Nearly a month since Rio Tinto detonated the Juukan Gorge caves over the protests of their traditional owners, the mining giant’s chairman, Simon Thompson, nailed his apology on the first attempt. “On behalf of the Rio Tinto board, I would like to apologise to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people,” Thompson said on Friday.

Rio Tinto’s management team spent the preceding four weeks provoking the world’s escalating abhorrence with iterative, disingenuous, pedantic and qualified apologies – offered mostly in the stark absence of Rio’s suddenly invisible chief executive, Jean-Sébastien Jacques.