed many of its self-justificatory pamphlets through AMIC (46); sponsored free booklets published by AMIC for children and, along with other AMIC members, made large contributions towards the eventual defeat of the pro-land rights Whitlam administration in 1975. There is no doubt that CRA's commercial priorities and those of AMIC - especially in the mid-1980s when land rights raised their threatening head - have been virtually synonymous.
On two occasions in the last fourteen years, the veil over CRA's "hidden agenda" for Aboriginal people has been pulled away. On both occasions the revelations were made by employees who were incensed at the gulf between the company's public declarations and its secret intent. In 1978, a Memorandum fell into the hands of CIMRA (Colonialism and Indigenous Minorities Research/Action), summarising mineral deposits discovered by CRAE on 39 Aboriginal reserves - some of which had clearly been under scrutiny for a considerable time. Among the areas listed as "top priority" for future programmes were Arnhemland, Groote Elandt and Forrest River. Daly River, in the NT, was listed as having "potential for diamonds, copper, lead, zinc and uranium". Among the reserves listed in Group 2 - "only marginally below those in Group 1" - were the West Kimberley Reserves (potentially diamondiferous) and Yuendumu. "Low mineral potential" was recorded for Jigalong Reserve in Western Australia (WA), Cundeelee (WA) among others, and "little or no mineral" potential was assessed for eleven other reserves, including Beagle Bay (WA), Aurukun-Mitchell River in Queensland (QLD) (only bauxite was considered prospective in this region), the Yalata Reserve (WA) and Mornington Island (QLD) (57). The memorandum had been compiled by Harry Evans in 1976 (the CRA geologist who "discovered" the Weipa bauxite deposits) and was, in fact, leaked to the Melbourne Age the following year (58). But it was not until it was publicised at the RTZ annual general meeting in 1978, that its full import was appreciated.
CIMRA, together with the major British overseas aid charity War on Want, and supported by Survival International and Greenpeace (London), issued a press release accusing CRA of deliberately focussing on remaining Aboriginal lands as soft targets (59). The furore caused by the revelation (60) forced RTZ's chair, Mark Turner, to send his vice-chair, Lord Shackleton, to Australia, ostensibly to check the allegations. In fact, Shackleton did not meet any major Aboriginal leaders during his brief visit, spent less than an hour at the Weipa reserve, and did not talk to any Australian press (61) . RTZ also responded angrily to an Open Letter addressed to Turner by War on Want and CIMRA, accusing Comalco of forcing Aborigines off reserves and settlements, burning their homes, destroying their culture, and showing "brutal unconcern" in the face of consequent suffering (59). It sent a solicitor's letter threatening a libel action if the accusations were repeated (62): War on Want did not do so, but CIMRA continued to assert the truth of its case.
Apologists for the mining companies would argue that a Memorandum of this kind is nothing to write home about (certainly nothing to tell the press about): it is merely routine. Such cynical acceptance of the "right" of mining companies to walk onto Aboriginal land, explore and drill without consent from its owners, then blithely presume they will be able to proceed to mining when it suits their interests, should appal us just as much as a public relations exercise designed at weakening land rights campaigns of specific communities.
It was such an exercise which comprised part of a second covert action indulged in by CRA. By 1980, Greg Walker, the public affairs manager for Ashton JV/Kimberley Diamond Mines (forerunner of the Argyle Diamond Mines JV and then, as now, controlled by CRA) had commissioned two public relations companies to suggest how CRA could lobby against the setting-up of a diamond cutting industry in Australia (which would undercut arrangements it had made with Anglo-American/De Beers), and "sustain the Argyle Agreement with the Glen Hill Aboriginal community and isolat[e] this agreement from the general debate on Aboriginal land rights while encouraging community acceptance of the company's policy towards its Aboriginal neighbours". What this meant, quite simply, was that CRA wanted a public relations campaign which would convince the public that it was supporting Aboriginal self-determination while actually doing the opposite. The Glen Hill "agreement" had been signed with a selected group of Aborigines, in order not to have to deal with the demands of the whole community (see below).
The company chosen for this purpose was Eric White Associates, the Australian subsidiary of the world's biggest public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton - "like Ashton Joint Venture, it was a hawk" (63). CRA's own public relations company, International Public Relations Pty (IPR), had its submission rejected (46), because it argued for securing a larger share of revenue for Aboriginal people (63). Eric White, on the other hand, was broadly in tune with Ashton JV objectives. Greg Walker urged acceptance of the White proposal - and so the world's biggest public relations company was duly brought in to White-wash Australia's biggest threat to the Aboriginal people of the Kimberleys (63). The saving in royalties to Ashton JV was promised to be "substantially greater than the proposed expenditure on the company's public relations programme next year" (3, 46, 64).
Seven years later, it was CRA's activities in the western desert which gave rise to most anxiety among Aboriginal communities (see below). The Martu people have good reason to be disquieted. Several of their community visited the Argyle diamond mine, in 1988, to see what they might be letting themselves in for, and they returned absolutely determined to stop mining (that of CRA in particular) on their traditional lands.
Even before then, like almost every other Aboriginal community throughout Australia, they had heard about Weipa and Mapoon in Cape York province, Queensland: site of the world's largest open-cast bauxite mine.
These two places have become synonymous with the devastation and social breakdown caused by mining. In a lengthy report, in 1976, Melbourne Age reporter David Broadbent delivered one of the most powerful attacks on the human effects of mining ever made, after a visit to Cape York. "If men ever establish a base on the barren surface of Mars," he wrote, "it will look like Weipa". By then Comalco had been mining at Weipa for a decade - the result, declared Broadbent, was "acres of dead craters unrelieved by a single growing thing". The conditions at South Weipa - site of the main Aboriginal relocation - were such that "traditions have disappeared and alcohol has wreaked havoc ... the Weipa operations have caused alarm in every Aboriginal community throughout the north of Australia" (G5).
A few years later, the sociologist Paul Wilson, following up an apparently routine murder investigation at Weipa in 1979, analysed more closely the reasons for the devastation. He found that the rate of imprisonment among Aboriginal people at Weipa was the highest in Australia; the rate of violent crime and self-inflicted violence (a convincing indication of grave psychological malaise) was profoundly disturbing (66). The case of Alwyn Peters, which first elicited Wilson's concern, was later to be dramatised and filmed - by the well-known Australian film-maker David Bradbury (67). What is especially alarming is that this recent film (1989) State of shock, graphically describes a situation which has clearly not improved over a period of ten years. Aboriginal writer Marcia Langton - confronting criticisms that State of Shock "reinforces stereotypes of Aboriginal drunks" - wrote in a letter to David Bradbury:
"When Mrs Jean Jimmy and Mrs Rachel Peters tell us about their country and their forced removal by police in 1963, that is a powerful explanation, if not justification, of the motives of the younger people in their destructive behaviour ... it is clear that the old ways must have provided a sense of identity ... of personhood which was satisfying, and a way of life which sustained the development and growth of the person and quality of life through to old age ... The Peters family and others were rounded up and moved from Mapoon, at the whim of a mining company. As Rachel Peters explains: 'All this suffering for nothing; there has not been any mining there since they were taken away, their homes burnt' (68, 69)".Mapoon and Weipa were two of the oldest reserves in Australia (46). "Missionised" by servants of God, many of whom were little more than racist despots, the area they comprised was cursed as the site of some 3,000 million tonnes of bauxite worth an estimated A$60 billion (46). In 1957, Comalco (then a wholly-owned subsidiary of CRA's predecessor, Conzinc) opened secret negotiations with Queensland's Labor government, designed to keep all other interested parties off the newly-discovered bauxite lode. From the start, CRA/Conzinc refused to attend any meetings to discuss compensation with the Aboriginal people living on the land (44). Mapoon and Weipa
The same year, as a new right-wing government took power in the state, Comalco and its friends in power pushed through Parliament the Commonwealth Aluminium Corporation (Comalco) Bill. This extraordinary act of theft gave the company 2,270 square miles of Aboriginal reserve land on the west coast of Cape York, and nearly 2,000 square miles (1982) on the east coast. This was traditional Aboriginal land, though not classified as a reserve. The company was required to select, and retain within a decade,1,000 square miles of the western, and 500 square miles of the eastern, leases for a minimum of 105 years. The other 1270 square miles had to be relinquished by Comalco over a period of 20 years (44, 46). The royalty was set at a mere 5 cents a ton - about the lowest rate in the world. (It was doubled in 1965 (46), although it went up ten-fold to a more equitable rate in 1974) (70) . Rent was set at At2 a square mile (it rose later) - only 1/160th (one hundred and sixtieth) of the normal mining rental at the time. All timber, cattle-grazing, water and farming rights in the lease area were granted to the company; some A$8.5 million was given in government aid for infrastructure; and Comalco was exempted from the Clean Water Act.
Not one of the demands made by the Presbyterian Church of Queensland - the mission authority at the time - was accepted by the government: there was to be no compensation (because all the "natives" would be employed), no Native Welfare Fund, no exclusive pastoral rights for the mission, and no other safeguarded Aboriginal rights (71). Comalco's attitude to Aboriginal self-determination was quite clear: Sir Maurice Mawby, a director of Conzinc, told the mission in August 1957: "We aim to provide a gradual and satisfactory means of assimilating suitable natives" (72). Comalco, said Sir Maurice Mawby, was prepared to help with native education and employment opportunities the salve to bad conscience that the missionaries most required (46). At the same time, Comalco would pay for the eviction of Aborigines from Weipa, and assist in the removal of families from Mapoon if necessary - although the company did not initially need their land.
From the very start then - and whatever the protestations of innocence by Comalco in the years to come - mining and eviction were two sides to the same dirty coin.
Comalco's initial proposal was to move Mapoon and Weipa residents to Aurukun - a reserve area some 80km south. They refused. In 1960, Comalco, on its own accord, built a settlement at Hey Point, on the mouth of the river opposite its mining headquarters. But, once again, the Mapoon and Weipa people refused to relocate.
Comalco maintained its pressure on the mission to get the Aboriginal communities out from under its feet. The Weipa people were forced into a tiny area set aside for them at Weipa South, some nine miles from the white mining town at Weipa North. This mere 308-acre plot was far removed from their traditional hunting grounds (much of which has been devastated beyond redemption, the game having fled). Their old homes were bulldozed off the beach as an "eyesore," and it was many years before anything like adequate housing, sewerage, and any pretence of training and education, were provided (46, 73). While priding itself on its "gifts" to the community, a strain of patronising puritanism has run through much of Comalco's attitude to remuneration. There is abundant evidence that cash alone has been socially destructive in many Aboriginal communities (74). Comalco has also consistently refused to consider anything approaching royalties or compensation.
However, there are two much-vaunted benefits which, the company declares, support its case for mining. The first is employment of Aborigines - intended under Queensland government policy to be the solvent for assimilation. In reality, employment has been meagre (only 10% of the workforce was Aboriginal in 1977) (75). During much of Weipa South's existence, and despite government policies of supposed equal wages, Aborigines have worked on the lowest economic rung. In 1963 they were still being classified as "handicapped, being unintegrated to the industrial demands of our society" (76). Weipa South remains the impoverished, black township, and Weipa North the modern mining town. The parallels with South Africa are all too clear (46).
A second beneficence, supposedly visited on the community by the company, is its rehabilitation of mined-out lands. It is only in the last decade that Comalco has made any real effort to compensate for some of the devastation it has caused. By 1975, only 300 hectares had been revegetated. In late 1976, Senator O'Keefe, deputy leader of the Labor opposition, reported that the exotic tree species used by the company (79) condemned the landscape to "total dead[ness]" - failing to provide food for indigenous birds or animals (77). The following year the company was compounding the error, experimenting with Burma teak, mahogany and cypress trees, aiming at planting some 400 hectares of these every year (75). In 1981 an investigator, looking at the general environmental impact of the mining, praised the company's apparently "good attitude to regeneration of mined-out areas" (it was spending about A$5000 per hectare in 1980), but found that Comalco persisted in trying to grow commercial crops, with "little success".... "Huge fertiliser requirements make planting costs astronomical. One species of tree, an exotic called African Mahogany, is the only one showing signs of usefulness". (This investigation did find that regeneration of pre-mined vegetation was relatively successful) (78).
Comalco has made much of the climatic problems on the Cape York peninsula and the prevalence of termites. It cites drought, fire and flood (during a heavy wet season the water table can rise to the surface) as factors which "seriously limit the range of tree species which can be grown" (79). What it does not say, of course, is that mining is the prime factor in constricting the choices available in rehabilitation: though it does admit that the "ironstone mine floor which lies immediately below the relaid overburden" is so "compacted by mine machinery during the mining operation" that it has to be "ripped to allow plant penetration and development" (79).
The Australian Financial Review in 1977 predicted that, thanks to its timber operations on Aboriginal land in Cape York, Comalco by 2000 AD "will be a major timber group" (75). This was too close to suggesting that, having ripped-off and ripped-out the heart of Aboriginal traditional country, CRA was now going to misappropriate whatever meagre fruits the barren land could support. Its public statements in the late 1970s stressed that, by starting forestry, agricultural or pastoral activities, Comalco could "obviously benefit the Weipa community and the State of Queensland," and that Weipa South council members "have expressed approval about the rate of growth in the regenerated areas, the high proportion of native species and the abundant evidence of birds and animals returning to the replanted forest areas" (81).
In fact, the majority of Aboriginal people at Weipa have expressed grave disapproval of the company's ill-fated attempts to rehabilitate the area. Joyce Hall, one of the most prominent members of the community, travelled to Europe in 1981 to testify at an international tribunal on the degree to which her land had been rendered a veritable dustbowl (82). Comalco eventually won the defamation case which it had brought against the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) for similar allegations made by Joyce Hall in the Granada TV film Strangers in their own land (64). However, during that trial, Weipa people gave eloquent testimony on the degree to which Comalco had failed to keep its promises. Gertude Molton testified that mining had destroyed the hunting, while their homes flooded in the wet season. According to Andrew Miller, Comalco was not re-planting local varieties of plants, and animals would not return to their original habitat. Stanley Budbury said that he and his people had to walk twenty miles to catch pigs (64). Perhaps the central testimony came again from Joyce Hall. For the first time in more than twenty years, she chose to tell publicly what had happened when bulldozers first moved onto her ancestral land at Weipa Tongue- tied by emotion, she had to leave the court at one point. When she returned, she declared:
"Since the mining come, a real sacred place was destroyed ... that is where the bodies, the deads, were put on the trees. In our own traditional ways, the bodies are not buried. They are put up into the trees until the grease is down ... left to dry before we could go back. This was destroyed when they burnt and knocked the trees down. They did not know it was there. Of course whiteman should know better. Ask first." (83).The Aboriginal community at Mapoon was a hindrance and an embarrassment: to the church, because it was becoming militant and resistant to assimilation; to the Queensland government, because it showed too many signs of being able to live independently; to Comalco because, while the company had no immediate plans to mine on mission land, it had every intention of doing so later. Indeed, the Mapoon people themselves remember being told by both the government and the Mission that "Comalco would come and turn our homes over with bulldozers, and they would dig holes all over our hunting grounds" (69).
Various mailed-fist-in-velvet-glove tactics - and more belligerent ones - were used to persuade the Mapoon people to leave "voluntarily". If a woman went off to the hospital to have her baby, she was not allowed to return home; if a man went off the reserve to find work, he was banned from coming back.
In 1963, the Missionaries packed up and went. Despite closing down all the community facilities, some seventy Aboriginal people remained. It was then that they really asserted their independence: living off the bush, ferrying-in from Weipa necessary supplies and looking after their own cattle (84). But then, under cover of darkness on November 15, 1963, armed police slunk into Mapoon, arrested the entire community, burned their homes, the church, school, stores and shops. The Elders were transported to another reserve. Some other people remained but they too were forced off within the year (69). Two years later, Alcan of Canada was to be granted a lease over much of the lands not contained within the Comalco lease (46).
Notwithstanding this act of terrorism, some Mapoon people returned to land not yet affected by mining in 1974. In order to enable the State government to close down their camp, Comalco later turned-over this part of the lease to the state authorities. Despite closure of the community's bank account, and denial of social benefits, many of the people remained. In its one act of charity during this whole repugnant saga, by 1979 Comalco had returned the resettled area and the site of the old Mapoon mission to the people (still, of course, under the repressive tutelage of the Queensland government). Comalco continued to mine on the remainder of their land in the old Mapoon Aboriginal reserve (46).
At around this time, Comalco was laying plans to open up further bauxite mines on the Aurukun reserve, south of Weipa, along a coastal strip eight miles wide, fifty miles long and more than 750 square kilometres in area (46, 84). The plan was linked to proposed mining by a consortium of foreign companies, called Aurukun Associates (Tipperary, Billiton, Pechiney). To date, mining has not taken place at Aurukun. Nonetheless, the Associates' and Comalco's plans had severe consequences for Aboriginal people, not only at Aurukun but throughout north Queensland. Initially the Aurukun people were able to halt the operations. In retaliation, the Bjelke-Peterson regime went to the Privy Council and won permission to award mining contracts. Shortly afterwards, the regime arbitrarily cancelled the reserve status of Aurukun and Mornington Island, making them shires under control of an administrator: a return to the worst days of the early twentieth century, when Queensland had itself shown the architects of South African apartheid the way to solve their "native problem" (85). It was not until several years later, that the Queensland government modified its legislation affecting Queensland's Aboriginal people living on reserves (86, 87).
CRA now controls the world's single largest diamond production company, operating the world's most lucrative diamond mine. The history of the Argyle diamond mines is one of deception, derring-do, devastation and divide-and-rule of which perhaps only RTZ's favourite son is capable. The Argyle Diamond Mines Joint Venture was originally one of many outfits, sparked by the Kimberley diamond rush of the 1970s. The Kalumburu JV was formed in 1972 by five companies, and CRA began "farming" into this group a few years later. By the end of 1976, it had secured 35% in what was then known as the Ashton Joint Venture(AJV): this gave CRA management rights (88). That year the AJV held prospecting leases covering 450,000 square kilometres (88). In 1977 and 1978, CRA secured the minority shares of both the Belgium company Sibeka (89) and Jennings Holdings. By the end of 1978, it controlled nearly 60% of the Joint Venture (90). At Argyle
Meanwhile, a new Western Australia Mining Act was being pushed through, squeezing out smaller prospectors, and giving favoured status to the mining corporations (91). Throughout 1978, the company received increasingly sparkling reports of finds in the kimberlite diamond pipes located around Lake Argyle (92). No less than 26 pipes covering 600 hectares had been confirmed by the end of that year (93), and bulk sampling had commenced (94).
The value of CRA's market capitalisation took a huge leap at this point: up by half a billion dollars. As the ever-vigilant Australian Financial Review put it: "Expressed another way, the value of Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation's investment in CRA has jumped A$308 million". This meant that the cost of reducing RTZ's equity in CRA to the level stipulated by the FIRB (see above) had itself increased to around A$100 million - thus making it even less likely than before (95).
It was important to CRA's interests to conceal both the value of its finds and their exact location. In a deft display of double bluff, it bought out other company leases in the Argyle area, by convincing competitors that its interests really lay there (96, 106). For as long as it could, it also refused to release details of its discoveries (97). When the Melbourne Stock Exchange took it to task, CRA agreed to publish certain details of specific finds - but only at a relatively late stage (98). At this time, too - though scarcely noticed - the AJV began talks with the Anglo American/De Beers' Central Selling Organisation (CSO) over eventual marketing (99).
Early 1979 saw the discovery of many small diamonds in the area (100). AJV was by now firmly dominated by CRA (56.8%) with Ashton Mining (46.3% controlled by the Malaysian Mining Corp Bhd) holding 24.2% and AO (Australia), itself controlled by the Malaysian government, holding 4.9% (101). Much to the chagrin of those who have long campaigned for Australian control of Australian resources, this meant that potentially the most important national mining project in the 1980s was now in foreign hands. Tanust (a subsidiary of Union Miniere's Tanganyika Consolidated, or Tanks) held - and still holds - just over 9%. The only domestic equity was 5% in the hands of Northern Mining, managed by the Bond Corporation.
The following year, CRA formed Argyle Diamond Mines Pty Ltd, and two years later the AJV was replaced by Argyle Diamond Mines JV (ADMJV) and Ashton Exploration, to be managed by CRAE (88).
Towards the end of 1979, the JV announced its most exciting discovery: an "extremely rich" central kimberlite pipe on the Glen Hill-Lissadell border area (a pastoral station), comparable with any find in South Africa (102).
The Western Australian Minister of Mines approved mining - even though the AJV itself continued referring only to "sampling" (and, in order to conceal the true extent of its discovery, barred journalists from entering its prospect) (103). The area was by then massively disturbed, criss-crossed by roads and camps, the product of"booty" or "raider-type" sampling techniques (103, 104). The decision to mine was finally announced in July 1980.
Between 1982 and 1985, world diamond production (both gem and industrial) increased by more than 40% (41.4%) (105). This was almost entirely due to production from Argyle (105).
Mining of the proximal alluvials started in early 1983 and, of the Argyle pipe itself - "actually a crater, 1600m long and from 150 to 600m wide at the surface, approximately 45ha in size" (106) - in late 1985. Twenty two million tonnes of overburden had to be stripped away (107). Once mining at this deposit was on the cards, CRA began dropping a large number of its east Kimberley claims (108).
CRA was now riding a whirlwind. Its share of Argyle profits quadrupled in the first six months of 1986 (109). By 1988, the JV was admitting that its original estimate of 70 million tonnes of reserves had been "conservative" (110) and, in early 1989, the partners shelled out nearly A$40 million to develop deposits around the kimberlite pipe, AK-I (111).
In the late 1970s, CRA had dealt with noises off-stage from two smaller Australian companies with interests in the region. The Afro-West Company, based in Perth, claimed it had staked five areas in the middle of the kimberlite pipe, after CRA's claims had been allowed to lapse and before they were renewed. Afro-West's court challenge was voided, and in November 1981 the West Australian legislature confirmed the rights of the AJV to the whole pipe (106).
Northern Mining, the very junior partner in the whole venture, had challenged very low estimates of the value of its early discoveries. (The CSO, on behalf of CRAE and AJV gave a value of A$ 11 a carat, while Northern Mining's assessor had valued them at nearly double). While this argument was never really settled, Northern Mining itself sold out to the Western Australian Diamond Trust (WADT) in 1983 (106). This was a sop to public demands that some share of the fabulous profits predicted from Argyle would go towards Australians (albeit the wealthier ones) rather than outsiders.
But, five years later, the Western Australian government sold its own taxpayers short, by putting WADT out to tender. CRA and Ashton Mining picked up the booty: CRA thereby increasing its equity in the JV to 57.8% (112). The participation of WADT in the Argyle Diamonds Mines ensured that at least a small proportion of the output was marketed outside the CSO. In 1983, CRA and Ashton Mining formed Argyle Diamond Sales (ADS) to market their lion's share of production. All the gem diamonds, except for a small proportion retained for cutting and polishing in the state, go to the CSO. Around three-quarters of cheap gem and industrial stones are also marketed through the De Beers organisation (4). The agreement with the CSO lasted until 1991 (113). When the deal with De Beers was being made, there was considerable opposition from many sectors of the Australian public: the spectre of Australia's most important gem-find being controlled by South African interests was too much for many people to bear. At this time, the Aboriginal Mining Information Centre (AMIC), and researcher Jan Roberts, exposed the links between the Oppenheimers, CRA (through Charter Consolidated's 10% holding in RTZ) and Ashton Mining (Charter Consolidated holding 28% of the Malaysian Mining Corporation and a small indirect interest in Tanks). In response, bullets were fired through the AMIC offices and its workers were chased around Melbourne (114). (To this day it is not known who was responsible for these acts of terrorism, though one AMIC worker publicly identified CRA as being responsible for hounding him personally) (115).
CRA's much more careful approach to Aboriginal communities at Oombulgurri (mentioned earlier) or its comparatively low profile at Ellendale - another potentially lucrative diamond region on Aboriginal land (85, 105) - derived primarily from its 1978 decision to concentrate on Lake Argyle. In fact, CRA has not dropped its Ellendale claim, and regards it as "highly prospective". And, despite its 1985 decision to drop a large number of claims in the east Kimberleys, the Kimberley Land Council reported then that CRA was "... still proving to be a difficult company to deal with, intent on blaming Aboriginal people for any interruptions to [its] exploration programmes, even when these interruptions are clearly caused by external market conditions" (108).
In 1982, ADM commissioned an Environmental Research and Management Programme (ERMP) (116), which admitted that five areas of spiritual significance, and no less than seventeen archeological sites, had been destroyed as a direct result of the company's activities. The ERMP also recognised the considerable fears of Aboriginal people that they would lose access to their land (about 5500ha was initially required for the mine development), and have to compete with whites for the use of their fishing holes, swimming holes, camp sites and hunting as well as social areas.
Despite this, in May the following year the Western Australian government gave permission for the mine to proceed - subject to eight conditions being met. Nine months later, the government also proposed an ex-gratia A$1,000,000 payment to affected Aboriginal communities for a minimum of five years. But it did not address the question of who would decide the criteria for "affected" communities, nor how money could be distributed so as to maximise Aboriginal self-management.
Two of the conditions laid down in ADM's own report have still not been fulfilled: those relating to Aboriginal site protection and management, and the employment of Aboriginal people at the mine (117). Of the eight conditions laid down by the government three are worth quoting here:
4. [That] the company closely monitors social impacts, especially during the construction phase. It should cooperate with private and government agencies to overcome adverse impacts.6. [That] an Impact Assessment group be established ... including Aboriginal groups ... with a view to further development of Government and company social programmes ... which will pave the way to avoid conflict and confrontation.
8. [That] the company consults with government and local Aboriginal groups, with a view to changing the management of funds contributed under the "Good Neighbour Programme".
In July 1984, representatives of four major bodies (Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies of the Australian National University; Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies; Anthropology Department of the University of Western Australia and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia) visited the Lake Argyle region. In a report to the Kimberley Land Council (KLC) and the National Aboriginal Conference, they delivered a profound indictment of the way in which the company had failed to implement the conditions laid down for the ERPM.
Some of the ERPM's conclusions were as follows:
The Good Neighbour Programme (GNP) has actively denied Aboriginal aspirations to land, refusing funds which could enable them to develop outstations (an essential antidote to social disintegration). The overall effect of the GNP has been to increase the company's social and political control of Aboriginal affairs, and dampen potential Aboriginal opposition. All Aboriginal people expressed a desire to be free of handouts and dependence on a European-type economic system. However, GNP funds can only be spent on capital works and the company determines what these are. Aborigines have no control over the determination of priorities for expenditure. As the number of capital items increases, so does the need for recurrent funding to maintain them, making an already poor community poorer. Exclusion of Aboriginal opinion/management reduces the people to passive victims and this, in turn, preempts effective Aboriginal leadership.
There is now competition for fishing and recreation sports from mine workers. Important Aboriginal food sources are being exploited and, in some places, destroyed.
Kununarra (the township nearby), is such that land suitable for residential purposes is limited. Company proposals to house staff and dependants will place housing out of reach of many Aboriginal families. One result of this has been the enforced eviction of Lily Creek people, for whom derisory compensation arrived in the form of one Toyota!
The clear signal from the company has been that favourable decisions and fund releases depend on maintenance of good interpersonal relationships and deference to company agents. These personnel now exercise an influence over the direction of Aboriginal affairs in the region that rivals the Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA), or Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC), approach to block funding, and entirely eclipses the State's community welfare and Aboriginal planning authority. Since the company's Aboriginal affairs policy tends to operate against government policy, this should be a matter of concern to both State and Federal governments.
At no time has the company entered into discussions with the communities in respect of Aboriginal employment. Aboriginal people represent 56% of the local population, but of the ADM workforce of approximately 1000, only 8 are Aboriginal, 3 of them locals, with 4 Aboriginal apprentices (government-subsidised). Training in semi-skilled occupations is nonexistent. Six people have been offered menial work for a few weeks. Wages are not equivalent to those of white workers. As a consequence, the main mine settlement is kept predominantly white.
As pressure increases on both formal and informal systems of control, so does the sense of alienation felt by some Aboriginal youth. Nothing has been done to prevent this. The Warringarri "drop-in centre" was sold from under the young peoples' feet, and no such facilities now exist.
ADM senior personnel demand more academic subjects in the District High School with the result that, resources being limited, other areas of the school programme will be lost. No government or company action is taken to prevent this. The number of Aboriginal children leaving the education system has increased.
Increased tourism puts pressure on land in direct conflict with the need of Aboriginal communities. Tourist interests do not want Land Rights granted.
Family-based community decision-making structures are breaking down. In a 34-day period, the Warmun community was required to be involved in 42 meetings. Although ADM does have a working relationship with John Toby and other men of the Mandangala community, the company does not enjoy the confidence of the majority of Aboriginal communities in the region. It is without the Aboriginal contacts needed to obtain information on which to base an impact evaluation. It has no competence in the field of Aboriginal Affairs.
From the outset of the project it has been clear that Aboriginal groups would be profoundly affected, both by the direct effect of mining and exploration, and by the policies devised by the company to deal with the local communities, who have little recourse against actions and policy decisions of the Argyle developers. The repercussions of this major development leave the Aboriginal groups isolated, disadvantaged and powerless, without means to articulate their grievances, and with the company not subject to close government or public scrutiny. Since there has been no independent assessment of ADM, it has become increasingly urgent that Aboriginal interests are not rendered invisible (118). As of 1986, still no effective structures to monitor the effects of the mine had been established (64). Within two years, certain changes had occurred for the better, in housing, employment and social amenities. But the "Good Neighbour" programme continues to be administered by the company. Security controls still deprive Aboriginal women of access to the Barramundi dreaming (what's left of it) (119). And the company's insensitivity to Aboriginal claims is such that, when a delegation from the Western Desert Puntukurnuparna visited Argyle in 1988 to see for themselves what awaited them if they gave consent for mining to take place in the Rudall River region (Karlamilyi) - they were not allowed to climb the hill and view the destruction the company had wrought.
As for the destruction - real and potential wrought on the Western Desert people themselves by CRA, that is a continuing story. CRA holds numerous leases (sometimes joint leases with other companies) over at least a third of the Rudall River National Park (WA): it has extended its exploration to the south of this ecoregion "looking for diamonds", and had entered into a provisional "site avoidance agreement" with the Ngaanyatjarra Council, while ranging over a huge area of traditional land hugging the NT border (120). Rudall River
Described as a "three act nightmare - uranium, in a National Park, on Aboriginal land" (121), the Rudall River saga evokes uncanny comparisons with many of CRA's previous exploits in Aboriginal country. There has been a strategy as at Lake Argyle - to hive off one group of people from another, and conclude deals with them, which are then produced as "evidence" that Aborigines have agreed to exploration and mining (122). Certainly, the Strelley Mob (comprising many of the Nomads - see section on the Pilbara below) did conclude a site-avoidance agreement with Canning Resources, CRAE's front company in the Park. But in 1989, when many of them discovered that their white "leader" Don McCleod was, both figuratively and literally, in the CRA camp, and that the other Western Desert people firmly opposed all mining on their lands, they withdrew their nominal support for the company's plans (123).
There has been the customary batch of protestations from CRA that their work conforms to guidelines laid down as early as 1978, when mining conditions for Rudall River were first gazetted (124). Yet the company has broken many of the elementary rules: situating base camps close to water and rock holes, interfering with vegetation close to water sources, disturbing plants, dumping rubbish, and constructing access tracks without government permission (125). CRA has accused Aboriginal people of harassing its operations to the extent that, in 1984, it had withdrawn from part of the Park, without being able to conclude an exploration agreement with the Western Desert Land Council (126). The truth is that it had already finished its programme for that year and had neither the need, nor the volition, to reach agreement with "awkward" Aboriginal people (127).
In the last two years, CRA has also cultivated accusations that the white employees of the Western Desert Land Council (Western Desert Puntukurnuparna) are "manipulating" the Aboriginal people - a clear echo from the late 1970s when it was deliberately undermining the roles played by North Queensland and Kimberley Land Councils in supporting traditional communities (128).
The Rudall River region is the likely site of a huge minerals deposit on a par with Roxby Downs (Olympic Dam) or Arnhemland. Under conditions of considerable secrecy, CRA had been exploring the Park for no less than eighteen years (129). In 1979, it upgraded its exploration programme after discovering significant deposits of uranium, along with some copper, gold, lead, zinc, platinum and bismuth (130). By the end of 1987, CRA had spent A$20 million exploring some 8000 square kilometres of this part of the western desert, including 6000 square kilometres within the Rudall River National Park (131). It held around 35 exploration licences, and 6 mining leases, inside or on the boundaries of the Park (132).
One of these leases, at Kintyre (Karlamilyi) (133), has been confirmed as a world-class uranium deposit, with 15,000 tonnes of resources and 20,000 tonnes of possible reserves. However, estimates of the extent and grade of the lode have been increasing over the past two years. A new drilling programme, costing A$ 10 million (134), in mid-1988 revealed further deposits which could make both an open-cut, and an underground operation, viable (135). In early 1989, reserves were upped by another 1000 tonnes (136), and it has been stressed continually by CRA that Kintyre is only one part of a potentially vast uranium province (137).
Apart from being an extremely important - and unique - eco-region, rich in fauna and flora (much of it still to be recorded) (138), Rudall River has for around a decade been home for 300 or more Martu (Aborigines) from the Manjiljarra, Martujarra and Warnman people, who began returning to their traditional country after thirty and more years of enforced removal and missionisation (mainly at the Jigalong reserve). The outstation of Punmu was established in 1981 and, three years later, another at Parngurr (Pangurr) (139).
More recently it is the people at Parngurr who have had good cause to be gravely alarmed by CRA's intentions. In 1987, the company announced plans to start drilling at three sites within close distance (up to 10km) of a sacred women's dreaming, Mount Cotten (140). This, and CRA's previous activities, convinced the communities that they must stop the prospecting, until all the implications could be assessed and properly discussed. Under national and international pressure (e.g. from Survival International) in late 1987, the Western Australian government created an "exclusion zone" around Parngurr, from which mining would be temporarily (and possibly permanently) banned. Exploration, reconnaissance, and mining outside this zone was subject to environmental and social impact studies and site-avoidance agreements, "involving full consultation with and input from Aboriginal interests" (141).
At an historic meeting in the desert between the Martu, CRA, Uranen, other mining representatives, tourist interests, and assorted government officials, in May 1989, the Aboriginal community made it abundantly clear that they did not want mining - especially uranium mining - under any circumstances on their lands (123).
Meanwhile, as the Australian Labor Party conducted a re-assessment in 1988-89 of its "three mines" uranium policy, CRA and the Western Mining Corporation mounted a large-scale public relations offensive, to convince the Australian public that new mines had to open, to take advantage of a "window of opportunity" scheduled for the early 1990s (137, 142).
The legendary Broken Hill ore field in New South Wales (NSW) was the site of CRA's first operations. In 1905, Melbourne businessmen set up the Zinc Corporation Ltd, to process lead and zinc residues from "the Fabulous Hill" (14, 29). Later, the Corporation became the largest producer of such concentrates in the whole of Australia (14). Its future was assured during the first World War (1917), when the British government negotiated a long-term contract for zinc concentrates (14). And, in 1949, the Zinc Corporation merged with the National Smelting Corporation - later the Imperial Smelting Corporation Ltd - to become the Consolidated Zinc Corporation Ltd (14, 29). With its head office in London, the new Conzinc had close links with the "Collins House" families of the Melbourne business establishment (143). Lead and zinc
The 1962 merger with Rio Tinto naturally transformed some of the operations and objectives of Conzinc; but, essentially, the merger was a vehicle for confirming the penetration of British capital in Australia and facilitating the repatriation of profits. It was logical that, in 1971, seeking further control over downstream processing, the Zinc Corp and the British New Broken Hill Consolidated (NBHC) formed in 1936 (and then owned one third by CRA), should merge to become Australian Mining and Smelting (144). This gave CRA control over the Avonmouth lead and zinc smelter in Britain, and a half share in the Budel zinc smelter in the Netherlands (145).
CRA's operations at Broken Hill, held through AM&S Mining, and consisting of the NBHC mine and Cobar mine, were amalgamated in 1987. They are now known as the CZ mine: recent reserves were set at nearly 30 million tonnes of ore, grading 8% lead, 11% zinc and 70g/tonne of silver (8, 146).
While their potential is still considerable (in 1986 they were producing 6% of the western world's lead and 4% of its zinc) (147), their grades have been getting lower, and they have been beset by discontent. Morale was "at the lowest for thirty years", declared John Butcher, head of the Workers' Industrial Union (WIU), in early 1987, as the workforce at the Port Pirie smelter went on strike (36).
In 1984 the Broken Hill workforce had gone on strike for seven and a half weeks (148). Two years later they were out even longer (149), as CRA sought to double the number of shifts, impose night work, and drastically cut the workforce. This attrition was too great and, in an agreement imposed by the courts (150), CRA and North Broken Hill (NBH) ended up with more or less what they had wanted, and a reduction of 40% in the workforce (151).
The zinc-copper producer, Cobar, has also experienced problems mainly due to the fall in ore grades (8). Acquired in 1980 from Broken Hill South, it has a long history of industrial dissatisfaction which culminated in CRA threatening to close it completely, unless more productivity was offered by the workforce (152). After four years of losses, the mine was shut in 1985. An expansion programme was then carried out and, since re-opening, Cobar has proved a competent producer. Productivity per miner in 1987 was reportedly twice that of CRA's operations at Broken Hill (8).
Cobar supplies copper to the Port Kembla smelter which was due to double its capacity in March 1989 (153). Operated by AM&S Associated Smelters, a subsidiary of Electrolytic Refining and Smelting Co of Australia Ltd (ER&S), it sold out 40% of its equity to a Japanese group, led by Furukawa, in 1988 (1).
Fortunes have been worse at the Woodlawn mine near Canberra. Opened in 1979 as another lead-zinc-copper producer, ore recovery soon proved difficult (154). In 1985 CRA bought the mine from Phelps Dodge and St Joe, a subsidiary of the US company, Fluor (155). Within barely a year, the open-pit mine was scheduled to close, and underground mining to commence (156). But Woodlawn had been characterised by "poor operating performance for most of its life" (4) and, not surprisingly, CRA sold the mine in 1987 to Denehurst Ltd (8).
AM&S Associated Smelters also operates a smelter at Cockle Creek, NSW, which handles lead and zinc bullion and turns out copper sulphide, silver, gold, and cadmium, as well as sulphuric acid (14), while its Pacific Smelting Company subsidiary in Los Angeles and Memphis, USA, also recycles scrap (14).
But by far the biggest smelting operation within the AM&S network is the Port Pirie smelter operated by Broken Hill Associated Smelters (BHAS) - perhaps the world's largest lead smelter and refinery (157).
In 1974, CRA had increased its interest in BHAS from 50% to 70%, by doing a share swap with the Australian company BH South. The Labour government of the day - highly sensitive to attempts by foreign companies to control even more of Australia's resources (this was the period of the Fitzgerald Enquiry, referred to below) - put the deal under investigation. Unfortunately, the investigation committee on foreign take-overs concluded that, since CRA was already foreign-controlled and there was nothing in principle to prevent foreign equity being increased, the take-over had to be allowed (44). At this time CRA was a part of a zinc cartel, one of whose effects was to ensure that Australian manufacturing industry actually paid more for its zinc than the London market (158). Despite the passage of the Australian Trade Practices Act, designed to prevent such cartels, CRA had been operating its price fixing ring with impunity (158).
In early 1988, CRA announced that it would amalgamate its Australian and international base metal interests into AM&S Metals Pty Ltd, which would market BHAS and Sulphide Corporation output (159). This preceded a merger between the lead-zinc mining and smelting operations of North Broken Hill Peko (NBHP) and CRA, which was completed in July 1988 (160). (North Broken Hill Holdings and Peko Wallsend had already amalgamated in 1987) (161).
The new company, Pasminco, was effectively a response to the earlier merger between the operations of MIM, Teck, and Metallgesellschaft. The only valid reason for it, commented RTZ's chief economist Phillip Crowson, was "the very real opportunity for the companies to cut their costs" (162).
As part of the deal, NBHP contributed to the new monolith (which makes Broken Hill "a one company town" said the Mining Journal (163)) its west coast lead, zinc, gold and silver operations, its Risdon electro-zinc smelter in Tasmania, its Elura mine at Cobar, a zinc smelter in South Australia and, of course, its Broken Hill mine (North) (164).
For its part, as well as contributing its Broken Hill operations, CRA has merged into Pasminco its Impalloy, ISC Alloys, and Pacific Zinc, operations (owned by Commonwealth Smelting Ltd) and both NBHP and CRA have dished-in A$25 million each, to up-grade the Avonmouth smelter (165) and the Budelco refinery in the Netherlands - 50% owned by Billiton (Royal Dutch Shell) (164). Broken Hill Associated Smelters is now owned 70% by CRA and 30% by NBHP (166).
Following a public share issue in early 1989, CRA's interest in Pasminco itself fell to 40% (1).
Both the Port Pirie and Avonmouth smelters have been the subject of nagging criticism over many years by environmentalists and health authorities.
The Avonmouth smelter is situated on an estuary near the major city of Bristol, in England's west country. A long-established plant producing zinc (it's the only primary zinc producer in Britain), lead bullion, cadmium and sulphuric acid, it fell on hard times in the 1970s. By 1983, with over-capacity in the world zinc industry and slack demand from customers (168), two alternatives were presented by the company (Commonwealth Smelters) to the workforce: closure or a drastic "survival plan". A third option - to join the EEC-coordinated capacity reduction programme - was never pursued (168) and, as zinc prices rose towards the end of 1983, the EEC plan was itself abandoned (169).
In the event, the survival plan was pushed through - although it meant redundancies for nearly one third of the workforce (1,000 down to 700 employees). Profits soon rose (4), although further setbacks were experienced in 1985 (116, 170). By the late 1980s, Avonmouth was a comparative economic success story.
Not so, however, for much of the workforce and the communities surrounding the plant. As early as 1969, many workers were diagnosed as suffering from lead poisoning, and a government enquiry was held into the plant's operations (171). Three years later, Duncan Dewdney, RTZ's chief executive in the UK, "openly confessed that the plant's initial construction was skimped, that corners were cut and that it should have cost at least two million pounds more" (172).
In 1985, soon after the survival plan was implemented, Dr George Kazantzis of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) Institute of Occupational Health at the University of London, carried out an investigation which appeared to show increased lung cancers at the plant. Two years before, Kazantzis and a colleague had also investigated mortality from lung cancers among cadmium workers - many of whom came from the Avonmouth plant (173). The second of the two studies did not satisfy CRA, as it appeared to show that the risks were greater than they had ever admitted. There is evidence that the parent company in Britain (RTZ) took steps to suppress publication of the document (64). In any event, it was not until 1987 that the study was accepted for publication by the British Journal of Industrial Medicine, and it was well over a year before the report was published. This concluded that workers in the smelter - particularly those who had been employed for more than 20 years - exhibited an excess of lung cancer, although it was not possible to pin down which of the contaminants - arsenic, lead or other materials - might be responsible (174).
Meanwhile, a TV research team had been looking at health and safety at the plant. Interviewed for the programme, a co-author of the Kazantzis report, Tony Ades, confirmed that there was a definite relationship between lung cancer, exposure to cadmium, arsenic and lead workers' deaths, and the length of time they worked at the plant (175). Residents close to the Avonmouth smelter, interviewed in the programme, also expressed their opinion that the community had been put at risk from Avonmouth's continued operations (176).
The following year, across the world at Port Pirie, a health survey of 537 pre-school children drew a direct relationship between the slower mental development of four-year-olds, their blood/lead levels, and the presence of the Port Pirie smelter (177).
The Port Kembla smelter was itself under scrutiny in 1987, as the New South Wales State Pollution Control Commission declared that the plant did not conform to pollution standards (178). After an economic study of the project, CRA decided to update the smelter and expand its output (178).
The Pilbara region accounts for virtually all of Australia's iron ore production - itself around 10% of the world's (179). In the Pilbara, CRA's wholly-owned Hamersley Holdings Ltd is the biggest producer (8). Hamersley owns and operates the large Mount Tom Price deposit and the Paraburdoo mine, linked to Tom Price by rail (5). In 1986, it also acquired half of CSR's Yandicoogina deposit, some 140km east of Mt Tom Price at the other end of a lease held by Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP). This prompted the Financial Times to remark: "... Australia's two largest companies now sit at either end of the Yandicooga deposit" (180). Pilbara
In 1981, RTZ purchased Texasgulf's 50% stake in the Wittenoom and Rhode Ridge iron ore lodes (181). But, with 490 million tonnes of reserves, the Marandoo deposit (Lang Hancock interests: 50%) continues to wait for markets in Europe, Asia and the Middle East (182). In 1982 the Financial Times announced that Marandoo had "basically been dropped because CRA believes it could harm the viability of the Hamersley operations" (183).
CRA announced in 1986 that it would develop a new deposit at Channar, near Paraburdoo, together with the China Metallurgical Import and Export Corp (CMIEC) (5). The deal has made Hamersley the largest supplier of iron ore to the murderous Beijing regime (8), specifically the Baoshan steel complex near Shanghai (4). Production of 10 million tonnes a year, at a cost of a quarter of a billion dollars, started in 1990 (8, 185, 410).
The Australian government banned the export of iron ore from 1945 until 1960: since the Japanese would be the main customers, the embargo was mainly for political reasons (28). The notorious Australian mining "baron", Lang Hancock, persuaded RTZ's Val Duncan to invest in the Pilbara when the embargo was lifted. Using US funding, and confident of securing the market to Japan, RTZ stepped in to negotiate for Mount Tom Price (28). One of the sweeteners for the deal was an offer by the RTZ supremo to supply Western Australia with a steel mill, in return for control over the iron ore. He got the deposits, but Western Australia has never seen the steel mill (4, 44).
The US finance secured by Duncan came mainly from First Boston Bank (186), via Kaiser Steel (part of the same outfit that partnered CRA in Comalco until quite recently). Between 1979 and 1981, CRA bought almost all the shares in Hamersley that it did not then own, by issuing new shares, and thus reducing the proportion of shareholders' existing equity (33, 187).
Through a bid made by In-Situ Processes Australia, in late 1984, CRA bought out the 6.25% of Hamersley still left to devour (5, 188).
In 1988, Hamersley recorded record shipments of more than forty million tonnes of iron ore. Spurring this production was a new agreement reached with Hamersley's key customers, the Japanese steel mills (Hamersley is Japan's largest supplier, providing 18% of Japanese needs) (189). Under this agreement, firm contracts would last for up to 23 years, with fixed annual tonnages set 5 or 6 years ahead. This was, as the Mining Journal put it: "a watershed for the iron ore industry world-wide" (189). And, of course, particularly for CRA (190).
Through much of the 'eighties, Hamersley had been looking for new joint venture partners - to share its costs - and new markets (191), but its fortunes had not been uniformly good. In 1986, after allegations of participation in an iron ore producers cartel, Hamersley had been the last company to settle price terms with its Japanese customers (192).
On the other hand, its ascendancy in the Pilbara - indeed in the world of iron ore as a whole - should not be underestimated. The Fitzgerald Report of 1974 examined the methods by which Australian and foreign-dominated companies, operating in Australia, avoided taxation while gaining subsidies from the Federal government. It accused Hamersley of paying only A$572,000 income tax, while declaring profits of A$264 million, between 1967 and 1973 (193).
However, the Tax Commissioner later failed to ensure that Hamersley paid all its dues, when Justice Gobbo ruled that certain production processes (notably those involved in blending Mt Tom Price and Paraburdoo ores) could be exempted from sales tax (33, 194).
In addition, Hamersley has gained from the decline in the Australian dollar which occurred in the mid-'eighties: its profit rise of 60% achieved in 1985, for example, was attributed principally to foreign exchange manipulation (4).
Hamersley's holeshot position in Australia's iron ore industry, and its prestige success in securing Japanese and Chinese markets, has overshadowed its deplorable industrial relations record, its bad management practices (which, according to Richie Howitt, might have been its downfall had it worked on a less expansive and rich deposit) (33), and its disregard for Aboriginal people and their rights.
The number of strikes at Hamersley over the past two decades are almost too numerous to record: in 1976 alone, there were 157 different sets of industrial action (195). In 1988 an indefinite dispute with CRA halted all shipping of iron and salt in and out of Dampier, Cape Lambert and Port Hedland (196). It was answered by the inevitable layoffs and cutbacks to "eliminate inefficiency" (197).
The deprivation and marginalisation of Pilbara Aboriginal people must rank alongside that of any other Australian Aboriginal community in the last fifty years. By the early years of the century, the Pilbara Aboriginal people (the Martu) - where they had not been killed - were virtual slaves of the cattle stations (46). Their situation marginally improved over the next forty years, but conditions on the pastoral leases compelled many of them to join the famous Pilbara Strike in 1946, led by Dooley and Clancy, two Aboriginal men, assisted by Don McCleod (33,46). The strikers were determined to run their own cattle stations, and gain money through their own mining enterprises. To this end they set up Pinden (or Pindan) as a co-operative to build self-reliant settlements. Within three years, more than 700 members of the movement were living in outstations, using miners' rights to set up camp (46, 198). They formed the Northern Development and Mining Company, which soon became the largest prospecting force in the region. From the proceeds the Aboriginal people bought one station - Yandeyarra. However, the government took over this station, and turned it into what is now the only reserve in the Pilbara. Some of those who were left at Yandeyarra then set up Nomads Ltd. The Nomads still exist - centred on Strelley Station.
When mining companies - first and foremost CRA - moved into the Pilbara, Aboriginal people began to be squeezed out of their former essential roles in the economic life of the region and, as one social science student put it, the "Giants" came to "dominate" (199). Particular impact was felt by Aboriginal people on the Roebourne reserve. A white, largely male, unattached, labour force moved into Dampier in the mid-sixties, to construct the new terminal and other Hamersley facilities. As they did so, Aboriginal people - already impoverished and marginalised - shifted to the Roebourne area, putting enormous pressure on housing, other Aboriginal families, and living resources (33, 199). Over the next few years Roebourne became a social disaster area: Aboriginal women were the victims of sexual "relief' sought by Hamersley workers, and alcohol was the only respite from tedium and degradation among Aboriginal men. "Roebourne shire in particular, and the Pilbara in general, rapidly developed an enormous contrast of wealth - extremes of "haves" and "have nots". In fact it is likely that nowhere else in Australia are these extremes exhibited in such close juxtaposition, or have developed so quickly" (33).
Hamersley refused to initiate special programmes of training and employment for Aboriginal people. Since they had to take their chance like everyone else, such false "equality" inevitably meant discrimination and increasing unemployment among Aboriginal people (33). Certainly the iron ore companies cannot be held solely to blame for much of this dissolution of culture and Aboriginal economy. Ironically, some of the legislative measures intended to equalise Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal status such as lifting the embargo on selling drink to black Australians, and awarding equal wages to pastoral workers - in the short term worked completely against Aboriginal people (33).
Nor must any analysis of the situation in the Pilbara in the past decade end on a note of hopelessness: self-reliance and Aboriginal organisation, better housing, increased employment in the urban areas, have undoubtedly helped mitigate the extremely bleak outlook of the late 1960s and 1970s. However, the invasion by the companies, and especially Hamersley, dealt a final blow to Aboriginal prospects for self-determination. "Always the highest priority has been placed [by the mining companies] on contributing maximum profits to the Group .... So, while State and Federal Governments must bear direct responsibility for many of the social decisions which have affected Roebourne Aborigines, it is the mining companies which made many of the most important decisions and who have benefitted economically from the oppression of local Aborigines" (33).
The history of Comalco is essentially the story of how Australia's vast bauxite deposits were hijacked by British capitalists and their allies in the world of high finance. Nor can the astonishing rise of this ruthless band of entrepreneurs be separated from the fortunes of CRA, itself the creature of RTZ. Comalco
During the last months of the second World War, W S Robinson, a leading light in both the Collins House group of companies and the British Consolidated Zinc Corporation, together with two Australian Labor Ministers, set up an Australian Aluminium Production Commission (AAPC) . In 1948, with public funds from the Federal and Tasmanian governments, the AAPC opened the Bell Bay smelter, using bauxite mainly supplied from Canada by Alcan. Over the next five years, a desultory and incompetent search for bauxite deposits was made within Australia, but little of value was recognised (200).
By 1953, Conzinc had its own men in key positions in the AAPC: these included a former Collins House mines manager, A J Keast, as general manager of Bell Bay, and Conzinc's exploration director, Maurice Mawby, as a Director. Shortly after the AAPC discontinued its own search for bauxite, Mawby instructed Conzinc to get back in the field. Within the next two years, Keast had deserted the AAPC to become Australian managing director of Rio Tinto Finance and Exploration (Riofinex). The Treasury representative on the AAPC, Donald Hibberd, threw in the towel to become finance director of the new company formed to exploit the Weipa bauxite deposits, after they were discovered in 1955 (200, 201). Later, Mawbywas to become the chair of CRA, remaining there until 1974.
Aluminium was a new and exciting prospect for the Conzinc group, but held enormous financial risks, primarily because huge amounts of electricity are required to refine the bauxite and smelt the alumina. Once the company had secured the Weipa bauxite deposits, and taken measures to throw the Aboriginal occupants off the richest major bauxite field in the world, it required cheap power. The one condition imposed by the new right-wing Queensland state government on Comalco was that it establish an aluminium refinery, and try to set up an aluminium smelter, too (200). Over the next four years, radical re-alignments took place within the world aluminium industry (202). British Aluminium - Conzinc's original partner in Comalco - sold out to Reynolds of the USA. In 1959, Reynolds itself pulled out. Conzinc looked around for a new partner, and finance, to exploit Weipa. It soon secured the interest of the Kaiser group of companies in the USA, whose 38%-owned Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical Corp was hungry for bauxite and processing plant (200). Meanwhile, the fabulously rich Oppenheimer family - owners of the Anglo-American Corporation and its numerous satellites - had used their British vehicle, Charter Consolidated, to obtain a good chunk (10 million shares) of Conzinc itself. This apartheid money enabled Conzinc to hold on to its half share in Comalco. (At the time, Charter Consolidated also held around 10% of RTZ, which it did not surrender until the 1980s).
By the end of 1960, Comalco had bought out the Bell Bay refinery and smelter for less than A$22 million (repaid over 16 years), which was far lower than its original cost to the Australian taxpayer (200).
At almost the same time, Kaiser announced a partnership with Comalco, to build an alumina refinery at Weipa, and a smelter at Bluff harbour, New Zealand. The Bluff (Tiwai Point) smelter was to be constructed amid raging controversy over its financing, costs, and environmental impact: a debate which, far from diminishing over the years, has intensified (see below). (Comalco had previously investigated using both the Purari River in Papua New Guinea as cheap hydro-power for a smelter (328), and Blair Athol Coal (see below). However, in terms of costs and availability, the Tiwai Point smelter won hands down).
In the event, the refinery was not constructed at Weipa, but at Gladstone in central Queensland. This plant has itself constituted a massive diversion of public resources into private hands. (Ownership in 1974 was: Kaiser 32.3%, Alcan 21.4%, Pechiney 20%, Comalco 13.8% and CRA 12.5%. Comalco later increased its ownership to 30.3%) (204). Not only did the plant not pay a cent in taxes in its early years but, as owners of the Weipa deposit, CRA and Kaiser paid substantially less than other customers for the bauxite delivered to the refinery (200), and the electricity consumed (205).
The plant also received ten million dollars' worth of free infrastructure at taxpayers' expense (200).
Over the next fifteen years, Comalco was to refine the strategies that have made it one of the world's leading profiteers from bauxite, and beneficiaries of the "added value" gained from refining and smelting it into aluminium. These ploys include: minimising Australian participation in the industry and supplying cheap raw materials to its paymasters (especially RTZ), and deliberately under-reporting its profits in Australia. One example of such transfer-pricing, exposed in the mid-70s, was Comalco selling bauxite at rock bottom prices to a Hong Kong subsidiary, which then sold it on to Showa Denko and Sumitomo Chemical: the bauxite, of course, never came within sight of Hong Kong, but went straight from Australia to Japan (200).
A case was brought against Comalco by the Tax Commissioner in this instance, but it failed. Comalco's argument, that its business was not controlled by its foreign shareholders, won the day (33, 206).
Other Comalco strategies have included: declaring its "poverty" to justify further government subsidies; blackmailing the Queensland government (as it did in 1974/75) to reduce its royalty payments; lobbying against compensation to Aboriginal people for the theft of their land; making political donations; playing a leading role in the Australian Mining Industry Council (AMIC), especially in its 1985 campaign to erase Aboriginal Land Rights (64); cutting costs on refining by using plants in third world countries with cheap labour; operating few, if any, pollution controls. Comalco also bought a 20% share - increased by 17.5% in 1985 (4) - in the Euralumina refinery in Sardinia, one of the poorest parts of Italy (145). Until 1987, it had aluminium fabricating facilities, not only in New Zealand and Japan, but also in Hong Kong, Madagascar, the Phillipines and Indonesia (207).
Comalco launched itself publicly in 1970, with a share issue which left CRA and Kaiser holding 45% each of the company's equity, and the Australian "public" the remaining 10%. Just how the "public" got this foot in the aluminium door- and how "public" the share issue really was - is a tale-and-a-half (208).
The enormous profiteering which characterised the share issue was the result of a carefully-managed media "hype", and the placing of "unsecured notes" to several Australian institutions which later gained them shares at a privileged price. This brought in Australian Mutual Provident (AMP), Anglo-American nominees, other insurance companies, and the ANZ Bank (200). Excitement generated around the wealth locked into Weipa ensured that, on the day of issue, the share price of A$2.75 (fully paid-up by the early buyers), shot up to A$5.80 and closed at A$5.60 - thus representing a capital gain in a few hours of more than 100%. Even bigger profits were made by CRA and Kaiser (around 1000%) (200, 209).
The ordinary Australian shareholders made considerably less, however - they had forked out nearly four times as much as the companies for the same shares. Those Australians who really made a killing that day were the select band that had been offered shares before the day of issue. These "trade customers" were essentially buddies of Comalco in high office in Queensland (and a few elsewhere). "... We expanded our usual list [of share recipients] to include people who've said over the years they'd like to have a chance to buy any new shares we float", Comalco blandly explained the day before the issue (210).
Such people included the Queensland State Treasurer and Acting Premier, Gordon Chalk, and his family; the Ministers of Aboriginal Affairs, Industrial Development, Works, Local Government and Electricity, Health; and the Premier of Western Australia.
While it was said of Acting-Premier Chalk's family that the only member who had not accepted shares was "the dog" (200), none of the Aboriginal community at Weipa got a look-in (let alone the dogs!). (The Queensland director of Aboriginal and Island Affairs took up 40,000 shares, "on behalf of " the 50,000 people under his protection, and 38 Aboriginal people working for the company got a small entitlement.) The Australian Financial Review forbade its staff to have any part in the deal; the Federal Prime Minister rejected the offer; and the Premier of South Australia, Don Dunstan, called the scheme "highly improper". However, the Presbyterian church in Melbourne, and the Anglican church in Melbourne and Sydney, accepted shares. Joh Bjelke-Peterson, a great friend of the company, and shortly to become Premier of Queensland, took up only 5 shares, but his wife later acquired 500. (A few years afterwards, the Australian Senate Select Committee on Foreign Ownership and Control of Australian Resources would find that Queensland was "the only state for which both foreign ownership and control exceeded 50 per cent" - and it was the highest in both categories!) (211).
By the late 1970s, Comalco was Australia's leading exporter of bauxite and, with a world recovery in aluminium, it embarked on an A$80 million expansion programme which necessitated a 12% increase in mining at Andoom and Weipa (212) . Production of calcined bauxite - which it first produced in 1970 - had already given Comalco half the world market (212).
In 1982, Kaiser had had its fill of Comalco, and wanted out (213). Not, however, before some of its Weipa bauxite found its way into B-52 bombers and others used in massive raids on civilians in Vietnam: many of these planes were shot down by the North Vietnamese army and the National Liberation Front and thereby recycled (200)! Kaiser sold its share of the company to CRA and AMP. CRA then came to hold 70.3%, and AMP 16.5% (214). However, CRA sold-on some 16 million of its holding to Australian investors, thus marginally reducing its control (215).
Within the next few years Comalco, like its parent CRA, was to concentrate on consolidating, expanding and controlling downstream activities and attracting new markets, as its major corporate strategy for the eighties (4). To this end, it bought 50% in Showa Aluminium Industries KK (SAL) in late 1982. Showa was a company with which Comalco had a long association, having equity in a small smelter at Kitakata, a refinery and various aluminium products. SAL had also acquired a 20.65% interest in the Tiwai Point smelter. (Showa Denko was one of the two Japanese companies culpably responsible for the mercury poisoning, known universally as Minamata disease, which killed and maimed thousands of people from the 1950s onwards (216). But, of course, Comalco was little concerned with such moral niceties: it had, after all, discussed co-financing Weipa with the Nazi war criminal, Baron von Krupp, thirty years earlier) (200, 216).
The flirtation with Showa Denko gave Comalco an unprecedented entree into Japan (217). But SAL was not as efficiently ruthless (ruthlessly efficient?) as its weightier partner and, after a dispute between Comalco and SAL over methods of restructuring in 1985 (218), the "Australian" company pulled out of the partnership (4). This was to cost Comalco much of its expected profits that year (219) though, in return, Comalco got back SAL's share of Tiwai, thus increasing its control over the controversial smelter, to 79.4% (220).
The following year Comalco also sold a number of businesses world-wide, including Chiap Hua Comalco, Comalco (Asia), Federal Aluminium, Hooven Comalco, and its operations in Indonesia - PT Indo Extrusions (221). Meanwhile, the company had been chalking up a five-fold rise in profits for 1983, expanding Tiwai Point again, and starting up the Boyne Island smelter (222).
In early 1985, CRA effected something of a coup, by buying into the aluminium operations of Martin Marietta in the USA. (Martin Marietta is one of the world's biggest defence contractors - Comalco certainly knows how to select its partners!). The following year a new kaolin plant was opened at Weipa, thus sacrificing even more Aboriginal subsoil (the kaolin lies under the bauxite), in a quest to "capture a major share of markets in the Asia-Pacific region" (223). In less than a year the operation was proving successful (224).
1988 saw record profits for the company, again because of reduced income tax, high prices for aluminium, and a small rise in output (225). The "mere" fact that Comalco's New Zealand's accounts are maintained in US dollars, and not NZ dollars, meant a profit increase of US$22.3 million (226). Further expansion and upgrading - to the tune of A$ 1 billion - was also announced (227).
A few months later, in a spring-clean of top management structure announced by CRA (228, 229), Mark Rayner moved from Comalco to become CRA's head of financial and strategic planning- only a step from the shoes of current chief executive John Ralph (230). (Interestingly too, as part of the shake-up, CRA's head of exploration moved northwards to become RTZ's head of exploration: so much, once again, for the pretence that CRA is managerially quite separate from its parent) (229).
Comalco has entered the 1990s with a lot of self-confidence (some would call it conceit), although Mark Rayner himself has predicted that the aluminium industry will enter a "trough by 1992". Despite some disastrous overseas exploits, the company has recently considered opening an alumina refinery and smelter in the USSR. It also put its support behind a proposal with BHP, the discredited Bond Corp, and the Martin Marietta Corp, to build a space launch centre at Cape York (230), which it saw as a means of "improving the availability of its Weipa bauxite operations" - although it may be guessed what such a disastrous innovation would have on the land, culture and lifestyles of the Mapoon, Aurukun and Weipa Aboriginal people. (In 1990, Comalco pulled out of this extravaganza).
For more than thirty years Comalco has been able to convince a large number of Australians that it serves the interests of"the nation" (whatever, on closer scrutiny, these can be said to be). Forgotten are the stratagems by which it seized Aboriginal land and broke up one of the longest-surviving black communities in the country; destroyed Australia's only public initiative at forming a rational and controlled bauxite industry; resisted, tooth-and-claw, attempts to ensure "added value" to its mining, by processing in Australia, rather than overseas (until the pressures became too great to resist, and the structure of the world market itself dictated the location of plant closer to both mine and consumers) (232). Forgotten are the ways in which it ensured that the interests of its corporate backers (specifically CRA/RTZ) would be served at the expense of Australian taxpayers and more commonplace investors; the manner by which it polluted and devastated natural environments, in a chain that stretches around the world.
Cape York's are not the only bauxite deposits on Aboriginal traditional land that have been the subject of intense interest by CRA or Comalco. In 1965, Amax lay claim to massive bauxite deposits on Mitchell Plateau, in the far north of the Kimberleys of Western Australia (minimum of 200 million tonnes) (46), and nearby at Cape Bougainville (around a thousand million tonnes). Three years later the company built a beneficiation plant and tested bulk samples. In 1969, the Western Australian Minister of Mines (then Charles Court, who was later to be state Premier at the time of Noonkanbah - see Amax) gave Amax a 1500 square mile lease. The company made plans to build a town, port and refinery. Twenty seven square miles were also excised from the Kalumburu Aboriginal reserve at Cape Bougainville, without any consultation with the Aboriginal owners, or consideration of compensation (233).
However, Amax failed to raise the finance needed for such a large enterprise. In 1980, CRA bought out 52.5% of the prospect, and Alcoa bought minority shares in both Mitchell River and Cape Bougainville (46). Billiton (Royal Dutch Shell) also took 10% in Mitchell Plateau, and both Sumitomo and Marubeni secured 5% (234). By 1983, Mitchell Plateau Bauxite Ltd, managed by CRA (5), had acquired another bauxite project in Western Australia, at Muchea in the Darling Ranges, northeast of Perth. None of these prospects has moved to the construction phase - "it is difficult to get enthusiastic over what will inevitably be an expensive venture", commented Rowe and Pitman in 1982 (14). Nonetheless, exploration at Mitchell Plateau in the early 'eighties had already damaged sacred sites (235).
The controversial Tiwai Point smelter (sometimes known as Bluff, because it is situated at Bluff Harbour) is owned by New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Ltd (NZAS), which consists of Comalco NZ (owned 67% by CRA) and Sumitomo of Japan (20.6%). NZAS also has extensive downstream interests in extrusion (a 50/50 JV with Carter Holt Harvey) and fabrication. With a staff of 1750 in New Zealand mostly at the smelter - the majority of its production goes to Asia (especially Japan and Taiwan): 27 per cent of New Zealand's exports to Japan in 1988 were of Comalco aluminium (236). Tiwai: a point for alarm
The plant's existence has been marked by controversy for nearly thirty years: indeed, it could be claimed that it is the longest-running economic/environmental issue on the country's agenda.
Comalco came to New Zealand for cheap power to smelt alumina which derives mainly from the Weipa bauxite fields, and is refined at the Gladstone refinery. The lease it negotiated with the government in 1960 is a model of resource theft-by-stealth. Under the Manapouri Te-Anau Development Act of that year, Comalco undertook to build a power station to power a smelter. In return, the New Zealand government would grant the company exclusive rights, for 99 years, to use the waters of two of the country's most precious natural assets: Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau, situated in the Fiordland National Park. These lakes could be raised to a level which would just avoid flooding the Te Anau township - no less than eighty-four feet above its natural level in the case of Manapouri. Since Comalco would own the hydro scheme, the cost of power would be its own concern.
Within two years Comalco was complaining that it couldn't pay for the work necessary at Manapouri. In a 1963 agreement, the New Zealand government itself then undertook to construct Manapouri and sell the power to Comalco. The power station was designed by Bechtel, constructed by Utah Mining and Construction (both US companies) and eventually cost twice the original price (237).
What's more, Comalco would come to pay for its electricity at a far lower rate than that charged to everyone else in the country. Although still not officially revealed, this price was originally fixed at less than one fifth of one cent per unit: thirteen times less than the rate charged to New Zealand householders, and only one twentieth of that charged to the country's other industries and farmers.
By 1967, there were an unprecedented 264,906 signatures to a petition to stop the raising of the Lake. In 1972, the Labour party campaigned on a similar platform. Meanwhile, Comalco and its Japanese partners had built their smelter at Tiwai Point. In 1974, because of droughts, there were severe power cuts throughout the country: Lake Manapouri's level dropped - yet Comalco was able to take electricity from the national grid to compensate!
In 1980, the Campaign Against Foreign Control in New Zealand (CAFCINZ) - now CaSca (Campaign Against Foreign Control in Aotearoa) - published documents emanating from Comalco, which demonstrate the enormous lengths to which that corporation will go to ensure its own profitability at the expense of just about everyone else. These documents cover a range of issues surrounding the operations of the Tiwai Point smelter. Key among them is a telex dated 15/11/77 (IFB/MBB) from I F Borrie, Comalco's General Manager, Special Services, to M B Bennett, Comalco's Corporate Manager in New Zealand. This outlines crucial discussions between Prime Minister Muldoon of New Zealand and Mr Schlesinger, the United States Secretary of State for Energy. The US Secretary had been briefed on the issue of pricing by Comalco (namely by Cornell Maier President of Kaiser Aluminium and Chemical Corporation). He then sent a transcript of the meeting to the company, which used it in their battle in New Zealand to keep the power price down. Prior to this, Comalco had walked out of a governmental meeting, set up to renegotiate the power price, and Muldoon had met with Schlesinger, partly to gain his support on the Comalco "problem". Comalco's campaign against the New Zealand government involved various other ruses, including a telex sent to Lord Shackleton, deputy chair of RTZ, asking him to initiate British government action against New Zealand (238).
The upshot of these various pressures (with others which have still not been revealed), and a threat in October 1977 to close down the smelter, was that Comalco finally agreed to pay 4.5 times its previous rate (only around a quarter more than it was bargaining for) and the government retreated from the 650% increase it was insisting upon (239).
In 1979, the pricing issue still loomed large. Power from Manapouri continued to be "one of the cheapest ... in the world" (240). When Muldoon came to power in the late 1970s, he promised to better the Labour opposition in squeezing concessions from Comalco (240). Once again, however, the company came out on top: while other consumers had to suffer a 45-50% increase, the smelter sustained only a 25% price hike (241).
In 1983, despite chalking up a NZ$18.1 million loss, Comalco reported a good year (242). The following year, with Tiwai Point still paying less than 2 cents a unit, and consuming one fifth of the nation's electricity supply, the government announced a 22% price rise to NZAS (243). Comalco's Don Hibberd was appalled: it would "demoralise" the management at Tiwai Point, he claimed. New Zealand farmers were incensed: the dairy industry would continue subsidising Comalco, declared the chair of the Dairy Board, although it was earning "vastly more" for the nation than the smelter. The Coalition for Open Government also rounded on Comalco (244).
Three years later the price issue remained high on the political agenda. The government set up an Energy and Minerals Advisory Committee, soliciting public opinion on various issues, including the electricity cost to NZAS (245). The previous year, the Lange government had yet again tried to squeeze more out of its recalcitrant corporate bed-partner. Comalco reacted with its heaviest sticks. It began conducting "surveys" of top government officials (246). Japanese business men at a Japan-New Zealand business gathering in Kobe threatened a boycott on future investment in New Zealand, unless the government fell in with Comalco's desires (although this was later denied) (247).
In September, Comalco and Sumitomo filed proceedings against the government in the High Court, "to protect their rights" should the government legislate an equitable pricing deal (247).
By November, Comalco was claiming it ran at a loss, citing the closure of the Goldendale smelter in the USA as evidence of the parlous state of the industry. The following month, NZAS lost its court case: the government did indeed have the right to legislate a new power price - a 100% increase was the figure mentioned (248). As CAFCA pithily put it: "New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Ltd was not yet the New Zealand House of Lords ..." (247).
In 1987, the Prime Minister David Lange ridiculed Comalco's claim that it was losing money at Tiwai Point: the company said it had chalked up a NZ$34 million loss in the first fifteen years of the smelter's operations (249). Lange declared sarcastically how "deeply grateful" he was that Comalco had kept going, despite its deprivations, "... to service New Zealand" (249).
That year, as Comalco doubled its profits (up 192%) (250) the government promised to double its charges to Comalco (251) and made another proposal, whereby Comalco would buy out the Manapouri power station, and float some shares to the New Zealand Electricity Corporation and institutional investors (406). The Guardians of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau were considerably alarmed: its chairman was "suspicious about the sincerity of Comalco's respect for the environmental sensitivity of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau", and worried that Manapouri's level would be raised to supply all the power used at Tiwai Point (Manapouri supplies a majority, but not the whole amount) (247). On March 25, Comalco sought a court order preventing the government from transferring Manapouri to the new Electricity Corporation (due to be inaugurated on April 1 1987). It failed.
1988 was a record year for Comalco as a whole. (According to Australian brokers, A C Goode Ltd, its debt-to-shareholders'-funds-ratio was as low as 1:13) (251). The Energy Minister Bob Tizard complained, in early 1989, that the government was not even covering its costs in supplying power to Comalco: the company could have saved as much as NZ$200 million in the previous year (251).
Through 1988 and 1989 the possible sale of the Manapouri scheme to Comalco moved from being a nightmare impossibility to a nightmare probability. To soften the New Zealand public for the take-over, Comalco announced that it would bring all its New Zealand operations together, in a new outfit which would hold its 79.4% share of Tiwai Point. Mark Rayner of Comalco claimed that the company was "keen ... to underline its commitment to New Zealand" (252). It also set about refurbishing its tarnished public image "from a multinational sucking money out of New Zealand to that of a local company pure as spring water" (253). TV advertisements ended with the legend: "The Power of Good" - a comment which led the Secretary of CAFCA to retort (in a letter to The Listener): "Comalco's history in this country is one of deceit and arm-twisting at the highest level, threats to our environment on an unprecedented scale, dubious share deals and electricity at give-away prices" (254).
The Public Services Association accused the government of back-tracking on an undertaking not to sell off public assets (255). The Christchurch Star, the following year, exposed Comalco's attempt at "greening" its image, and at softening public opposition to the take-over proposal: "Comalco has dressed itself up in Kiwi clothes," declared the newspaper, "by establishing a New Zealand holding company with local directors ... [but] the number of New Zealand shareholders remains extremely low. It has also set up an aluminium recycling plant capitalising on an advertising campaign promoting itself as a good corporate citizen. But the company's prime concern is to ensure that the access it enjoys to cheap New Zealand power is preserved once the electricity industry is privatised" (256). According to the Christchurch Star, Comalco would go along with a proposal to take a minority share in any new company, but would require an option to increase its equity to fifty per cent later.
Meanwhile, other electricity Boards in New Zealand demanded that Manapouri be tendered to them as well, and not remain the subject of a secret deal (257). The Christchurch Star succinctly commented: "The time is long past when Comalco's power concession, retained at the expense of every other consumer, should have been removed ... any scheme that would give an overseas-based multinational concern the inside running on the purchase of such a strategically valuable asset as Manapouri has to be viewed with extreme wariness" (258).
Alumina from the Gladstone refinery in Queensland may also be smelted at the Bell Bay plant in Tasmania. This, too, has been the subject of controversy since Comalco bought the smelter from the Tasmanian and Federal Australian governments in 1961.
It was then powered by hydro-electricity gained from diverting the waters of the Great Lake, on the central plateau, into the South Esk river (259). The lake's level was raised, leaving its shores beachless and scarred with dead vegetation (44). Then, in 1969, the Tasmanian parliament - in the face of considerable opposition approved the damming of Lake Pedder, and the flooding of its surrounds, including the Gordon River gorge (260).
By the early 1980s, Bell Bay was Australia's largest aluminium smelter, turning out 112,000 tonnes a year according to Comalco, and contributing about 6% of Tasmania's gross domestic product (261) . But, although the smelter is a very minor contributor to state employment, it has accounted for around 40% of all electricity usage (260), dropping to around 25% in the late 1980s (256). Thirsty for more cheap electricity, Comalco enthusiastically supported proposals to dam the Franklin river in the early 1980s - the last major river wilderness area in south-eastern Australia. Thanks to an overwhelming national and international campaign, this proposal was eventually blocked.
As in New Zealand, the company has never revealed details of its secret agreement on power pricing. In 1981, it was suggested by the state Premier, that Comalco paid as little as 0.7 cents per kW/hour unit (260). As part of the price of gaining "#008040" support in the 1989 Tasmanian elections, the Labor party agreed to reveal details of the deal, late in 1989 (256). It still had not done so by summer the following year.
In a comprehensive study of CRA's interests, completed in 1986, the investment advisory group McIntosh, Hamson, Hoare, Govett Ltd estimated the proportion of the company's costs that went into power generation for aluminium smelting. In 1984 this was around 9% of total operating costs (4). The average electric energy cost per unit (kW/hour) "compared favourably" with industry as a whole: at 1.12 Australian cents/unit it was less than one third of the industry average (3.4 Aus cents). The Tiwai Point and Bell Bay costs were almost identical (Tiwai Point costs were slightly higher). Those at Boyne Island were the highest. (Comalco's interest in the Boyne Island smelter near the refinery at Gladstone, was 30% in 1989, but due to rise as the third and fourth potline came on-stream and the company took a higher proportion of the output) (262).
In 1988, Comalco and the Tasmanian government agreed to build an aluminium wheel-casting plant next to the Bell Bay Smelter (263), to sell automotive wheels to USA, Japan and Europe. This was vaunted by Comalco's Mark Rayner as a move which was good for Australia (264).
Pollution from Comalco's refineries and smelters has long given rise to concern. Caustic soda is dumped from Gladstone's operations in the form of an ugly red sludge. In 1974, Professor Fitzgerald summarised "some recent reports [as appearing] to suggest that the environmental impact of the refinery ... could limit the region's prospects of becoming the site for continuing industrial expansion on a scale that might justify the costs of the initial take off" (193). Also of concern are the impact of boiler ash and alumina dust. The major air pollutant is sulphur dioxide - a cause of "acid rain" - whose effects vary according to the height of the stack from which they are belched out, and prevailing winds. At maximum levels of concentration, Gladstone's emissions have been estimated as equal to the average concentrations - from all sources - in the city of Perth (200), and this, at only two-and-a-half miles radius from the plant! Smelters: a dirty footnote
Fluorides emitted from aluminium smelters are supposed to be gathered by a variety of filters, centrifuges and water spray collectors. However, more than a decade after its operations commenced, the Bell Bay smelter reportedly had no such controls whatsoever, at around half the furnaces in the plant. Deadly fumes crept up from floor level directly into the atmosphere (44, 200).
In 1989, Australian medical authorities finally caught up with US and European studies on the links between aluminium smelting and cancer. The executive director of the Asbestos and Industrial Cancer Society, Kerry Davis, declared that "at least 39" cancer deaths had occurred among workers in the industry directly as a result of the industrial processes. This was confirmed by a specialist at the Peter McCallum Cancer Hospital, Dr Cyril Minty, who also said that as many as 10% of aluminium smelter workers could be affected by "pot room asthma" (265).
Maoris at Tiwai Point have recently complained of "severe air pollution" from that smelter, and declared that "no living plant life [is to be found] in the area". In his submission on the Ngai Tahu land claim, to the government's Waitangi Tribunal, Robert Agrippa Whaitiri complained of ships from Tiwai polluting Bluff harbour (266).
CRA has kept a lower profile in New Zealand exploration compared with its rampages over Australia: possibly because of rebuffs by planning authorities. In early 1984, it became the first overseas mining company to be refused a prospecting licence by the country's Planning Tribunal. It had wanted to "investigate" part of the Victoria range in Inangahua county, by blasting, excavating, and felling trees on the slopes. Passing judgment on the company's intentions, Tribunal Chair, Judge Sheppard, said CRA had "shown little concern for the environmental effects of the proposed prospecting" and "no willingness" to minimise them. A little later, CRA's prospecting in the Reefton Area on Globe Hill, Westland, was criticised, when the. company bulldozed an area of historical importance (though not covered by the Historic Places Act) for a helicopter landing pad (267). The Nelson Planning Tribunal rejected the company's plans. Maoris take on CRA
A more significant defeat for CRA - which partly influenced the incoming Labour government of David Lange in 1984 to introduce some restraints on large-scale mining - had occurred two years earlier. Spurred by the high gold prices of 1980, CRA tried to secure an exploration licence on traditional Maori fishing grounds, at Manaia Harbour, the Hauraki gulf and the Manaia river, all on the renowned Coromandel peninsula. Concerned that these fishing grounds would be poisoned, shellfish beds destroyed, lifestyles and traditional recreational pursuits set at risk, and economic self-sufficiency jeopardised, Maori activists began organising against CRA. Not only did they lodge formal objections to the application and secure the help of four Maori MPs, they also enlisted the assistance of the New Zealand Maori Council, the Maori section of the National Council of Churches, Maori land rights campaigners, and tribes in the Hauraki gulf. The issue was widely publicised by local media, including television. Ministers were invited by Maori traditional owners to inspect the area and determine the deleterious effects which mining would have upon it. Only CRA was excluded from invitations to visit the Maori marae, lest they use it "as a public relations exercise". Links were established with non-Maori organisations and with the Aboriginal Mining Information Centre in Melbourne. AMIC (US!) attended a CRA annual general meeting in Melbourne and, to the question: "Would CRA guarantee NZ$3,000,000 to return the land to the Maori people in its natural state after mining operations ceased?" got the timeworn, derogatory response that it was "a matter for the New Zealand government" (268). Although the campaign did not secure recognition of Maori land rights and exclusive use of their traditional territory under the Mining Act, the campaign was partly successful: CRA withdrew its application (269).
Of course CRA has had other intentions to explore, and if possible mine, in New Zealand. (In 1982 it held the largest amount of leases under application of any company, at Golden Bay, a heavy mineralised dairy and forestry, fishing, mining and tourist area in North West Nelson. It had also built a heli-pad and carried out drilling and line-cutting) (269). A later clash between the company and local farmers and conservationists occurred in 1988 in Cobb Valley and the Mount Arthur Tableland. CRA claimed that any mining would be "insignificant" - its usual threadbare "defence". The local organisation NAPSAC (Nelson Area Parks Action Committee) launched a national petition against the project - the Wharepapa Declaration - calling for the whole of North West Nelson Conservation Park to be closed to mining.
In 1991 CRA announced that it was pulling out of New Zealand exploration.
Australia is the world's leading exporter of coal. Not surprisingly, CRA has also been involved in producing both coking and steaming coal, though its contribution to the national effort has not been as substantial as it might have liked. (In 1986 CRA produced around 6 million tonnes, while Australia as a whole exported 92 million tonnes) (8). Black and gold
Like other producers, CRA has had to suffer the effects of gross over-supply in the world market (270), and price cuts demanded by Japanese customers: in 1986, for example, it had to drop its price by around 10% (8). Also, like other producers, it has fallen foul of the unions, as it cut real wages and tried to boost productivity (8, 271).
However, early in 1989, CRA scored a coup by arranging new three-year sales with Japanese consumers, worth nearly one hundred million dollars (US$96 million) (272). This arrangement followed the federal Australian government giving approval for the controversial export of coking coal to Japan: controversial, because the currency movement left the Japanese better off than the Australians (273).
CRA's wholly-owned subsidiary Kembla Coal and Coke (KCC) runs underground mines in the Illawarra region south of Sydney (NSW), producing coking coal and some coke (4). KCC's Coal Cliff mine was at the point of closure in 1986 (4), but Coal Cliff Collieries Pty Ltd itself has an 80% interest in the Vickery JV at Gunnedah (NSW) (4). CRA has a 50.2% interest in the sulphur-steaming coal project at Blair Athol, Central Queensland, run by Pacific Coal (5). This is CRA's biggest coal project, in Australia to date - producing around 5 million tonnes, but capable of putting out 8 million tonnes a year (4).
The Tarong Coal project (in ex-Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson's constituency in south-east Queensland) is an open-pit mine, with considerable reserves of steaming coal, and an assured contract to supply fuel for a state-owned power station (4, 14).
This bland recital of CRA's coal interests should not suggest that (for once) we have entered a non-controversial sphere of the company's operations. On the contrary, CRA's underhand attempts to take over AAR and CAIL (Coal and Allied Industries) in the 1970s, were among the more outrageous of RTZ/CRA's ploys to seize a lion's share of the nation's resources (see above). Controversy over coal
In 1980, CRA - along with the Victorian State Electricity Commission and other companies incensed farmers, and others in the state, when it investigated the Latrobe Valley for brown coal and other deposits. A leaked Task Force report declared that this region could become "the most intensive energy producing area in the world thanks to its extensive deposits". The environmentalist magazine, Chain Reaction, predicted that the project could "destroy the entire La Trobe valley" (274). Undeterred by the criticisms, in 1981 CRAE stepped up its investigations of the deposit and also into the Murray Basin. Roderick Carnegie, the company's chair, waxed lyrical about the region's potential for coal-fire electric power, managed by CRA and possibly fuelling a chemicals industry - so long as the coal's high (50-60% weight) water content could be removed (275). (In 1988, CRA and Melbourne University started work on a project to turn lignite into smokeless fuel, by removing its 60% moisture content) (276).
In the last couple of years, echoes of the Latrobe controversy have been heard in the far west of Australia, where (along with Barrack Energy) CRA has proposed to deep-cut for coal in a proposed National Park, and either sell it to industrial users, or use it to fuel a A$1 million power station - possibly for a pulp mill (277). Known as the Hill River project, CRA's plans to exploit this deposit were quite advanced by 1989 (278). So, however, were strident objections to the whole scheme. One of Australia's leading conservation organisations, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) (279), pointed out that the area, Mount Lesueur, contains over 800 plant species alone: perhaps 10% of the total native species in the state.
CRA blandly asserted that it is aware of the botanical importance of Mount Lesueur and is intent on ensuring "environmentally responsible development" (280). But, once again, CRA put its money on a potentially disastrous chain of consequences: destruction of part of a unique eco-region, the logging of thousands of trees, and the construction of a coal-fired power station, possibly for a highly dubious woodchip plant: thus, at a stroke, contributing both to the greenhouse effect and other atmospheric pollution.
But Australia is no longer necessarily regarded as the best bet for international coal supplies (281). In any case, where cheap sources of coal are concerned, CRA has already "picked a plum" in a part of the world where environmental consciousness is weak (though rising), labour is cheap, and national legislation strongly favours the multinational at the expense of smaller, indigenous developments: Indonesia.
CRA has long been deeply involved in Indonesia: as already pointed out, Comalco located some of its plant there in the early years of its bauxite exploitation. In 1975, the Indonesian regime proposed leasing one million hectares of West Papua (Irian Jaya) to the company for a large-scale integrated scheme, combining logging, timber, plywood, veneer, woodchip and pulp production (282). This project never materialised. In Indonesia
On the island of Kalimantan (formerly Borneo), CRA holds a half share in Indonesia's largest new coal mine, the Kaltim Prima: indeed it is likely to become the largest mine in the country, apart from the state-owned Bukit Asam coal mine, owned by PT Batubara (8). Output from Blair Athol, and the Kalimantan mine could soon make Pacific Coal, Australia's largest producer of steaming coal (283, 355).
Situated in the Samarinda district of East Kalimantan, only 20km from the coast, the Sangatta (Sengatta) coal mine is owned 50/50 by CRA and BP. Although, in 1989, BP announced the sale of its world-wide coal interest (and CRA was mooted as a possible buyer for the non-South African mines) (284), BP has held on to its share of this particular mine "for local reasons" (285) . Kaltim Prima has coal reserves of at least 360 million tonnes - just under a quarter of Kalimantan's total reserves (286) - of which around a quarter is recoverable by open-cut methods (287). It is a "premium fuel with high calorific value and low sulphur" (287). Test production at the mine started in late 1988, commercial production in 1991, and is expected to increase to 4 million tonnes by 1992 (288) and 7 million tonnes three years later (288). Its major markets are expected to be in Italy, West Germany, the Netherlands (GKE), Japan (Chugoku), Hong Kong (China Light and Power) and Taiwan (283, 289).
The Kaltim Prima partners have benefitted enormously from an "open door" policy by the Indonesian authorities, which allows "one step" approval for new projects (thus cutting out a lot of environmental and social impact studies which might be required elsewhere); guarantees unbreakable contracts; has taxation laws which are favourable to foreign investors; and allows up to 95% foreign equity ownership for a project's first ten years (290). At Kaltim Prima, the government will take a 13.5% royalty, and pay tax at 35% for the first ten years (291).
Equally important, the Kaltim Prima coal mine is central to implementation of the Indonesian regime's "transmigration" programme in Kalimantan - a programme which has been lambasted throughout the world by human rights and environmental protection organisations (including Survival International, Friends of the Earth, the Ecologist magazine, Tapol and others) (292).
Kaltim Prima is intended to provide jobs and encourage infrastructure for the relocation of families from the Indonesian mainland (293). Yet, full implementation of the project has required that huge areas of tropical forest be felled for roads, a power station, and a conveyor to the coast. Drastic congestion has been occurring in the local river Sengatta, with probable pollution of the water supply. Worse, there have been highly negative social impacts:
"Drunkenness, prostitution and conflicts between local people and newcomers have already reached a delicate stage", warned a local social scientist in 1989. "Large numbers of contractors have been associated with the mine and an oil lease across the river. Workers get taken on for limited periods, however. They get high wages, prices go up. When they quit, they rarely return to agriculture and, in any case, much of the good farmland has been lost to plantations and now the mine. We're seeing the birth of a floating, aimless, unskilled, population with few prospects." And a substantial proportion of these local people are indigenous to Kalimantan. They are Dayaks - whose economy, culture and livelihood, centre on the river and its banks (294).CRA's penetration of Indonesia doesn't stop with coal. More than ten years ago, it was investigating an alluvial gold deposit, and its parent, RTZ, reached an agreement to explore for copper and other base metals in north-west Sulawesi (295). ....and gold
Both companies have also been active in Kalimantan where gold fever has dazzled both the small-time prospector and the multinational corporation, on a scale only slightly less than that currently blighting Brazil (296). An advisor to the Northern Land Council in Australia, who worked with Dayaks in 1988, came across a Rio Tinto Indonesia prospector who announced the discovery of gold in the cap of a mountain on the Kalimantan/Sarawak border: "If we want it we'll just cut the top off the mountain," he declared (297).
CRA also entered into a JV with Battle Mountain Gold in 1987, to investigate precious metals in Kalimantan (364).
Among the many multinationals invading the island (more than a hundred contracts were signed between 1985 and 1988, although many of them have lapsed) (298, 299) have been BP, Pelsart International and Pancontinental (300). In 1985, PT Rio Tinto Indonesia began exploring a prospect on the Kelian river in central Kalimantan (301): later CRA took over. With more than 30 million tonnes of ore, grading 2.2 grammes/tonne, the mine is clearly "highly prospective". (Recent figures were: 55 million tonnes of ore grading 1.9 gramme/tonne, producing 100 tonnes of gold over 11 or 30 years, depending on the scale of operations) (302).
Kelian Equatorial Mining (KEM) will benefit from favourable government legislation, which one head of a mining company has called "the best in the world" (298). Unfortunately, the conditions under which the mine will operate are not "the best" for the thousands of Dayak river-dwellers in the neighbourhood. Many of these have lost their traditional livelihood - namely, the panning of the river Kelian (a tributary of the Mahakam), and selling the nuggets for cash (303). And, according to a Dayak investigator, the project has attracted gambling, prostitution and given rise to theft - even murder - on a scale previously unknown: "Already waste from the plant has been found in the water two kilometres from the site and pollution in this part of the Kelian has meant the people have to look elsewhere for their water supplies" (297).
A feasibility study for the Kelian prospect was completed by the end of 1988 (304) but a thorough social and environmental impact study has not been carried out.
Rum Jungle, in Australia's Northern Territory, was one of Australia's earliest uranium finds (though Radium Hill in New South Wales was probably the first) (305). Rum Jungle: still poisoning thirty years on
The first Rum Jungle find was recorded in 1912, some thirty years after it had become part of one of the far north's most colourful "frontier" mining and agricultural settlements (306). At that time, uranium was just another mineral, and it was not until after the Second World War - with a government incentive of Ag25,000 for bounty hunters - that uranium was rediscovered along the Finnis river. In 1952, uranium profits were exempted from income tax, and mining was declared a "special defence undertaking": the government took over land on which the strategic mineral had been found (306). It was at this time that the Mary Kathleen deposit and Rum Jungle were discovered. (The latter by a farmer, J White, while killing kangaroos). Plans were soon being laid for underground mining at the White shaft, and seven other deposits were drilled, including the Mount Fitch orebody which was never actually brought into uranium production (306). 1952 also saw British and American experts arriving at Rum Jungle and plans for a town-site being drawn up (305, 306).
A year later, a joint British-American government group, called the Combined Development Agency (CDA), provided ten years' worth of capital on which to open the mine. Consolidated Zinc Proprietary was authorised to construct the project on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia and, for this purpose, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Conzinc, called Territory Enterprises Ltd, was formed. The same year, the Australian Atomic Energy Authority (AAEA, later the AAEC) was set up. The AAEA took control of Rum Jungle, while Territory Enterprises was responsible for its operations (305).
Rum Jungle was mined for just over a decade, supplying yellowcake to the British and American atomic weapons programmes. When that programme was cut back in the USA, output was reduced. In 1963, the mine was closed altogether as a uranium producer, although copper mining continued until 1965 (306). Uranium seems to have been delivered some time after closure - Rum Jungle was the last uranium mine to fold in the 1960s, and it was dismantled in 1971 (306).
Three separate open-cut mines were constructed on the Rum Jungle site: besides White's cut, there was Dyson's cut, completed in 1958, and Rum Jungle South, which was not opened until 1963 (305). Construction for the White mine was carried out by the British firm of George Wimpey and Co Pty Ltd and, at one point in its operation, was even visited by that well-known wildlife enthusiast, the Duke of Edinburgh! (306).
However, the royal seal of approval did little to compensate for farmers' land loss (claims were being settled as late as 1962) (306), deplorable working conditions in its early days ("Hell Hole" was one Melbourne newspaper's appellation, after a protest strike was called in 1956) (306), and Aboriginal claims in the region. The Finnis River Claim, made by the Northern Land Council (NLC) in 1980, has been called "the most complicated yet heard in Australia" (307).
Worst of all has been the huge amount of environmental damage inflicted on a region noteworthy for its fauna and flora. As early as 1960, an officer of the Northern Territory (NT) Administration was reporting that: "... trees along the back of one stream are dying and water holes [are] devoid of fish". Two years later, a Senior Engineer in the territory claimed that severe pollution stretched 16 kilometres from the mill, along the East Finnis river. "Heavy concentrations" of pollution were reported in January 1963, "as large numbers of freshwater shrimp ... and small fish resembling herring have been floating or lying on the banks" (305).
The Australian Senate Select Committee on Water Pollution declared two years later: "One of the major pollution problems in the NT is that caused by copper and uranium mining at Rum Jungle. The strongly acidic effluent from the treatment plant flows via the East Finnis river into the Finnis river, making the water unsuitable for either stock or human consumption for a distance of 20 river miles. Vegetation on the river banks has been destroyed, and it will be many years before this area can sustain growth" (308).
In April 1965, a water resources technical officer told his superiors that the worst period for pollution came just after floods broke down the wall holding back the effluent at the treatment plant. In reality, the early period of mining had not even been graced by a tailings dam and, when dams were built, they often got washed away by floodwaters. Not until 1961 was the situation ameliorated, when tailings were discharged into disused (but presumably quite porous) open-cuts (305).
Six years later, a Northern Territory Administration team reported that: "no significant rehabilitation has been carried out" at Rum Jungle (305). By then, the degree of poisoning caused by the mine was creating great concern in the Administration and the parliamentary opposition. However, the AAEC was unperturbed. One of its officials, Dr Warner, called the pollution "a minor, local ... problem" (305), while the Commission itself refused to take steps to revegetate the waste dumps, and would not make public a (presumably) damning report on water pollution, which the AAEC itself had carried out (305).
There was also complicity between government and company, as evidenced by a submission made in June 1971 by Mr R F Feldgenner (a senior NT official), to his Minister. Feldgenner recalled that, in 1962, the Minister for Territories had been well aware of the degree of illegal water pollution caused by the mine, but "... he was reluctant to proceed against the companies for reasons of their association with the Commonwealth in the venture". Any attempt to overcome the hazard would "involve quite unreasonable operating costs," according to another Minister (309).
By 1975, it was known that 2,300 tonnes of manganese, 1,308 tonnes of copper, 200 tonnes of zinc and 450 curies of radium had been released into the Finnis River, with around one quarter of the radium having found its way "probably to the sea" (310).
"About 100 square kilometres of the Finnis River flood plain have been affected by contaminants (heavy metals, uranium, radium and sulphur). In the ten kilometres of the Finnis River downstream from the mine, fish and other aquatic fauna have been almost eliminated, with the effect reducing over the next 15 kilometres downstream". Pandanus palms, water lilies and other aquatic plants had been "eliminated" (311).
CRA and RTZ refused to contribute anything towards the clean-up of Rum Jungle (312). It was left to the federal government to provide A$7.6 million to that end, with another A$ 16.2 million to be spent over the following six years (to around 1990), in removing heavy metals and neutralising the tailings (313, 333).
In its home state of Victoria, CRA has notched up a fairly remarkable reputation for treading on the feet of farmers, Aboriginal people and environmentalists. Its project with the most profound implications for the future is probably the proposed mineral sands mine 20km south-east of Horsham, otherwise known as WIM- 150, after the area of Wimmera in which it is located. Announced by the company as the biggest mineral sands find ever made in Australia - possibly the world (314) (notwithstanding the huge deposits already found in Western Australia) - early indications were, that the deposit consisted of one billion (1,000,000,000) tonnes of contained ore in a larger deposit of nearly 5 billion tonnes (315), under some 4 metres of clay overburden (316). In 1986, CRA applied for permission to conduct exploration on a 1000 hectare site, where initial drilling had indicated monazite, xenotime, zircon, anatase and leucoxine, as well as rutile and ilmenite. (Ilmenite and rutile are used to produce titanium dioxide - mainly for the pigment industry - while rutile is utilised for the output of titanium metal which has applications in the aircraft and aerospace industries. Zirconium, processed from zircon, can be used as fuel cladding in nuclear reactors). Heavy minerals
The Victorian state government has clearly been in favour of the project (317), although both Queensland and New South Wales state governments have banned some types of mineral sands mining (132), due to the grave risks of radioactive contamination (thorium and uranium) from tailings disposal - not to mention the huge upheaval to farmland. (Four metres depth of clay have to be removed and then 10.15 metres of sand must be dredged.) The Horsham council, backed by environmentalists, delayed the opening of the 120 tonnes/day pilot plant, with an appeal to the Planning Appeals Tribunal - but this was dismissed. In any case, the local shire council at Wimmera is in favour of the mine (298). At the beginning of 1989, CRA had permission to process 20,000 tonnes of mineral sands a year, but this was to be increased to no less than 1,000,000 tonnes a year (319).
While it looks as if WIM-150 will proceed, CRA got a drubbing in 1983, after farmers, Aboriginal people and environmentalists united to persuade two local shires (Maldon and Lexton) to exercise their powers to stop a gold-leaching project, which would have resulted in potassium cyanide and other chemicals being pumped 100 metres underground into aquifers (318, 319). These "deep leads"at Eastville not only cover nearly two thirds of underground Victoria, but are crucial in providing drinking water for livestock (320). Farmers around Mount Mitchell formed the Groundwater Protection Society (Mt Mitchell), after other farmers had initiated the Groundwater Protection Society at Eastville. During what has become known as the "Evansfor Incident", it was discovered that the company had started drilling without shire approval: the shire swiftly told CRA to stop. Whether or not it was this which was effective, or direct action - during which persons unknown smashed the company's drilling rig and painted a rude behest on the road CRA responded and did indeed "piss off" (321).
After CRA withdrew its original plans, the company came up with another proposal to tap into the underground gold, using toxic chemicals which included hydrochloric acid (322), and that would release arsenic and copper into the groundwater (321). But this scheme, too, was eventually abandoned. In 1989, at the RTZ annual general meeting in London, the chair, Alistair Frame, gave an undertaking that RTZ (and presumably CRA) would never be involved in cyanide solution mining of the type proposed at Eastville (323).
This was not the first time CRA had tangled with Aboriginal protestors and other landholders in Victoria. In the late 1970s, CRA was among a number of companies exploring for various minerals, including uranium, in the famous Victorian Alps - an area of great, relatively untouched, natural beauty which includes the Snowy Mountains range. (CRA's lease was next door to one held by Urangesellschaft) (324). Within a few years, according to research by AMIC (US!), the company had leased an area for exploration covering one-third of the state. Not one of these leases had been secured with permission from Aboriginal people - of whom there are up to 30,000 (325). Much of the lease area contained potential uranium deposits - a highly contentious fact raised by Aboriginal poet, Boolidt Boolitha, and others, at the RTZ annual general meeting in 1981. It was pointed out that CRA had discovered significant deposits of uranium in both north-west and central eastern Victoria, and that some of the exploration work had been conducted over Aboriginal burial sites (326).
It is Bougainville Copper in Papua New Guinea (PNG) which, of all the company's many enterprises, best illustrates the degree to which CRA is prepared to exploit indigenous people, and virtually wreck a major ecosystem. (The destruction of Weipa and Mapoon runs a close second). Bougainville
Until 1989, Bougainville Copper Ltd (BCL) has also probably been CRA's most consistently successful subsidiary - although Comalco's returns from bauxite mining on Cape York peninsula have paid major dividends in recent years.
In 1973 BCL was not only CRA's - and RTZ's - most profitable single venture, with profits running at A$158 million, it was also the most successful company in Australian corporate history up to that time (327). The following year, 1974, it turned in another huge profit of A$ 140 million, due partly to the dubious practice of "high grading" (mining and processing higher grade ore while dumping lower grade material, possibly for future use) (328). By the early 1980s, Bougainville was contributing a hefty 23% of RTZ's pre-tax profits, despite representing only 9.4% of the corporation's total assets and 8% of its sales (29).
The project was set up (with some Japanese funding) (329) as a joint venture between CRA and North Broken Hill Holdings (NBHH) in 1966. By 1972 CRA held 65.6%, and NBHH 28% respectively in Bougainville Copper Ltd (330). RTZ's beneficial interest by that time was 80.7% of CRA and more than half (53%) of NBHH. (Fifteen years later CRA's interest in BCL was 53.6%, with RTZ holding 49% of CRA).
Bougainville's development was underwritten by 27 British, European and Canadian banks, headed by the Bank of America. They provided nearly US$250 million by the end of 1970, with the Bank of America taking up 1 % of the equity and a second syndicate of the same banks having the option to take up 2% of the equity (331).
A few months later, Mitsubishi Shoji Kaisha Ltd, with Mitsui and Co, loaned another US$50 million and signed an agreement to provide equipment worth a further US$30 million, with repayments for this stretching over ten years (332).
It is therefore little wonder that RTZ's first chairperson, Sir Val Duncan, called the mine: "the Jewel in our Crown" (44).
Discovered in 1964 by Ken Phillips, a geologist with CRAE (Conzinc Rio Tinto of Australia Exploration Ltd), the company was actually benefitting from gold discoveries that had been made near Panguna thirty years before. It was an Australian geologist working for the colonial Administration who located low-grade deposits in 1960 (334). In the early stages of testing and defining the orebody, CRA operated under a 1928 mining law which enabled it to prospect on land used by the Nasioi people for copra and cocoa cultivation, without the permission of the landowners (44). In 1966, despite opposition from some members of the PNG House of Assembly, this mining law was modified, allowing CRA virtually unhindered extension of its operations, to a ceiling of ten thousand square miles [sic] around the deposit (334,335). The following year, CRA had confirmed the Panguna project as commercially viable. It had already spent A$4 million proving the deposit, and was to shell out another A$12 million until 1969 (334). However, it held only a two-year prospecting licence, with no guarantee that it would be allowed to mine. The company told the Administration that it couldn't foot any more bills until it got mining contract permits, and enough land on which to operate (334).
Under the 1967 Agreement, which was then negotiated with the Australian authorities in PNG, Bougainville Copper acquired virtual fiefdom over the island and its resources. The Administration was offered 20% of the equity in the new company. In return it would acquire, and offer to the company, almost any land it required (334), as well as a township, roads and port - not to mention support facilities and a tailings disposal area which could extend over 50,000 acres (334).
There is some discrepancy between historical sources as to whether BCL was offered a ten year (44, 335) holiday from corporate taxation under the 1967 Agreement - or a more limited three-year or a five-year one (334, 336). In any event, the project was able to operate without taxation restraints during its formative years, paying no more than 1.5% royalty on the FOB (Free on Board) value of the copper produced (335).
Production from Panguna started in April 1972, after certain "teething problems" - which included landslides caused by a cyclone (328). BCL's investment in the project had, by then, cost around A$400 million. No matter: for, in the first six months of output, BCL was raking in no less than A$1 million a day in tax-free profits (336). Its contracts at this stage included a four-year deal with Phillip Brothers of the USA (a subsidiary of Engelhard Minerals, itself an associate company of Anglo-American), and substantial arrangements to supply both European and Japanese smelters (330). The European customers included Norddeutsche Affinerie (NA) of West Germany and Rio Tinto Minera SA (RTM) of Spain (337). In 1988 further agreements were sealed with Japanese customers for long-term supply.
In 1974, CRA was forced to re-negotiate its 1967 Agreement, after Papua New Guinea gained independence. Riots broke out between Papuans and New Guineans, while outrage was expressed at the concessions CRA had obtained, and the damage it had wreaked. These events precipitated calls for Bougainvillean secession, and widespread condemnation of the company's practices.
According to mining authority, William S Pintz, the renegotiation of the agreement was a "direct result of local reaction to Panguna" and a "political backlash associated with river sediment problems" on Bougainville. It was also an opportunity for the in-coming government of Michael Somare to show its abilities and muscle (338).
The June 1972 PNG General Assembly had set out development strategies for the country (Prime Minister Somare's eight-point programme), which included avoiding the country being "in a position where we are so dependent on any other country, or on any single business or industry that we must shape our policies with the interests of that country or industry in mind, instead of our national interest" (328). Other laudable sentiments, promulgated in the Assembly, put a premium on self-reliance, locally-raised revenues, small-scale enterprises, and an equal role for women in development. (Unfortunately, none of these aims was ever thoroughly put into practice).
With the threat of renegotiation heavy in the air, Sir Val Duncan flew to Port Moresby, only to be met by "nothing!" (327): "... no red carpet, no police band, not even a minister at the airport, simply BCL's own cars" (327). RTZ's illustrious chairman spent hours trying to get hold of Somare (who was actually on the golf links at the time!) When the two parties finally met, Somare's side had the advantage of special overseas consultants on its side, including Michael Faber of the British Commonwealth Secretariat, and Stephen Zorn, perhaps the best-experienced negotiator with mining companies, anywhere in the world. For its part RTZ/CRA had little, except the original agreement (334). Albert Maori Kiki made it clear that the negotiations were not between equal partners: "... [We] are acting as a sovereign power," said Kiki, "which comprehends our role as owner of our resources, custodians of our national heritage and as a taxing authority on behalf of the people" (334). Somare was blunter: if the company didn't reach agreement, by September that year, "the agreement will be in a position to put our basic principles into practice" (334).
Understandably, RTZ soon capitulated - but not before trying to get the Australian government to loan the PNG government enough money to buy-out 50% of the mine (339). Triumphantly, Somare announced that the fledgling government had brought to heel "... One of the largest mining companies in the world - a company with big projects in Canada, South Africa, Australia, Britain, Spain and other countries and with total sales worth more than US$1500 million. But we proved our ability to stand up to the foreign interests" (334).
Over the next decade and a half, the PNG government did little to stand up to CRA, although the re-negotiated Bougainville agreement was to become something of a model for other Third World (and indigenous) peoples. In the 1970s, CRA wanted to build a A$300 million alumina refinery in the North Solomons, near large bauxite reserves: its partners were to be Mitsui (50%) and the PNG government (25%) (44). But - like the Purari hydro-electric scheme - the project petered out. CRA also considered buying into the other huge copper-gold project in PNG - the Ok Tedi mine. John Ralph, (to become CRA's chairperson on the demise of Roderick Carnegie), was especially keen on getting a slice of this particular action. The PNG government, however, didn't want "a greater role given to CRA" (338).
Throughout most of the 1970s and the 'eighties, BCL was to justify its progenitors' early investment of confidence. By 1983 the processing plant at Panguna was the world's largest copper concentrator (340). Four years later, BCL chalked up its largest profits since the anno mirabilis of 1974: though copper and gold production was actually lower than it had been the previous year (341).
One matter of particular concern to CRA has been the moratorium imposed by the Australian administration on mineral exploration in the North Solomons which, under the 1974 Agreement, was to be reviewed every seven years (342). A little while before this prohibition came up for its first review, BCL was expressing "considerable concern" at being prevented from "exploration ... thought to be vital in order to determine whether any other viable ore bodies exist in the Bougainville region" (343).
What has the Papuan New Guinean government got out of Bougainville? RTZ/CRA's Panguna mine was not the country's first gold prospect by any means. As early as 1528, the Spanish navigator, de Alvaro Soavedaro, had dubbed the country Isla del Oro (Island of gold), and Australian prospectors were busy in Papua with pick and shovel from the 1880s until 1914 (344). Nor, with the development of Ok Tedi, and mines at Porgera and Misima, has BCL retained its position as the biggest PNG gold producer. Should Lihir Island (RTZ: 80%) enter production, the country will be host to what has been called the richest gold deposit outside South Africa (345). Within the next five years, according to stockbrokers James Capel, PNG could become the world's fastest growing producer of gold (346).
The mining industry has consistently regarded PNG as a state replete with unnecessary and punitive restrictions: "a welter of government controls over the operations of the private sector ... [the] legacy of the zeal of government advisors and civil servants in the early 1970s to save PNG from the perceived greed of foreign investors" (336).
Certainly it does seem, at first, as if PNG has benefitted considerably from BCL's operations. However, it is important to distinguish the pre-1974 period from the period which followed the signing of the Bougainville Copper Agreement, and to separate the benefits accruing to the central government from those denied the provincial government - let alone the traditional landowners.
The infrastructure provided by the PNG administration has been furnished at the expense of resources which could, and should, have been directed elsewhere to the benefit of the Papua New Guinean people (335). According to BCL, the mine has been responsible for providing 45% of PNG's export earnings, as opposed to only 15% from coffee, the country's second highest earner (342). But such high reliance on one mine as a provider of foreign exchange, is hardly healthy in a rapidly developing.economy (where 80% of the people live in rural areas).
There is also some debate as to the importance of BCL as a provider of internally-generated revenues. The mining industry and BCL put the proportion at 20% (344). M R Chambers puts it at more than a fifth - stating that US$660 million has been contributed to the State since 1975 (347). Other sources are more conservative, setting the figure at 16% or 17% (348).
In any event, partly to limit the economic risks, the PNG government from its early days decided to take only around 20% of BCL's equity. In 1972, a million ordinary shares were issued to the Investment Corporation of PNG - a statutory body established to promote indigenous membership of commercial enterprises in the country- while another four million shares were issued to BCL (334). The government has thus limited its access to dividends, but benefitted greatly from royalties and taxation. Crucial to PNG's taxation policy has been the concept of Additional Profits Tax (APT) (applied to the Ok Tedi project in a revised form known as Resource Revenue Taxation or RRT) (338). Under this system, while royalty taxation at 1.25% might be regarded as a concession to multinationals, "super profits" attract a much greater claw-back. APT is assessed when the company has received an annually compounded rate of return of more than 20% on the total investment (as BCL apparently did in 1987) (349). It is applied at the rate of 35% on post-Corporate Income Tax profits, raising taxation on these to nearly 60% (58%). However, it is also important to remember that the concept of APT has never been fully, or rigorously, applied to BCL (327).
Compared with the poor deals secured by other Third World governments, in negotiation (or lack of it) with mining companies, PNG's situation must certainly be counted among the more fortunate.
But North Solomons politicians, and specifically those from the Panguna region, have not been persuaded by this argument. Led by John Momis, John Kaputin and others, they have long considered the province to be sorely neglected by the central administration (327). The issue of separatism - especially by Bougainville - was to figure prominently in discussions between the Pangu Pati coalition led by Michael Somare, which came to power in 1972, and both Momis' and Kaputin, in the months leading up to final independence. Agreement on a wide measure of self-government for the provinces appeared to have been reached, when BCL announced its grotesquely fat profits for 1973.
From that point on, relationships between the provincial representatives and the central government deteriorated, despite practical steps being taken towards setting up the provincial government of the North Solomons in July 1974.
Fired by separatist sentiments, especially those expressed by the Napidakoe Navitu (an organisation set up to defend land rights against the depredations of BCL), the Bougainvilleans demanded that all royalties from the mine should be returned to the province (334). The central government wasn't happy: financial independence for the provinces could lead to assertions of political independence. But, when the Bougainvilleans threatened to divert a river essential to BCL, Somare's coalition gave in. Henceforth, the whole of the 1.25% royalty was to go to the province (334, 335). Allocations for capital works, granted the next year, proved a much knottier issue. When, in mid-1975, the central government offered only a quarter of what the provincial assembly had demanded, the Bougainvilleans voted to secede. A provincial flag was raised on September 1, government offices were attacked, the airstrip was torn up, and the mine-site itself was invaded (44, 327).
Before considering what impact the mine has had on Bougainvilleans in general, we should ask whether it has actually provided the boon in employment and opportunities widely boasted by BCL and its defenders. In the first three years of construction, the mine attracted a workforce drawn from all over the country, and further afield. Between 1966 and 1971, some 6300 newcomers entered the island (327). By 1970, out of a working population of 10,500, some 9000 were construction workers. A high (but unknown) percentage of these was recruited from outside the island (350). This created not only a differential wage system between locals and outsiders (350), but tensions which led to inter-community conflict. In 1970, a petition by 700 local villagers and company employees demanded that the company "repatriate" the outsiders. An Australian engineer working on the project during these years has attested to the apartheid-like conditions of that time (351). And, when the Australian Labor Party shadow Minister of Labour visited the mine-site in 1969, he was appalled at what he found. Accusing CRA of paying "slave wages" to black workers, he conjectured that the company's "excellent training programme" was mainly a device to secure a cheap labour pool: blacks driving trucks were getting less than a quarter of their white counterparts (334).
BCL's Employment Relations Manager at the mine in 1970, a Colonel McKenzie, was in no doubt that he preferred outsiders to potentially restive Bougainvilleans: "At present it's about 50% [ratio]," the Colonel told Richard West: "[At] the early stages we were recruiting wherever we could. But we'd prefer a proportion of 33 per cent" (28). When the construction phase came to an end, unemployed workers spilled out around the island, creating an aimless, impoverished, and self-destructive group of single men, about whom Raphael Bele, Member of Parliament for Central Bougainville, commented in mid 1973: "... [We] have so many vagrants in Bougainville. Often they paid their own expenses to Bougainville ... what a pity when a person arrives to find there are no vacancies. From there, the person's vagrancy begins; he is now included on the list of those who steal, murder and so forth. Bougainville villagers are terrified by these serious incidents; they dare not walk alone on the roads" (328).
More serious, in the long term, was the insidious substitution of imported goods for local produce (28), and consequent dangerous weakening of the indigenous economy. As Richard West and R J Jackson have both pointed out: before the establishment of BCL, Bougainville was far from being an indigent backwater, suddenly blessed with new-found wealth. Copra and cocoa cultivation was carried on in no less than 81 plantations (foreign-owned, and already employing several thousand migrant workers) (327). Not only did the mine absorb invaluable agricultural land, which Bougainvilleans might have used to grow foodstuffs, but the company itself had a policy of importing many of its provisions. Though BCL claimed to have purchased more than a million dollars' worth of fruit and vegetables from villagers (A$1,300,000), between 1970 and the end of 1974 (355), many of these purchases were from expatriate traders (28). Local people were often not able to compete with the imports, because they could not reach the towns (lack of roads) (350). John Momis summed up the situation in 1973: "While the company makes some attempt to buy local produce, there is no systematic attempt to replace imports by food produced by the local people themselves ... Throughout Bougainville there is a lack of incentive for people to develop their resources ... when the copper company is asked to supply [technical advice] it says that it is not prepared to favour one area at the expense of another" (328). A few months later Momis was even more damning:
"Companies have no interest whatsoever in the welfare of the people. They tell lies to the people repeatedly, saying they are concerned about their welfare. Companies have one motive only, and that is to make profit. Many of the so-called professional people do not act in such a manner as to cause physical violence but they poison the minds of the people. They are against us, ruining us, colonising our minds, so that our people have no self-respect today. They have become tools: some of them are being trained to become very effective tools of the colonial system ... The company ... does not have any interest in the people. It would sit there in its ivory towers watching us murdering one another; it has no concern for us whatsoever. It will give you eighty dollars to be a good white-haired boy of your colonial masters" (328).A decade and a half later, the worst fears of Bougainville landowners were confirmed. In 1988 Perpetua Serero, leader of the island's matrilineal landowners, told a visiting reporter:
"We don't grow healthy crops any more, our traditional customs and values have been disrupted and we have become mere spectators as our earth is being dug up, taken away and sold for millions. Our land was taken away from us by force: we were blind then, but we have finally grown to understand what's going on" (348).Four months later, echoing Serero, another traditional owner - defining her traditional land as somewhere in the bottom of the gaping mine-pit - said: "We are in the darkness at that time ... Now we see with our own eyes" (352). What the people of Bougainville see is one of the worst human-made environmental catastrophes of modern times. "Rio Tinto Zinc has more to answer for in this tiny corner of the globe than any other. The day was certainly cursed when [it] discovered copper deposits on Bougainville," said Diane Hooper in 1977 (44). "An economic godsend - and an environmental disaster" was how Philip Hughes (Head of Environmental Science at the University of PNG) dubbed BCL's operations ten years later (353). Ken Lamb, Professor of Biology at the same University, has also called the Bougainville experience "disastrous" (327). An Australian engineer, working on the mine in the early phase, was more direct. Commenting on the impact on the local people, he declared: "It's fucked them" (28).
"Take a trip down the Jaba river", invited the respected Pacific Islands Monthly in early 1989, "where millions of tonnes of waste is dumped to become floating filth" (348). "All aquatic life in the Jaba Valley has been killed," concluded another scientist, M M M R Chambers, in 1986. "Entire villages have been moved and rebuilt on tailings down-river from the mine-site," commented the Australian Financial Review in late 1988, "where crops grow only after heavy application of artificial fertiliser to the highly acidic soil" (354). "When the mine first came," another Bougainvillean has declared, "everything was so new, we didn't know what to expect. The thing what we were becoming so ignorantly proud of was that it was the biggest open-cut mine in the world. At the time, our thinking was that money can be a supplement to our way of life. But now it's not only that, it is chewing and going right into the people's life and that has disturbed a traditional balance that has existed" (356).
In a central government mission to investigate the environmental effects of the mine, in 1988, the Environment Minister, Perry Zeipi, found the pollution "dreadful and unbelievable" (357). The Jaba river was "full of all kinds of chemicals and wastes" and the people had been forced to abandon traditional fishing (357).
Panguna is situated in the mountainous interior of Bougainville, virtually at the heart of the island, in an area of high rainfall (around 4800mm a year). It registers high seismicity and volcanic risk: earthquakes of 7.1 on the Richter scale are recorded roughly every ten years (347). Prior to construction of the mine, no environmental impact studies were carried out - there were no laws in the territory governing such evaluations (347). While three later pieces of legislation did incorporate some environmental regulations, they were ridiculously inadequate. The 1967 Agreement (already mentioned) obliged BCL to revegetate tailings piles and overburden; the 1971 Overburden and Tailings Agreement was intended to compel BCL to minimize copper pollution and expedite land restoration (but it lapsed in 1980) (347); and the 1974 Agreement empowered the government to collect environmental data from the company - but didn't say what type of data.
It might as well have been that no legal attempts were made to limit environmental damage. Waste rock was simply dumped near the mine (347). From 1973 until 1983, 768 million tonnes of ore and waste was processed, rich in copper and iron pyrites. Of the 373 million tonnes of processed ore, just under 7 million tonnes was exported as concentrate, and the remainder deposited in the Jaba Valley. By 1976 alone, out of 118 million tonnes of waste rock, and 108 million tonnes of tailings which spewed out of the Panguna hole, around a third was "smeared over the valley floor and neighbouring areas", causing "serious environmental change" (327).
The tailings have continued to be released into the Jaba River Valley, and thence have leached into the Kawerong-Jaba river system, completely untreated (347). The only redress has been a short, virtually useless, pipeline to the upper reaches of the Valley (340), and engineering studies which commenced in 1987, to construct the world's largest gravity-flow slurry pipeline from the mine to the Empress Augusta Bay (358). But this innovation risked simply transferring the pollution further into the sea. In 1973, tailing discharges were running at a massive 70,000 tonnes a day - totalling 34,376,000 tonnes between January 1972 and June 1973 alone. At that time, it was estimated that about 60% of the tailings would be carried all the way along the 35km river and into the sea, while the remaining 40% would be deposited on land (359). By 1974, these tailings were eroding at some 539,000 tonnes a month (359).
It seems that around half the tailings has remained in the valley, while finer portions have been carried into the Bay (347). Contaminated with heavy metals - such as copper, zinc, cadmium, mercury and molybdenum (359) - these washes are also high in sulphur, arsenic and mercury. This sedimentation alone would have robbed the Jaba river of its aquatic life, quite apart from the chemical pollution (361).
H R Meier has declared that it will be impossible to restock the river system until long after the mine is closed (362).
By the mid-1980s, some 8000 hectares of the Empress Augusta Bay were covered with tailings, to a copper concentration greater than 500ppm (parts per million) - destroying benthic flora, but not apparently affecting fish to any great extent in the estuary (361). Nonetheless, no-one appears to doubt the profound affect that the operations have had on the major part of the Kawerong/Jaba river (363) - where the "entire length of the valley is covered by sediment up to 60m deep [sic] and 1km wide in basins". At the outflow, the river bed was more than 30 metres deep several years ago, and rising by 3.5m every year (347). Although M R Chambers claims that revegetation of tailings dumps has been relatively successful (347), this, of course, has little or no impact on the rates of leaching into the rivers. It is to be doubted that the company itself has progressed in its thinking, much beyond a statement made in the early '70s by Brian Barry, BCL's public relations manager:
"I get pretty snakey," stomped Barry, "when I hear the conservationists complain about what we're doing to Bougainville, because I live at Toorak, which is a very nice suburb of Melbourne, and I can't go for a walk without stepping in the doggy dirt which has been left by the dear little doggies of the rich people. So why can't they worry about conservation in their own suburbs first?" (28).Whatever the profound environmental consequences of this runaway project, the most serious physical and psychological impacts of the Bougainville mine have undoubtedly derived from the land seizure and land clearances which occurred in the late 1960s. (Of course, we should not minimise the continued loss of agricultural land and water, as the tailings area has expanded) (359). According to M J F Brown, in 1974 some 800 people lost their land rights in the tailings area alone, while 1,400 people's fishing rights in the Kawerong and Jaba were jeopardised by mining operations (359). Some 220 hectares of forest was felled before mining could begin: trees were poisoned with herbicides, then chopped down and burned, while the overburden - rich in fertile volcanic ash - was hosed directly into the river (359).
BCL and its Melbourne and London masters have consistently denied any responsibility for the wave of protests and numerous acts of resistance which have dogged the mine since before its establishment. These have been portrayed as the results of secessionist tendencies in Bougainville, and conflict over the disembursement of royalties and compensation (407). Even when guerilla actions were started in earnest against BCL and CRA in late 1988, the chairperson of RTZ, Sir Alistair Frame, tried to pass over the threats as: "nothing to do with the company" (356). And, this was despite the fact that the guerilla leader, Francis Ona, was a former employee of BCL, and his followers were then wearing T-shirts sporting the emblem "Valley of Tears" - a pointed reference to Richard West's 1976 expose of RTZ and BCL, River of Tears. (Ona, in a letter to the Member of Parliament for South Bougainville, David Sisito, also alleged that a white "mafia-type" network was operating within CRA, with links to the central government) (366).
Certainly John Momis - the long-standing critic of BCL, and one of PNG's ablest political leaders - is in no doubt of the responsibility that the company bears for the misfortunes of the people. In his role as Provincial Affairs Minister in the central government, Momis rounded on BCL in late 1988. He claimed that it had "blatantly disregarded the longstanding grievances of the Panguna landowners" (367), and he called for a tripartite agreement to be concluded between the landowners, the company and the government. Momis also stated that foreign traders and entrepreneurs, who have taken over many local businesses on Bougainville, were sponsored by the company through its Bougainville Copper Foundation (368). The Australian Financial Review itself commented, in December 1988, on the "growing and vocal opinion that [the landowners] would be better off if the company just packed up and left" (368).
Panguna lies at the heart of the land of the Nasioi people: their reaction to CRA's first explorations was to set the unequivocal tone for years to come. "Bewildered, frightened and hostile," wrote Don Woolford of this early period, "they did what they could to stop the project. Mothers put babies on survey pegs to stop the pegs being hammered in ... A village leader publicly threatened to cut his throat in protest. Workers were occasionally assaulted ... The protests were supported by the American-born Bishop of Bougainville..." (334).
When CRA secured permission to prospect on 10,000 square miles of the island, the local fight was taken up at central level, where Bougainville representative, Paul Lapun, demanded that rights over subsoil of PNG should remain with the people, not the state. After an initial setback - and an incident when five men were jailed for expelling BCL prospectors - Lapun's motion passed by 31 votes to 21 (334).
It was a short-run victory, however: the 1967 mining lease virtually negated the land rights supposedly guaranteed the previous year (334). When construction for the port and township (at Arawa) started, it was coastal people around Rorovana who felt the brunt.
In early 1969, CRA told the Administration that it wanted to take-over 240 acres out of some 4000 acres owned by the Rorovana people around Keita. A derisory A$105 per acre, plus A$2 per felled coconut palm, was offered in compensation. The Rorovanans soundly rejected the offer.
Weak attempts at negotiating a takeover failed miserably and, on August 1 1969, backed by seventy-five riot police flown in from Port Moresby, CRA prepared to take possession of the land. In the early morning, led by District Commissioner Ashton, a hundred police carrying rifles, shields, batons and gas-masks, marched through the coconut groves onto Rorovana land. It was the women, through whom the land is held by matrilineal inheritance, who led the resistance (369):
"Three helicopters hovered above. A few hundred yards from the land a delegation of about twenty-five villagers met the party and asked for fresh talks. Ashton replied that there had been ample opportunity for talking and the survey must begin. The police moved onto the narrow stretch of beach and formed a protective barrier around the surveyors. Simultaneously about six hundred villagers materialized from the jungle undergrowth. As soon as the first marker was in, about ten women darted from among the silent spectators and tried to pull it out. A rugby-style scrimmage developed, with police pulling the women away, only to have them immediately return to the fray. As the watching villagers moved closer, the main body of police put on their masks in case tear gas was needed. At the same time more women joined the scuffle. Finally the marker was rolled free. The villagers cheered and clapped and moved off. No blows were struck and no weapons were displayed by the villagers. A few of the village men momentarily looked as if they would help the women, but they were restrained by their own people and Middlemiss, the only white face in the Rorovanan ranks. Both sides seemed happy with their day's work. From the Administration point of view, surveying had begun with only what it regarded as a token protest and no violence worth speaking of. From the Rorovanan viewpoint, a sample of village power had been offered and a symbolic victory achieved. Surveying continued over the weekend without hindrance" (334).However, this was only the "lull before the storm".
"On Monday 4 August, CRA, its surveying finished, moved in bulldozers to clear the jungle and knock down the coconut trees. The Rorovanans stayed away. But the following morning about sixty-five villagers lined up in front of the bulldozers. They ignored several calls to move and stubbornly held their ground when police, holding their batons horizontally, tried to shepherd them off. Several rounds of tear gas were fired, but the fumes wafted away. Finally a controlled baton charge - in which the police aimed only at the legs - was ordered. In the melee one villager suffered a gashed leg. The drawing of blood apparently had a similar symbolic significance to the removal of the marker the previous Friday. As soon as it occurred the villagers moved away, leaving the bulldozers free to continue their work. Next day the bulldozing continued and Ashton told reporters he thought the crisis was over. He had spoken prematurely: politically, the crisis was beginning. Early on the Thursday hundreds of villagers, many from the other communities, walked onto the land. They moved in orderly fashion and in small groups. A few carried weapons - multipronged fishing spears, tomahawks, or bows and arrows. One man wore a bright yellow CRA hard hat. The build-up was watched by helicopter, and Ashton asked the company to suspend work for the day. The same thing happened on Friday. Spokesmen for the villagers said they had the support of most communities in the sub-district. Some men had walked all day to join. The Arawa villagers, well aware that their land was next on the list, were the most prominent allies" (334, 370).From then on, opposition gathered speed. A Bougainville farmer was jailed for throwing a CRA geologist into a stream (371). The Territory's public solicitor, a strong supporter of land rights, flew to Rorovana to help the community; a new organisation, Napidakoe NavitU, was set up to bulwark the protest, and immediately gained the support of hundreds of people. In Australia itself, various white supporters of the Nasioi and Rorovanans began speaking out against the Australian administration's heavy-handedness. Incensed by photos of the tribespeople lined up against riot forces and CRA bulldozers, the Seamen's Union in four ports carried a resolution condemning the "planned seizure of the indigenous peoples' land" (334).
At this point, the Australian government called in CRA for the first time in the crisis. With a federal election only four months off, the government and company hammered out a new offer to the dispossessed indigenous community. Total acreage of land requisitioned was reduced by 35 acres, reclassified as forty-year leasehold at A$50 an acre a year, with A$30,000 compensation and 7,000 BCL shares at par (334).
While most Bougainvilleans did not take kindly to the new offer, PNG independence was drawing near, and the fight for proper compensation was mainly conducted at a political level.
This was true, at any rate, until two decades later, in 1988. In January that year, landowners marched on the mine demanding higher compensation (357). Three months afterwards, the same landowners lodged a claim for 10 billion kina (A$14.5 billion) - a demand which few people took seriously at the time (348).
By the end of the year, however, the farmers were once again adopting direct action. In mid-November, one hundred of them set up a blockade on the roads, using heavy machinery (372). Later the same month, a small group of dissidents, led by Francis Ona, using explosives and walkie-talkies stolen from the company stores, burned BCL buildings and a helicopter, destroying vital communications and electricity installations (348, 373).
Two hundred police were drafted in to deal with this new threat (372). The BCL chair, Don Carruthers, meanwhile told the new government of Prime Minister Namaliu that it would "seriously reconsider" its future investment in PNG (including its projects at Mt Kare and Hidden Valley in Morobe province, on which it was planning to spend K200 million in 1989). Prime Minister Namaliu angrily retorted that he recalled "... numerous Australian mining companies having difficulties with local tribal landowners, environmental groups and even state and national government", without wielding a big stick (367).
The following month, production was halted as transmission lines were bombed. CRA and BCL shares fell dramatically (347), and trading closed until further notice (368). PNG Opposition leader Paias Wingti attacked Namaliu for not crushing the landowners. Squeezed on both sides, Namaliu was far from taciturn. Condemning "Rambo-style terrorism", he threatened to send in the troops with a "shoot to kill" policy. Further damage followed, but the troops still remained in base (375).
By the middle of the month, Francis Ona had met with the government, some of the saboteurs handed in their ammunition, and a curfew was declared (376). The mine returned to production and, despite the assaults, BCL recorded fat profits for 1988 (377). However, within a few weeks, as troops were drafted into Bougainville (378), attacks on mineworkers and a police patrol (379) resulted in the first deaths. These were to rise to a dozen by April. By then, the forces were operating a "shoot to kill" policy and 400 troops were based on the island (380). Although the local press speculated that Francis Ona was losing support, Father Robert Wiley, a Catholic priest from Panguna, knew otherwise: "When I talk with the people I don't get that idea at all. When I go the villages, they are praying for him" (381).
By mid-May, Bougainville copper mine was at a standstill, though the company put a brave face on its demise and began to make some repairs (382). The cost in lost production from the mine had now reached around K52 million, with the central government in Port Moresby forfeiting some K1.5 million every day in lost revenues (383).
Australia then supplied four Iroquois helicopters, ostensibly for "non-military" purposes (383). This perfidious action was to cost several innocent lives, as the aircraft - kitted-out with machine guns - strafed villages and terrorised women and children in sorties which were compared to those of US forces in Vietnam a decade earlier (384).
In September, BCL tried to re-open the mine, only to shut it down almost immediately, as a work bus was attacked by members of Ona's Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) (385). At the same time, the Melanesian Solidarity Front for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (MELSOL) urged a cessation of the fighting, withdrawal of central government troops, and a negotiated settlement (386).
By now, there were 1000 central government troops and police on Bougainville island, in hot pursuit of perhaps as few as a hundred Ona-led followers (387). Rumours began circulating that BCL had closed for the last time, although the company claimed that the mine was: "in a state of readiness rather than ... being ... mothballed" (388).
Reports of atrocities on the island had been appearing in many articles around the world by this time. Most (though not all of them) cited arbitrary, brutal behaviour by"Rambo"-style PNG forces, aimed at villagers, who became increasingly sympathetic to the BRA (389).
Bougainville Copper continued to "retrench" 2,000 of its workers - a euphemism for sacking them (390). And, as the New Year dawned, the mine finally dropped all pretence at carrying on (391). Ona promptly set up the Republic of Mekanui and declared its independence from Papua New Guinea (392).
The central government ignored the call and petitioned the World Bank for US$130 million, to make up a deficit allegedly caused by events on Bougainville (393). Meanwhile, landowners on the mainland blockaded another Australian managed mine, Ok Tedi, demanding compensation for use of a road and increased royalties (394). The term "to bougainville" was beginning to gain currency in the Pacific region!
In February 1990, CRA evacuated all its Australian personnel (395) as reports circulated of a new "clash" between BRA and PNG forces, in which 20 "rebels" were allegedly killed (396). CRA estimated that renewed start-up of the mine would cost at least K100 million.
The withdrawal of expatriate workers effectively resulted in the abandonment of Bougainville to the BRA. Strikingly - within a fortnight of evacuation - the BRA sat down to talks with the central government (397). Over the next few months all other BCL employees pulled out, leaving the entire mine site to those sympathetic to independence (398). In May 1990, Ona declared formal secession - a move backed by a wide cross-section of Bougainvillians (399), including the provincial Premier. In response, the central government blockaded the island (400). The World Bank then agreed to increase its aid to PNG by US$280 million (401) and - after international and national pressure - Prime Minister Namaliu offered a peace deal to Bougainville which would award around K220 million in development aid to the landowners and other islanders (402).
Peace talks between the islanders and the Port Moresby government began in June (403); CRA acknowledged that the mine would not re-open for some time (404). In August 1990, an Accord was finally signed between the provincial government for the Solomons and the Namaliu government. The blockade was lifted (405). But the burning question of compensation is one that is not likely to go away, however the situation in Bougainville is ultimately resolved. It is complicated by the fact that Melanesians - like Aboriginal Australians and many other indigenous people - can never permit their land to be sold once-and-for-all. Land is a "second skin" (410), and each new generation claims compensation for any plot which was previously leased or "sold". Even if the compensation claims put forward bythe older Bougainville Islanders could be settled, younger landowners would be demanding their own settlements.
To date, compensation has been paid into the Panguna landowners trust, but many islanders are dissatisfied with its composition and membership and have been seeking to have it changed (354).
The 1974 Bougainville agreement covered five areas of compensation: occupation fees; payment for restriction of access; payment for cleared land; payment for physically used land; and payments into the Trust Fund. Five year renegotiations were possible (338). Government earnings from the mine since 1972 have come to around K1 billion - including the various kinds of compensation (348, 3(;8). Out of this, only around K1.5 million is paid annually into the landowners' Trust Fund. (The Mining Journal claims that K75 million has been paid since 1972 which averages nearly K5 million a year a figure that presumably derives from BCL) (380).
As early as 1981, North Solomons' political leaders were expressing considerable dissatisfaction at declining royalty receipts and increasing social commitments, while seeking major changes in the allocation of revenues between central and provincial governments (338). But, it was not until 1988, that the central government began seriously to address this highly contentious issue. In June 1988 it set up a holding company called Mineral Resources Development Co. (MRDC) to purchase state equity in new mining projects (203). Early the following year, it established a local mining task force to advise the Provincial Minister for Mines and the Cabinet on important political, social and economic issues surrounding mineral exploitation in New Ireland: this task force includes the landowners of Lihir Island.
Then, in February 1989, the government announced that it would increase the proportionate share of payments to landowners from 95:5 to 80:20. A special mining lease would be agreed with each mining company, covering currency repatriation, customs duties and similar charges. While the royalty on production would still remain at 1.25%, marginal corporate income tax would rise from 35% to 58%, for project investments with an annual compounded rate of return more than 20%. The provincial governments would be compensated by a 1% charge on total export value of minerals.
However, this arrangement did not satisfy the provincial governor of Bougainville (and now head of state) Joseph Kabui, who in April 1989 demanded that BCL should give A$14 million - or even A$42 million - to the community as a "goodwill" payment (265, 411).
At the time of writing, such proposals seem highly speculative. The savage irony is, of course, that no meaningful compensation will be provided to the Bougainville people unless the mine resumes profitable production. Yet, were CRA/BCL to adequately fund the mammoth task of cleaning-up the Jaba valley and rehabilitating the devastated land, its profits would be set at nought.
The Mount Kare gold prospect, discovered by CRA in the Highlands of PNG in 1986, has since become the scene of a "frontier gold rush". Worried by the reaction of local people, CRA initially proposed a small-scale mine - possibly increasing to one million tonnes ore (grading at 3-5gm/tonne gold in three million tonnes of ore) (288, 412). Its Hidden Valley gold prospect has, for the last two years, been "very close to production" (272) with the expectation that it will produce up to 200,000 ounces of gold and two million ounces of silver each year. Gold on Mount Kare
By mid-1989, several thousand local people at Mount Kare, joined by indigenous prospectors from outside the area, were panning almost unbelievably rich gold deposits, left by a landslide. Nuggets weighing up to ten ounces (sic) were being recovered on a regular basis, and individual miners were panning around 30/40 ounces of gold a week (413).
The PNG government was placed in a dilemma - supporting the rights of traditional landowners to the pickings, while upholding CRA's exploration rights. Eventually a new JV corporation between CRA and one group of landowners was set up.
In the mid-'eighties, it was becoming clear to CRA, that its reliance on over-supplied commodity products in a saturated market did not augur a stable future. It needed to move downstream, diversify geographically and conclude large, secure, long-term contracts for raw materials, to avoid the swings and roundabouts of spot trading (414). Forays abroad: a note on Europe and the USA
Its first move along these lines was to prove quite spectacular and, to date, successful: its US$400 million purchase of most of the aluminium interests of the US weapons and aerospace company, Martin Marietta (MMC). Its second move ultimately fell on stony ground or to be more precise, united opposition - between an alliance of West German Social Democrats, Grunen (Greens) and trade unionists.
CRA had flirted with two of West Germany's major steel producers, Krupp Stahl and ICloeckner Werke, in the early 1980s, when the Australian company offered to invest up to A$200 million in the supply coal for a new coal gasification plant in the Republic (412). The partners re-united three years later in a merger-vehicle called SKK (Stahl-werke Krupp Kloeckner) (there's nothing like switching around syllables to pass off an old car with new paint!). CRA would secure 35% of the new partnership in return for supplying iron ore worth around DM525 million. The German companies would get secure supplies, while CRA would undercut the market in higher-quality Brazilian ore (with its lower alumina content), gain access to direct smelting technology and later could enter directly into the steel business in Australia or Asia (414, 416).
By July 1985, however, the marriage was off. Cries of "scandal" and "irresponsible" greeted news of the deal, when Social Democrats and Greens in the Bundestag realised that the merger would restrict steel-making capacity and rolling, with the loss of around 3000 jobs. Even the government was lukewarm, and the EEC far from happy: Kloeckner having refused to submit its highly modern carbon steel-making and hot strip mill to Brussels' production quota (414). West German trade unions were also vocal in opposition to the plans (417), and it was finally declared dead in the water, when Christian Democrats in Lower Saxony and the workforce at Kloeckner's Georgsmarienhutte works near Osnabruck, dug in their heels (416, 418).
Meanwhile, Comalco had gained more than a toe-hold in the USA. After early negotiations with one of the country's biggest aluminium producers (416), the company (now 67%owned by CRA) acquired a Kentucky rolling mill, aluminium scrap facilities, a smelter at Goldendale, and Martin Marietta Corporation's terminal at Portland, Oregon (used in 1988 to send nuclear fuel to Britain. It also secured access to MMC's new technology in smelting and aluminium processing (420), and a small, but significant, stake in the Boke bauxite mine in Guinea (421). The deal was signed and sealed in April 1985 (38, 422). In just over a year, however, Commonwealth Aluminium, the Comalco subsidiary which technically took over the Goldendale smelter (423), was locking out its workforce, as it pushed through a new work contract in the face of opposition from the USWA (United Steelworkers of America) (424). (USWA is the union which took on RTZ's Rio Algom subsidiary in its Elliot Lake Mines and won a unique health and safety contract at around this time - see Rio Algom). It was clear that Comalco wanted to shut down a plant it saw as uneconomical: shutdown costs were estimated at US$10 million (425) and, in early 1987, the company put Goldendale on the market for nearly twice that amount (US$ 18.7 million) (426).
From its earliest days, CRA has been the target of vociferous and prolonged opposition by numerous communities: ranging from the resistance of the Mapoon people (and their return to traditional land on the Comalco mining lease), to major manifestations in New Zealand, from 1975 onwards, against the Tiwai Point pricing deal; from the destruction of prospecting equipment (as in Victoria, when the company intended carrying out cyanide solution mining) to what is probably the best-orchestrated attempt to close down a mine made in recent times: the revolt by traditional Bougainville land-owners against operations at the Panguna copper mine. Actions against CRA
Perhaps the most significant long-term campaigning has been in the hands of Aboriginal Land Council representatives, who have pioneered transnational solidarity for more than a decade. In 1978, three Aboriginal representatives from North Queensland undertook a historic visit to Britain and Europe, where they addressed press conferences, appeared on television and visited the offices of RTZ (427). In 1982, when Aboriginal representatives Shorty O'Neill (National Federation of Land Councils) and Jimmy Biendurri (Kimberley Land Council) rose at an RTZ annual general meeting to condemn the desecration of Lake Arygle sacred sites, the chair, Anthony Tuke, brought the meeting to an abrupt halt. The ensuing chaos - during which police were called to remove shareholding protestors - was reported around the world (428). Six years later, two Aboriginal representatives of the Western Desert Land Council also attended the RTZ AGM to signal the vehement opposition of the Martu to CRA's plans at Rudall River. This visit was also reported widely in the media (429).
Aboriginal people and their supporters have often attended CRA AGM's in Melbourne starting in 1976 with questions asked by Jesuits (430). In 1987, the Northern Land Council rejected applications by CRA for certain exploration rights, on learning of the company's appalling record elsewhere (80).
With little doubt, CRA is the most feared and least loved of all Australian (and perhaps global) mining companies.
"The Philippines is far more densely mineralised than Australia, the tonnages are bigger and the terrain is largely unexplored. The place is wide open". That was the opinion of a Financial Times correspondent in 1989 (431). It was around the same time that CRA began expressing an interest in the country. True to form, within a year the Australian company had bought into a gold and copper prospect in the Mankayan region of Benguet province, high in the Cordillera. Content with nothing less than a controlling share, CRA soon took over the majority of Galactic Resources equity in the Far Southeast project (432) - giving it 30% of the joint venture and later the whole 40% share. This may still seem a mere mouse's bite of the cheddar but, under Philippines law, a foreign company may now hold more than 40% of any mine. CRA in the Philippines
CRA's 60% domestic partner is Lepanto Consolidated Mining; Lepanto is itself substantially owned by foreign investors (433).
By early 1991, the Far South East project was being advertised as potentially the largest gold mine in the Philippines (434). It will be an underground mine - an unusual development for CRA, but not for its host country. While this will reduce some of the adverse social and environmental impacts of the project, it will not avoid removal of around 150 Kanka-aney people from the hamlet of Tabbak, nor the destruction of their coffee, mango and banana plantations (435) and burial sites.
The families being removed from the project site have been offered some compensation, though it is derisory in light of the fact that they are losing their traditional land. They predict that the mine will cause subsidence of the soil, landslides, and pollution of underground water supplies. Such fears have a solid foundation. Since 1936, CRA's partner, Lepanto, has built up a reputation as one of the most unscrupulous, dangerous and negligent of all Philippines mining companies. As a virtual feudal lord of the Mankayan mining district, Lepanto has ruthlessly suppressed free trade unions (436), and sacked "disloyal" workers at will (437).
Current operations at Lepanto have been heavily criticised - in particular the operations of a copper concentrate dryer which local farmers claim has ruined their crops and affected the health of their livestock and families: allegations substantiated by a number of recent fact finding missions (438). Lepanto is also a major logging company- and its timber operations have led to the siltation of local rivers, the erosion of roads, the loss of freshwater fish and the destruction of rice paddies (439).
Perhaps worst of all, in the long term, is the legacy left by four tailings dams, two of which are in an appalling state of disrepair and one of which collapsed completely in 1986, leading to a deluge of acidic waste and heavy metals cascading into the Mankayan river. Far South East will be using a "new" tailings dam, but it is one which will probably leach into the same valley, and is being constructed in an area of heavy seismic activity and often torrential rains. It will wipe out a traditional gold-panning site.
Lepanto is almost a byword for mining disaster in the Philippines. It has done virtually nothing to clear up the mess it has caused over more than half a century, nor to adequately compensate for those affected by its noxious fumes, the poisoned waters and the ravaged agriculture. And it is this rogue stallion to which CRA has hitched its cart.
Contact: PARTiZANS, 218 Liverpool Rd, London N1 1LE, UK.
SOURCE: "The Gulliver File - Mines, people and land: a global battleground" by Roger Moody.
Published in 1992 by Minewatch, 218 Liverpool Road, London Nl ILE, UK, and WISE-Glen Aplin, Po Box 87, Glen Aplin Q 4381, Australia.
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Page last updated December 6, 1997.
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