Mining giant’s rising star Brandon Craig warns even green policy stalwarts like Canada are moving to protect their economies
‘If you want to compete, and your economy ends up at risk, you’ve got to make difficult choices,’ said Brandon Craig who questioned whether Australia’s IR, tax and climate targets were at odds with its natural resource ambitions.
BHP rising star Brandon Craig has warned Labor it needs to reconsider how policy settings are calibrated, including around emissions and climate targets, or risk being left behind by governments hungrier for mining investment.
Investment rivals like Chile, Argentina, the United States and Mark Carney’s Canada were acting to attract and secure multi-billion dollar investment from miners, but Australia was failing to meet their terms.
Mr Craig has been president of BHP Americas since March 2024 and previously ran the mining giant’s iron ore operations in Western Australia for about four years. He is one of the contenders to succeed Mike Henry as BHP chief, and currently has responsibility for the company’s big bets on copper in South America and the US, potash in Canada, plus the Samarco iron ore joint venture in Brazil.
Proactive governments were jostling for mining activity and in doing so, would strengthen their respective economies, Mr Craig told The Australian.
“The thing that really stands out for me is that the rest of the world is working incredibly hard to incentivise mining, and critical mineral resource investment for a range of reasons – security of supply, strategic reasons, concern over supply chain risks and other factors,” he said.
“There’s a huge opportunity for Australia to think about what are the right industrial policy settings to attract investment in what is going to be a period where the mining industry in copper alone over the next 10 years needs to invest a quarter of a trillion dollars ($US250bn).”
BHP wants to see the 30 per cent corporate tax rate in Australia lowered closer to 20 per cent, and tap reliable and competitively priced power. It has rallied against the Albanese government’s industrial relations changes and an extraordinarily high royalty regime in Queensland that has led to more than a thousand job losses in the coal industry.
Mr Craig suggested it was time to reconsider net zero and decarbonisation policies to safeguard Australia’s economy. “I would let readers form their own conclusions but I think if we contrast directionally where the rest of the world is going versus where Australia is going across energy policy, tax policy, industrial policy, deregulation, even in some respects net zero positioning and decarbonisation, even stalwarts like Canada – in the face of tariffs and the impact to the economy from US policy – is walking back policies that the country can’t afford anymore,” he said.
“So you do reach a point where a country can only afford a set number of things. If you want to compete, and your economy ends up at risk, you’ve got to make difficult choices.
“These geopolitical forces playing out are very substantial, and economies around the world are positioning to deal with that. I think there’s a question to be asked, which is where does Australia fit, and how is it positioning?”
Mr Craig pointed to Argentina, where he is tasked with bringing the potentially huge Vicuna copper project to life in partnership with Lundin, as an example. Under President Javier Milei’s RIGI policy – an incentive regime for large investments – the tax rate falls from 35 per cent to 25 per cent, there are 40-year tax stability agreements and dividend expatriation taxes are cut from 7 per cent to 3.5 per cent while miners have access have access to international arbitration to settle any disputes.
In the more established mining jurisdiction of Chile, where voters go to the polls this weekend and are tipped to elect Jose Antonio Kast as the country’s first hard-right leader since dictator Augusto Pinochet, BHP is hopeful of greater tax stability.
“We suspect, and I use the word suspect because it’s not confirmed, that there will be improvements to the tax regime … because you have Chile competing with Argentina for capital investment into mining,” Mr Craig said.
“You can see how determined the US administration is to attract mining investment and resource investment and so on, not just for copper, but other critical minerals, rare earths and similar.
“You then contrast that to Australia, and Australia doesn’t have any of that at the moment.”
Mr Craig said Canada was looking at major infrastructure investments, ways to supply competitively priced energy and pre-engagement with First Nations stakeholders.
Meanwhile, any remaining hopes BHP had of securing Anglo American and its copper assets faded when Anglo and Teck Resources shareholders voted overnight on Wednesday to approve their merger.
In November, BHP backed out of a play for Anglo for the second time in 18 months.
BHP has sizeable investments in copper including in Chile with the Escondida and Spence mines, the Antamina joint venture in Peru and the Vicuna project in Argentina, all of which were on track.
“The Escondida plan is coming together really well. The economics look pretty attractive. Brownfield copper in a jurisdiction we know and understand is always going to be pretty attractive,” he said.
“If you compare the capital intensity of Escondida growth or Vicuna, to acquisitions and divestments, for example, building is incredibly attractive.
“That’s why it still tends to be the default of what we do. What is the business BHP is in? We discover and we develop resources. So, we have to have the muscles to find resources and then the capability to develop them efficiently into future businesses.”
Mr Craig’s time in charge of BHP’s iron ore mines in WA crossed over with Simon Trott who is running rival Rio Tinto. Mr Trott, who became Rio CEO in August, succeeded Mr Craig as president of the Chamber of Minerals and Energy in WA when Mr Craig left Perth to take up his role in the Americas.
Originally published as Mining giant’s rising star Brandon Craig warns even green policy stalwarts like Canada are moving to protect their economies
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