Offsider rejects ex-Rio chief Sam Walsh’s cave assertions
A claim by former Rio Tinto CEO Sam Walsh that he had issued instructions not to destroy the Juukan Gorge caves has been rubbished by his old iron ore chief.
A claim by former Rio Tinto chief executive Sam Walsh that he had issued instructions for the mining giant not to destroy the ancient Juukan Gorge caves in the Pilbara has been rubbished by his old iron ore chief.
On Friday, Rio Tinto released a letter from former iron ore division head Greg Lilleyman — now chief operating officer of Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group — in which he challenged Mr Walsh’s versions of events.
On the eve of Rio Tinto’s appearance before a federal parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of the caves in May, Mr Walsh told The Australian Financial Review he had given the direction to not mine the site shortly after the company was given formal state approval to do so. He said at the time he had contacted Mr Lilleyman to confirm the accuracy of his memory of events.
But Mr Lilleyman says in his letter that he has no recollection of ever receiving such a direction from Mr Walsh. “It is not correct that in the past two weeks Mr Walsh contacted me to confirm his memory of events regarding an instruction not to mine Juukan Gorge,” Mr Lilleyman wrote in the letter, dated August 10.
“A few weeks ago I bumped into Mr Walsh on Terrace Rd in East Perth. We had a brief conversation during which Mr Walsh commented that he had issued an instruction that Juukan Gorge should not be mined. I did not confirm that this was also my recollection, as it is not.”
In his statement to the AFR, Mr Walsh said he would have given the instruction sometime after Rio Tinto was granted approval under section 18 of the Aboriginal Heritage Act to use the land.
Mr Lilleyman noted in his letter that he had already left his role in the Rio Tinto iron ore division by the time that occurred on December 31, 2013. “If Mr Walsh had issued an instruction that Juukan Gorge should not be mined soon after Rio Tinto obtained its section 18 … this was at a time when Andrew Harding had been CEO of Rio Tinto Iron Ore for almost 12 months and I had had no accountability for iron ore operations for approximately eight months,” he said.
The letter was released among several other documents as part of Rio Tinto’s latest response to the parliamentary inquiry.
In its response, Rio Tinto said it had reviewed Mr Walsh’s Rio Tinto emails from 2013 and 2014 and had not found any mention of the sites. “Further, a review of all email correspondence to and from Mr Lilleyman and a range of other potentially relevant personnel in this time period did not locate any evidence to support Mr Walsh’s alleged statements.’’
The inquiry was called amid widespread outrage over the destruction of the caves, where artefacts dating back as far as 46,000 years had been unearthed.
One of the archaeologists involved in the salvage dig at the caves had previously said the site was of “the highest archaeological significance in Australia”, but the caves were drilled with explosives and detonated in late May.
The latest responses also revealed that the extra 8.1 million tonnes of iron ore accessed by Rio Tinto as a result of its decision to include the caves in its mine plan would have generated $4.7m in payments to the gorge’s traditional owners, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people.
“However, after the events on 24 May 2020, Rio Tinto paused all operations in the Juukan Gorge area, which goes well beyond the Juukan rock shelters,” the company said. “No material has been moved to date and, as such, the PKKP have not received any financial benefit. Rio Tinto continues to work closely with the PKKP in respect of next steps.”
Rio Tinto chief JS Jacques is currently in Western Australia, where he is planning to meet with representatives of the PKKP and other Indigenous groups.