Fortescue accused of withholding $1.9m from Aboriginal people until they sign new mining leases
Fortescue Metals Group is allegedly withholding $1.9m in royalty payments from Aboriginal people in the Pilbara because the owners “asked for information about their plans” for several mining leases before signing them, a federal parliamentary inquiry has been told.
FMG is withholding $1.9m in royalties it owes to the Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation (WGAC), which was due to be paid on 31 January. The Guruma say the royalties – which relate to a separate agreement – are being withheld because they have been asking about FMG’s plan for nine leases in areas that contain numerous sacred sites.
“We have asked FMG to reconsider their position and they have advised us that they will only pay the royalties when we sign off on the mining leases,” the corporation’s Jocelyn Hicks told the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia.
FMG routinely does not honour its agreements with them, WGAC’s Tony Bevan alleged.
“These were nine mining leases we were asked to sign about a year ago,” Bevan said.
“Under the access agreement they are meant to have given us notice of those mining leases and come and discussed them with us. Five of those mines we knew nothing about and there are a number of very significant sites and areas in those mining leases.”
Bevan told the inquiry the corporation said “we are not going to sign these until we know more about your plans”.
“That discussion has never occurred and FMG as a result decided to withhold royalties until such time as we have signed the leases,” he said.
Bevan alleged FMG “routinely” breached its agreement with the Eastern Guruma people. Each time FMG breached the agreement WGAC issued a “dispute notice”, Bevan said. WGAC has issued six over the past year.
Bevan listed four examples of dispute notices WGAC issued between October 2018 and January 2019, which included other cases of non-payment of royalties by FMG.
“There’s a pattern of non-payment of royalties and, to be honest, country is more important than money, protecting heritage is more important.”
But, he said, WGAC had now stopped issuing dispute notices “because there’s no point”.
Under its agreement with FMG, there is no penalty to FMG for noncompliance.
“They go nowhere. There’s no power or disciplinary action,” Bevan said.
“It escalates to the CEO and stops. There are no penalties for non-compliance so the breaches continue.
“FMG are currently doing what they like on Eastern Guruma country and paying nothing for it.”
The Eastern Guruma have six Rio Tinto mines, a Fortescue mine and three railway lines on their lands. They estimate that 434 of their heritage sites have been destroyed while a further 285 are very close to current mining areas, with further expansion being planned.
FMG did not address the specific allegation by the Wintawari Guruma, but said ittakes its relationship with traditional custodians seriously and “has been working closely with Wintawari to assist them in meeting the obligations” under the Native Title Agreement.
“In early 2019, Fortescue varied this agreement with Wintawari to include new exclusion zones on Eastern Guruma native title lands and provide a range of additional benefits to Wintawari,” FMG chief executive Elizabeth Gaines said in a statement.
“We are committed to open and transparent engagement to facilitate the outstanding royalty payment, in accordance with the contractual agreement and the obligations of both parties,” Gaines said.
“People say why did the corporation sign these one-sided agreements with FMG and Rio,” Hicks, a Guruma traditional owner and WGAC board member, said.
“The answer is that we do not have the power or resources of FMG or Rio Tinto. In 2001 and 2009 we did not know the level of destruction of our country that would result.
“We did not know that over 400 of our sites would be destroyed. We did not know that our sacred springs would dry up. We did not know that we would be locked out of our own country. We didn’t know that the conduct of the mining companies towards us as traditional owners would be so disrespectful.”
Earlier, the inquiry heard that Rio Tinto could not be persuaded to back down from inserting a “gag” clause in the agreement it was making with the traditional owners of the Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara, despite appeals to senior executives before the agreement was signed in 2006.
Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation (YMAC), which represented the PKKP traditional owners of Juukan Gorge over the nine years they spent negotiating a binding initial agreement with Rio Tinto, said it expressed concerns about the “non-objection clauses” on numerous occasions during the negotiations.
Non-objection clauses have been cited as the reason why the PKKP were not able to speak publicly about their concerns about what was happening to their sacred sites.
But it was a “deal-breaker” for Rio Tinto, the YMAC chief executive, Simon Hawkins, said.
“We tried tirelessly throughout the process to raise those objections - including meeting with executives within Rio who we thought would be more open to change it – but we were unsuccessful.”
These executives were outside of the agreement negotiation team and “were reluctant to change company policy”, Hawkins said.
The inquiry continues.