Juukan debacle paints miners as evil, says Orica chief executive Alberto Calderon
Rio Tinto’s destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves in Western Australia’s Pilbara has ‘damaged the entire industry’.
Rio Tinto’s destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves in Western Australia’s Pilbara has damaged the entire industry and wrongly cast miners as an “evil empire”, according to one of its biggest suppliers, Orica.
The incident, which led to the ousting of Rio chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques and other top management, had reverberated through the sector and would take a significant time to fix.
“I have been tied to mining a long time and I’m sad to see it happen,” Orica chief executive Alberto Calderon told The Australian. “We have fought for so long to be good corporate citizens and so this just needs to be dealt carefully as it’s a big moment for Australia.”
Orica supplies half of the Australian mining industry’s explosives needs, with Rio one of its major clients. “That’s why we’re all affected by this,” he said.
“Before Orica I was in BHP, so I am invested in mining. But what this does is, it’s perceived like an evil empire and it’s not.
“We need to, all of us, really help again recuperate the good that mining can do.”
Mr Calderon has been among executives linked to the top job at Rio, but said he was focused on playing his own part in ensuring the image of the industry was restored and improved.
“I’ve been affected personally because I’ve spent so many years in the industry and I know mining can create so much good. But then this has put it in such a bad light. So for the industry we must do better,” Mr Calderon said.
“This will reverberate for a long time. It needs an Australian understanding. This is a wonderful country but you need to understand it well. It’s very sad in the end what has happened.”
Investors and mining customers had also raised the incident, the Orica boss said.
“I talk to investors all the time and I expressed the view that we have a license to operate and that needs to be well taken care of. In the end that goes to the heart of the problem. All of us who are in the industry must not take it for granted.”
Rio is under pressure to restructure its corporate presence towards an Australian bias. The WA government has consistently said it should have a WA director, given more than 75 per cent of its assets sit within the state, while others have suggested the role of an Australian managing director should be reinstated to keep a closer watch on its local operations, which account for the bulk of its earnings.
Rio will almost certainly look to an external appointment given the lack of internal options, but it may still want an executive with previous experience at the company, according to analysts.
Investor pressure played a key role in the downfall of the trio, after an earlier board review cleared the trio of any direct blame for the destruction of the 46,000-year-old heritage sites and recommended only the loss of short-term bonuses worth about $7m.
Executives with prior Rio experience who could replace Mr Jacques include Shell’s Zoe Yujnovich, Newcrest Mining boss Sandeep Biswas, OZ Mineral’s chief executive Andrew Cole, or Ampol’s Matt Halliday.
If Rio were to look outside its historic ranks, it could look to Mr Calderon, Energy Australia boss Catherine Tanna, South32’s Graham Kerr, or Anglo American chief financial officer Stephen Pearce, who held the same role at Fortescue Metals.
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