BHP and Rio Tinto call for permanent Indigenous voice in Australia's Parliament

[FlandersNed]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-indigenous-mining-idUSKCN1PP0F9?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5c52ac5604d3015f3c478234&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

I wonder why these companies of all people would raise this issue.

[Mighty AU]

Cynical me would suggest it’s because some Aboriginal land right holders are known to sell the rights to their land to mining companies, if there’s big money offered in return. While there are many Aboriginal Australians who are against mining and big industry, I would dare suggest that mining companies would be more likely to find an ally in an Indigenous MP, than your average Labor or Nationals MP.

[Download]

This might come off as a bit offensive but the relationship between mining/energy companies and the aboriginal corporations that manage traditional land ownership is disgusting. It's incredibly corrupt and allows a small number of aboriginal families to exclude other aboriginal families living in the same area from receiving the mining/energy royalities they're supposed to be receiving.

I won't name the company I worked for or the aboriginal family the company was negotiating with but they were so disgustingly corrupt. Things like requiring "consultation fees" that were never going to be distributed to the aboriginal families that lived in the native title area and were eithout a doubt going into the pockets of the "elders". These fees were quite often paid in cash and were negotiated behind the scene with threats of stirring up protests for non-compliance. I imagine the mining companies find it annoying, but paying out a few tens of thousands of dollars every so often was generally preferable to weeks of costly protests that dragged project development on.

[Azza]

Haha, fucking BHP and Rio.

Get some corrupt fuckers on an advisory board to sell off rights to mine on land under the guise of helping set it up for "reconciliation".

[patq911]

Doesn't new zealand have something similar? I don't know how it's going but it seems to work for them.

[Mighty AU]

NZ has Māori constituencies superimposed above above the standard constituencies. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and is indeed a model that Australia could replicate, but the problem in this particular case is that the indigenous advisory council idea is being advocated by mining companies, and those companies may not have altruism in mind.

[OfficerLamarr]

There's no way in hell these companies have indigenous people in mind consdering how the mining industry has given zero fucks about Aboriginal land rights in this country since the dawn of time and has had absolutely no problem at all with pushing indigenous people of their land so they can make a quick buck of our natural reasources (while giving about nothing back to this country).

The mining industry in this country is just pure fucking evil and I wouldn't trust a single they do.