New Rio book a groundbreaker

Mining giant Rio Tinto has published a book that provides an unusually frank insight into the impact of the mining industry on the people of the Pilbara region.

Contributors to the book, Breaking New Ground, range from traditional owners and mine workers to former Rio Tinto chief executive Leon Davis, through to local residents such as Clinton Walker, who in 1999 became the first Aboriginal male student from Roebourne to graduate from year 12.

Publication of the book indicates the company’s mature appraisal of its impact in the region.

Retired Rio worker Bob Beeton sets the scene when he fondly remembers growing up in the days before large-scale mining commenced.

“Roebourne was just about one of the best places for a boy to grow up in the early ’50s,” he writes.

“It was like one big family with Aboriginal people and white people having a lot of respect amongst each other.”

Mr Beeton says the influx of workers in the early 1960s had a disruptive impact on the local community and many Aboriginal people failed to keep pace with the rapid changes.

“It was probably halfway through the railway line that people started to think: “is this all for the good or the bad?”

Mr Beeton later established Rio’s first Indigenous training program and is optimistic about its long-term benefits.

“I believe the real success story will be 20 years down the road when these kids grow up and their own kids see them working and being successful,” he says.

Rio’s approach to Indigenous issues was aided by Mr Davis, who recalled a controversial 1995 speech that challenged the mining industry to focus on the needs of Aboriginal people.

“I guess when I made that speech in 1995, the Australian ‘mining group’ thought I was a radical and beyond redemption,” Mr Davis writes.

He can now look back with satisfaction because most of the mining industry accepts the need to engage constructively with Aboriginal groups.

Rio and BHP Billiton, which dominate mining in the Pilbara, both run programs to boost Aboriginal training and employment.

BHP, for instance, aims to have Indigenous people making up 12 per cent of its Pilbara workforce, about double the current level.

The two groups also support education programs, such as the Polly Farmer Foundation’s Gumala Mirnuwarni education project.

Mr Walker was a participant in this program, and he write in the book that completion of year 12 is starting to become a normal thing for Aboriginal boys in the region.