by Richard Roberts, Editorial Director, Beacon Events

The last place Melissa Winks expected to get a hostile reaction to her confession she’s a miner was on a plane to Western Australia, a place with something of an affinity with the industry. “It’s actually physically hard to recoil in an economy seat on a full flight these days, but she actually withdrew from me.”

Winks’ anecdote during a discussion at IMARC 2024 about mining’s ESG challenges connected community perceptions of the industry with project approval delays that continue to blow out worldwide, impacting capital flows and new mineral and metal supplies.

Australia’s mining sector is seen by the rest of the world to have an advantage in its economic centrality and hence popularity in mainstream political circles.

A new survey of Australian attitudes toward mining in 2024, conducted by national scientific research body, CSIRO, indicated public trust in the mining industry had improved since its previous review in 2017. More than 70% of respondents linked mining of a long domestic list of critical minerals to cutting net carbon emissions and to the nation’s future prosperity.

However, more than 60% of respondents said mining had negative environmental impacts and over 30% believed Australia should reduce mining activity even if it delayed a transition to net zero emissions.

“Given the industry’s significant role in both the economy and the energy transition, understanding public sentiment towards mining is more important than ever,” CSIRO said in its latest survey report.

“The survey results reveal that while trust in the mining industry has improved, there are still significant challenges ahead.

“The public’s acceptance of mining, though also on the rise, is contingent upon the industry’s commitment to environmental stewardship, community engagement, and transparency.”

Numerous IMARC 2024 discussions conveyed how the industry in Australia is working double time to arrest what it sees as damaging undercurrents of resentment in communities which translate into new regulatory strains, development friction and, perhaps most concerning of all, disengagement from young people needed to help take the industry forward.

“People understand broadly that they need commodities … for their mobile phones, for their cars, for their wind turbines, for solar panels,” South32 senior legal counsel Kelly O’Rourke said at the conference.

“But equally they want companies to dig up these minerals in a really responsible way.

“And the industry has probably a mixed reputation in that space and the increased focus [on environment, social and governance] is welcome from our perspective because while we do need to dig up these commodities if we’re going to go forward in this energy transition, we absolutely don’t want to do it at the expense of the future of the environment.

“You need to achieve that balance because if you can’t you shouldn’t be there.”

CEO of The Australian Aluminium Council, Marghanita Johnson, said community perceptions of the industry continued to be reflected in inconsistent public policy settings and a lack of reform urgency at federal and state levels.

“I would say as somebody who’s worked in this sector for 25 years … I’ve never seen the sentiment towards alumina and aluminium be so strong, so I’m taking that as a win,” she said.

“[But] I’ve never seen the sentiment towards parts of our mining industry be so weak, which is a challenge.

“Environmental approvals for a new mine are a real struggle and not one that we’ve historically faced in the same ways that we do now.

“And that connectivity in the middle is a challenge.

“Take our [TAAC member Rio Tinto’s Bell Bay] smelter down in Tassie.

“Fifteen years ago that smelter was called one of Australia’s big polluters. That’s now a green metal superpower. So it’s the same smelter producing the same commodity with the same workers and the same source of energy.

“It’s all about perception.”

Industry people such as Winks, gold and copper miner Newmont’s head of safety and sustainability in Australia, see a golden opportunity for mining to redefine itself in the eyes of the public as it becomes an increasingly important part of energy and security conversations in many societies and among more investors.

She says the way the industry goes about winning new project approvals can underline its maturing credentials in ways that go beyond public sustainability reports and statements. But it still needs to find ways to make better connections, as evidenced by her plane encounter when she tried to convey some of the experiences she’d had in a 25-year career.

“She said, well, you don’t look like a miner,” Winks said of the meeting.

“I’m not a greenie but I don’t like mining.

“My heart kind of sunk.

“We’ve all worked really hard over many years to do lots of things we’re really proud of.

“But it was that realisation that our general public, the broader community, is taking their points of reference … from the media [and] from activist groups; from pamphlets that are being dropped around.

“And we’re letting other people tell our narrative.

“I think one of the great opportunities we’ve got with approvals moving forward is … [working] together with regulators, with our stakeholders, with our communities, with our First Nations partners around [the] shared vision for our project.

“There are things that we can do.

“We can absolutely make sure we’ve got the best people working on our approvals projects that we’re investing the time in to put together really well considered, complete and comprehensive submissions as part of our approval process.”

CSIRO’s “citizen survey” report said more than 80 significant critical minerals projects in Australia’s national pipeline – requiring circa-$42 billion of investment – could create over 115,100 jobs in the Australian economy to 2040. That is, they need lots of people.

Discussions across various IMARC 2024 forums underscored the industry’s continuing problems retaining and attracting new top-line talent, and its need to adopt new strategies but also sell itself better.

“Industry is completely committed to strong environmental and community outcomes but we have a complex issue,” said Rebecca Tomkinson, CEO of The Chamber of Minerals & Energy of Western Australia.

“And we have to tackle it differently.

“We’ve got to come together and be prepared to look at it differently [and] accelerate the way in which we traditionally work.

“We need the brightest of the best to … help us address this complexity.

“Our industry doesn’t look like it did 50 years ago, and yet still the imagery is the same.

“I talk about an example where we used to have abdominal surgery to remove a kidney stone. Today, we go in with a laser and you’re in and out in an hour.

“Mining is very similar. The technology that is being developed … is incredibly exciting for our young people and we need them to be able to see the application of their skill set in being part of a solution for industry.”

Ashley Potter, a final-year mining engineering student at the University of New South Wales who is interning at Evolution Mining, told IMARC 2024 she was passionate about connecting other students to the industry having stumbled into it without previous exposure to mining growing up in Sydney.

“I hadn’t even heard about mining as a career pathway until I started university,” said the president of the Sydney student chapter of AusIMM, Australia’s mining professionals body.

“I truly don’t think that there’s an industry that has a greater focus on uplifting and developing its young people.”

AusIMM’s CEO Stephen Durkin told IMARC attracting students like Potter into the industry was “a massive challenge”.

“In Australia there is this year 70,000 STEM graduates and of that number 13,000 have graduated [in] engineering and of that number 400 will come and work in the mining industry,” he said.

“We see a massive opportunity to educate and inform STEM graduates about what a career looks like in our industry.”

Potter said: “You’ve got people that have been exposed to the mining industry – so largely your mining engineering students – who really see all of the opportunities that are available and are taking advantage of that.

“But even in resource-related degrees like mechanical engineering or geology or environmental science a lot of students that I talk to at university have actually got a very negative perception of the industry, largely just driven by a lack of awareness or ignorance about the opportunities and about how important the industry is for that energy transition.

“So I have very much found that I have to actually convince people about why they should be interested in a career in mining.”