Minerals Council chief Brendan Pearson steps down after BHP fallout

BHP’s divergence of views with the Minerals Council chief has seen an abrupt end to his leadership.

Outgoing Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Brendan Pearson.

BHP’s falling out with the Minerals Council of Australia has claimed the scalp of the lobby group’s chief executive, Brendan Pearson.

Mr Pearson announced late yesterday that he was stepping down from the role after almost a decade with the group, including the past three-and-a-half years as CEO.

Mr Pearson played a key role in the Minerals Council’s campaigns against both the Resource Super Profits Tax and the carbon tax during his time with the group, helping save its members potentially billions of dollars in taxes and entrenching the Minerals Council as one of the nation’s biggest and most influential industry groups.

But his advocacy for coal and opposition to the Finkel review’s Clean Energy Target left him and the MCA increasingly isolated from BHP, with the simmering tensions coming to the surface in recent weeks.

It is understood that Mr Pearson first saw the writing on the wall in a board meeting during the MCA’s annual Minerals Week in Canberra earlier this month.

Sources close to the situation said the head of BHP’s Australian operations, Mike Henry, asked Minerals Council representatives to leave the meeting, leaving only member representatives present. Mr Henry is then understood to have expressed to the other members that BHP had lost confidence in Mr Pearson’s leadership.

The divergence of views between BHP and the MCA has since spilt over into the public arena.

On Tuesday, Mr Henry used an address to an Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce lunch in Melbourne to renew its call for a Clean Energy Target, officially splitting from the MCA’s climate change position.

BHP also this week said it would review its membership of the Minerals Council and other industry groups in response to pressure from some activist shareholders, although Mr Henry stressed it was unlikely that BHP would actually leave altogether.

BHP runs one of the nation’s biggest thermal coal export mines, Mt Arthur in the Hunter Valley, and it is also one of the biggest consumers of power on the east coast grid, with a total bill of $300 million to $350m a year.

But it is not aligned with the Minerals Council’s stance that new cleaner coal-fired plants should be built without carbon capture and storage, and that the focus of the power system should be mainly on affordability and energy security.

BHP yesterday declined to comment on Mr Pearson’s departure, but a spokesman for fellow mining giant Rio Tinto thanked Mr Pearson “his successful and dedicated service to the MCA”.

“The MCA is a valuable organisation for Rio Tinto and we look forward to working with Brendan’s replacement in the future,” the spokesman said.

Mr Pearson’s advocacy for coal has helped make him a popular figure among the Nationals and the right wing of the Liberal Party, and Queensland senator and former resources minister Matt Canavan yesterday praised Mr Pearson’s work.

“He’s made a huge impact in the past year or two, a lot of people are finally coming along to the common-sense position that we should maybe use some of this coal that we export all around the world. Brendan can take a lot of credit for that,” Mr Canavan told The Weekend Australian.

“I’m not going to get into the internal politics of the Minerals Council except to say is that as I drive around the country more and more people (support coal).”

Mr Pearson himself declined to comment, although he said in a statement that he had been pleased to have built “coalitions of interest across a range of policy issues” during his time at the helm.

“Particular challenges to the coal, iron ore and gold sectors have been (and continue to be) met resolutely, while amalgamations with uranium and coal sector bodies have been productive,” Mr Pearson said.

“The mining and carbon taxes have been repealed, there is bipartisan support for the Fuel Tax Credits scheme and I am confident there will be much-needed reform of the GST distribution system over the next 12 months.”