The overdue axing of Rio Tinto’s contemptible management team 10 days ago should never have released pressure on the company’s board to radically reconstitute itself, given its own torpid oversight of the Juukan Gorge scandal.

If it has, that is the inevitable result of the company’s largest Australian shareholders expressing their premature satisfaction two Fridays ago that “the board has listened to investors” and “appropriate responsibility has now been taken by executives at Rio Tinto”.