Hugh Morgan
Hugh Morgan is Executive Director of Western Mining Corporation and immediate past President of the Australian Mining Industry Council. This speech was delivered at the annual seminar conducted by AMIC in May 1984 as a response to speeches given by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Clyde Holding, and the Minister for Home Affairs and Environment, Barry Cohen, to the seminar. Hugh Morgan argues that mining not only has an important role in Australia's economy, but also a legitimate place in Australia's Christian traditions. On the other hand, he sees the path taken by land rights activists and the Federal Government as potentially damaging to the nation's standard of living and in conflict with ethical and legal tenets in Australian culture.
Mr. Holding and Mr. Cohen have spoken to us today as Ministers of the Crown. They have used language which is conciliatory, persuasive, reasonable. My duty is to respond. Because of the conciliatory tone of the Ministers I have a heavy duty of care in such a response.
There are perils involved in bringing unwelcome news to those whom the Book of Common Prayer describes as being "in authority over us", and my first task is to put on the most effective suit of armour that the mining industry affords. What is our defence against charges that, for example, we as miners are no different from heroin pedlars? Whilst such charges have not been made this afternoon, they are not uncommon, and the purpose of them is to destroy our legitimacy.
Within the industry, we take our legitimacy for granted. What we assume as natural is the legitimacy of the market place. We look for orebodies; we mine the economic discoveries; we process the ore; we sell the minerals and metals on world markets at market prices; we pay royalties to the Crown; and we hope, indeed we strive, to finish up at the end of the day with an operating surplus, in other words with a profit.
That is what we do, and in so doing the mining industry has provided jobs and wealth for five generations of Australians. This has been our standard defence against continuous accusations of being greedy, rapacious, racist, profit hungry, un-Australian, polluting and. Multi-national.
Any reasonable man would accept such a defence as obvious, albeit not original. Samuel Johnson summed it up pretty well when he said:
"there are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money".
Samuel Johnson is an important figure for us in our present difficulties. Not because he was the great lexicographer, or the great essayist and poet, but because of his piety and Christian orthodoxy. Since we are now beset on all sides with sacred sites of one kind or another (Mr. Cohen I would emphasise is probably sitting on top of, potentially, as many sacred sites as Mr. Holding), we have to rediscover the religious basis of our own activity.
The words "sacred", "spiritual" and their derivatives, have appeared frequently in official pronouncements, although, interestingly, they do not appear in the Aboriginal Affairs Minister's five principles -- which we may, with no disrespect, call the Holding Pentalogue. The frequent use of these words tells us unambiguously we have religious problems.
Miners, it is truthful to say, are not noted for their piety, but neither are Ministers of the Crown. However, many of you will be pleased to learn that our orebodies definitely have a place in orthodox Christian doctrine. Just as Christian ceremonies such as blessing the fishing fleet, or blessing the plough, are well-established both in Christian tradition and in orthodox theology, so our orebodies, and the equipment we use to mine them, are part of the divine order.
The key text, I am told, is from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 7, verse 20:
"Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called".
"Calling" in this text does not mean a religious calling but a secular or economic calling. Paul himself was a tent maker and maintained himself throughout his missionary career as a tent maker. We can assume he was a good tent maker since he had no difficulty in keeping himself quite independently of contributions from the newly established churches which he had founded.
In St. Paul's time mining was a key factor in the prosperity, and in the defence, of the Roman Empire, no less than in Australia today.
Our word copper comes from the Latin cyprium (Kiprium) which is the Roman name for Cyprus, where they mined most of their copper. The Romans energetically pursued their other mining activities in Spain, in Sardinia and in Elba, as examples.
Our task, our obligation, then, in terms of St. Paul's exhortation, first to the Corinthians 1900 years ago, and ever since as a continuing demand, is to be good miners, successful miners, profitable miners.
The key point is that our work as miners has the same religious backing and authority as that of the fishermen, or farmers, or carpenters, or bricklayers, or car-makers or toolmakers; and that when we are under attack, as we now are, on essentially religious grounds, we are bound by nearly 2000 years of Christian tradition and doctrine in support of what we do.
Those who attack us as materialist, unspiritual, are themselves heretical in their religious philosophy. They are followers of Manichean doctrines which have always been condemned the Christian Church as heresy. Manicheaism, founded by a third century Arabian preacher, Mani, is that doctrine which argues that the material world, with its mines, its manufactures, its farms, its markets, is inherently evil, and that salvation can only come through total renunciation of the material world.
It follows from this renunciation that work, being a good tentmaker or whatever, is collaboration with the forces of evil. So it would be put by the Manicheans and so it is being put, even if without realising it, by those who seek to denigrate the industry.
Let me give some examples of Manichean rhetoric -- not all of them, I must emphasise, are ministerial examples.
"Spiritual attachment to land makes it impossible for Aboriginals to accept the principle that the State may grant miners free access to their land."
"A little drilling for oil on the Great Barrier Reef would be an instance on which there could be no compromise. We could not agree to the building of a little dam on the Franklin River."
"The Government is not opposed to mining. In fact it is very supportive provided it does not take place in a National Park."
"The history of white contact with Aboriginal people in Australia has been that it's always been the Aboriginal people who lose, and I think the bottom line is always that $2 billion always speaks louder than the protection of an Aboriginal culture."
These quotes are random quotes, quickly selected. But they do serve to illustrate the clash between the Christian orthodoxy of those who work, including the, miners, who, as St. Paul told us, are abiding in the same calling wherein we are called, and must perforce find the best orebodies wherever they may be; and the Manichean style commitments of those who regard rivers, or trees, or rocks, or Aboriginal sites as belonging to the spiritual world; who regard such sites as incommensurable, and seek to legislate such incommensurability (1) into the statute books.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE ABORIGINES
The religious rather than the racial quality of the Aboriginal land rights problem becomes clear when we consider the situation faced by Aborigines who embrace, as so many of them have, Christianity. For a Christian Aborigine, land rights or the proposed Heritage Protection Act is a symbolic step back to the world of paganism, superstition, fear, and darkness. There is no place for him in current official commitment. Indeed he is placed in a situation where he is in danger, if he spoke out against land rights, of being labelled officially as unaboriginal, even anti-aboriginal.
The situation of the Christian Aborigines, and this is not an isolated hypothetical problem as anyone who has any contact with the Aboriginal community well knows, brings the whole rhetoric of land rights into clear focus.
The land rights movement presents the same temptations and the same problems to Aboriginal Christians as did the spread of Manicheaism through the Mediterranean in the fourth century to the Christians of that era. Land is identified by government spokesmen with spirituality, sacredness, anti-materialism, with opposition to profits, with the essence of being an Aborigine. But Christianity is a religion which celebrates work and the physical world and which is universal, which transcends time, race and geography.
It is the predominantly Christian background of European society which has resulted in the widely accepted principle, in Western Societies, that society as a whole has a duty care for those people within the society who are particularly disadvantaged, who are in need of particular care, in need of especial care.
This principle is accepted by both believer and agnostic alike. The mining industry accepts and supports the principle that a disadvantaged person, whether aged, or an Asian refugee or chronically ill, or a disadvantaged Aborigine, has a claim on society as a whole.
We as an industry reluctantly find ourselves at difference with both sides of the political fence, from time to time, on this issue. Our position of treating all Australians equally has long been the predominant good sense of the community as shown in the Gallup polls. Public opinion is, at last, beginning to influence political language and political expectations and has led to calls for consultation and dialogue.
CONSULTATION: INDUSTRY AND GOVERNMENT
The importance of consultation is vital. Over the last few days a genuine attempt at consultation has been made. No other industry is so committed and involved with so many arms of government activity as the mining industry, and the industry recognises that its survival prospects depend upon a close understanding of government thinking and processes.
There has been a welcome response to the Minister's proposals particularly with his acknowledgement of the need to involve the State authorities and that this consultative framework would not seek to inhibit the normal processes of debate that best brings about an informed public opinion.
There have been, or are, short-term tensions concerning the rush to respond to the most recent Heritage Act proposals, the final details of which were received on Monday night.
We are always available for consultation. We accept that the Government has a policy and has to accept the responsibility far that policy. On our part the industry, particularly when engaging in consultation, must be clear in its own mind what the essential issues are, what issues threaten our survival, what problems can be resolved by compromise. We may have to differ but that should not detract from the benefits which consultation can bring. Let us try to summarise where we stand.
The 1976 Northern Territory Land Rights Act, which, it will be recalled, was the culmination of some years of agitation, inquiry and debate, has effectively stopped mineral exploration in the Territory. If that situation is not reversed and the terms of reference given to Mr. Justice Toohey, in his recent enquiry, precluded such reversal, then there is no future for the mining industry in the Territory.
It is worth noting, in passing, that Justice Woodward's terms of reference were likewise prejudicial, and that Mr. Seaman's enquiry in Western Australia is the first enquiry in which we have been able to take part whose findings, as constrained by the terms of reference, were not predetermined.
If the doctrines and principles underlying the Northern Territory legislation are applied to the rest of the Commonwealth, then there will be no exploration activity in this country, and ultimately no Australian mining industry. We are entirely legitimate in complete obduracy when such fundamental issues are at stake.
POLICY AND SOVEREIGNTY
Any process of consultation must begin with an analysis of the Minister's five points -- The Holding Pentalogue.
Let me list them
- Aboriginal land to be held under inalienable freehold title;
- protection of Aboriginal sites;
- Aboriginal control in relation to mining on Aboriginal land;
- access to mining royalty equivalents;
- compensation for lost land to be negotiated.
As with much political language, these points are protean in ambiguity, and detailed analysis will take time.
But I can make the following points to indicate the depth of our concern, and the extent to which analysis is required.
Let us first consider Mr. Holding's third principle.
- Aboriginal control in relation to mining on Aboriginal land.
This principle creates a new de facto sovereign for the mining industry. Our present sovereign is the State government. It is the Crown in the form of our State governments which owns minerals and controls their development. In NSW, very recently, Mr. Wran, who is both Premier of NSW, and Federal President of the ALP, asserted Crown ownership, asserted State sovereignty over extensive private mineral rights, and has created many problems concerning compensation in so doing.
In introducing provisions and setting precedents which are intended to irrevocably bind future Parliaments, (such as the concept of inalienable freehold and mineral rights) the Minister is embarking on a major shift in constitutional practice and theory.
So significant are these changes that those who complain of the drift to Aboriginal sovereignty are fully justified in their alarm.
In declaring for de facto Aboriginal sovereignty with respect to mineral rights, the Federal Government is selecting one particular group of people within the Australian community, and setting aside all the constitutional prerogatives both express and implied of the State governments, is granting of de facto sovereignty which can only lead to bitter resentment and social tension within the wider community.
It is now conceded that State governments will be consulted. The problem is that there is one area where compromise, the object of consultation, is impossible. Either the Crown owns and controls the minerals or it does not. If it does not then those who do own or control minerals have, in particular places, very great potential financial and even political advantages when compared with the rest of the Australian community. Belonging to that particular group of people will become a major ambition for those who do not so belong.
Aboriginality has become virtually a matter of self-definition, and this virtual self-definition has been strongly defended by some of the prominent spokesmen in the Aboriginal Affairs Industry. Where great financial advantage accrues to particular people by virtue of where they were born, or where their parents and grandparents were born, then self-definition is impossible. There will have to be a Register of Aborigines, with all of the difficulties connected with racial classification that that implies.
The mining industry's position has always been clear. We are for Crown ownership. The Australian people would be appalled if the consequences of Crown ownership of minerals for everybody else, but Aboriginal control and hence de facto ownership of minerals on Aboriginal land, were carefully and simply explained to them. This is particularly so if the likely extent of Aboriginal land claims is illustrated by the Northern Territory situation.
ANCIENT CUSTOMS AND CONTEMPORARY DELUSIONS
Let us now turn to Mr. Holding's second principle.
- Protection of Aboriginal sites.
Who could be against Mr. Holding's second principle, particularly when supported by the Minister's sincerity and commitment?
The mining industry has to ask, however, what is an Aboriginal site? Which Aborigines and what is Aboriginality? Are orebodies, for example, Aboriginal sites? So far, with many recent discoveries, it has turned out to be so.
The Minister has likened Aboriginal sacred sites to our cathedrals and our war memorials and our sporting venues. These buildings it is true do have a special place in our affections. But they are not incommensurable. If, somehow or other, a rich lode of gold were discovered under a cathedral; because the Christian church is not located at a place at a particular time, but is the community of believers, there is no doubt that despite difficulties, agreements could be reached. The essential point is that our cathedrals, our memorials, even our sporting venues, are commensurable.
But with so called Aboriginal sites, which are places of significance to some Aborigines, we are dealing with incommensurability and most important, incommensurability to be in legislative form.
The mining industry has to know, in every particular, what is a site of importance to some Aborigines, and what protection of it means. In particular, if protection of sites means in practice that indenture agreements between State governments and mining projects to be supplanted and superseded, then our care for our future as an industry demands obduracy of the most intransigent kind. The Australian community is also entitled to know and understand these things, and the welcome process of consultation between Ministers and industry must not give any grounds to charges of conspiracy against the people.
These are preliminary and indicative points that have to be made on Mr. Holding's Five Principles.
I do not think that either governments or commentators have realised the full implications of present policies.
The essential arguments mounted in defence of legislative proposals for sacred sites, for land rights, are not in terms of historical interest, but in terms of contemporary belief and commitment. Some of you will have seen the t.v. advertisements financed by the W.A. Government which include statements such as
"The earth is my mother"
and so on, which can only be interpreted as statements of contemporary religious commitment.
If these creeds are given legislative support, if the legislation uses these beliefs as justifying argument, then it will be very difficult to deny either legitimacy or financial support for the whole package of tribal belief, custom and practice.
On what grounds can a Minister or a Parliament, say on the one hand we respect, recognise and give legal support to the spiritual claims you have to a very substantial portion of this country, but on the other hand we cannot sanction infanticide, cannibalism and the cruel initiation rites which you regard either as customary or as a matter of religious obligation.
Let us consider, for example, the compelling demands which Aboriginal religious obligation for vengeance makes on the tribal Aborigine, which if applied, are quite irreconcilable with a twentieth century Australia.
On Anzac Day the Melbourne "Age" carried a story about a car fatality. A vehicle crashed en route from Alice Springs to the Docker River Aboriginal Mission. A man was thrown out of the car and died five hours later. Subsequently another man who was in the vehicle was taken by the Royal Flying Doctor to Alice Springs with leg wounds. The reference to Alice Springs and the Docker River Aboriginal Mission will enable you to infer, correctly, that those leg wounds were spear wounds. A hospital spokesman said that it was "not uncommon" for the hospital to have patients with spear wounds.
The essential point to understand is the religious element in this story. Whoever thrust the spear into the unfortunate fellow traveller in the vehicle was obliged, but what we can only describe as religious obligation, to perform this act of vengeance. It is not too far removed from the Old Testament injunction "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" but unlike this injunction the Aboriginal law of vengeance does not rely on animus or motive.
It is relevant here to note that vengeance killing, a religious duty, exacted a far greater toll on the Aboriginal population in the nineteenth than any depredations by the Europeans. The testimony of William Buckley and Daisy Bates, for example, cannot be brushed aside by charges of ethnocentricity. Charges of genocide of the Aborigines by our nineteenth century forbears, whether they be made by Ministers or by land rights activists are nonsense. Killings and murder there were, and sometimes on a group basis, but not genocide. The Aborigines exacted on each other a vengeance -- they were locked into a pattern of vengeance -- which continuously took a greater toll, in proportion, of their number than the casualties sustained by the European armies at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. I refer you all to Geoffrey Blainey's book "Triumph of the Nomads" for further discussion.
Let me take up further, this matter of repeated use of the word "genocide". The Minister has used it often. He has used the word "holocaust" in a Ministerial speech in the House. A prominent Aboriginal spokesman was quoted in "The Bulletin" as stating that asking Aborigines to celebrate Australia Day was like asking the Jews to celebrate the advent of the Third Reich.
These words are not used without calculation. The consequences of them are to incite resentment and animosity within the Aboriginal community; to arouse what the Member for Kalgoorlie has described as white middle-class guilt; and to create expectations of compensation payments by the white community, as atonement for past genocide.
Let me, add one final comment on this particular issue. Nineteenth century accounts of clashes between Europeans and Aborigines, particularly in North Queensland, are quite explicit concerning the partiality of the Aborigines for the particular flavour of the Chinese, who were killed and eaten in large numbers.
Do the Chinese from Vietnam, who have settled here in their tens of thousands since 1976; have similar claims on the Aborigines who killed and ate their ancestors?
I raise these points to indicate the direction in which official rhetoric is taking us. I do not think it is a direction that the Australian people wish to go. It is a direction that many Aborigines do not wish to go.
An Aborigine who seeks to escape from the religious obligations and vengeance and embraces Christianity is surely entitled to choose; surely entitled to support and recognition by those of us who have enjoyed a more humane tradition. Those Aborigines who have forsaken the Aboriginal law and custom well know that compromise is impossible.
Likewise, Aboriginal girls who seek to escape from the fate of tribal law and custom concerning marriage are entitled to the protection of the law. Once again, compromise between the Aboriginal situation of 1788 and the rights of all Australians in 1984, be they Aboriginal girls or European girls, is impossible.
It is important to note that our newly developed theological expertise is not something we have willingly or easily acquired.
The mining industry has found itself forced to become deeply involved in these matters.
No books have been published with the title "Aboriginals and the Dried Vine Fruits Industry" or with the title "Aboriginals and the Motor Vehicle Industry". There are no car stickers proclaiming "Land Rights -- Not Tourism"
Four Corners in its recent programme on the Heritage Act did not ask the Trustees of the Sydney Opera House concerning the problems of their piece of real estate if a sacred site was discovered at Bennelong Point. Nor did they ask the curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Melbourne. No. Four Corners asked Jim Strong, (2) and I quote:
"Suppose a vast mineral deposit was found on a sacred site: who would win?"
Jim Strong gallantly resisted the temptation to reply that the mineral deposit is found first and the sacred site comes second. But this exchange demonstrates how the mining industry is being set up as a scapegoat, as a vehicle for focusing animus, so that legislation can be passed. To those who think a distinction can be drawn between the Sydney Opera House and the mineralisation at Roxby Downs, let me repeat the lines spoken by Ben Blakeney, when the Opera House was opened by Her Majesty the Queen over ten years ago:
"I am Bennelong. Two hundred years ago, fires burned on this point ... the fires of my people.
And into the light of the flames from the shadows all about our warriors danced.
Here my people chanted their stories of the dreamtime, of spirit heroes and of earth creation and our painted bodies flowed in ceremony.
On this point my people laughed and they sang while the sticks clacked in the rhythm of the corroboree.
And then came the great canoes floating with white clouds above them. Our children watched and our lubras grew large-eyed and our painted men danced around the fires.
I am Bennelong and my spirit and the spirit of my people lives. And their music and their drama and their laughter also remains."
The journalist then commented.
"Proud words, spoken in a powerful, rich voice by a black man leaning into a 40 knot wind atop the Opera House sail, 120 feet above the official dais.
Words which boomed over the drone of the didjeridoo, the clacking of sticks, the wailing of women."
Ben Blakeney, in that same press report, attacked the land rights movement in the strongest terms. What a cruel dilemma he must face today.
But given the political developments since 1973; given the commitments by Parliaments and Ministers; given the expectations that have been aroused, and the half-promises, half-given; who could now deny with confidence that Bennelong Point when claimed will not be required to be designated an Aboriginal site.
In my view the mining industry is not just speaking for an industry when it raises these dilemmas and these issues. I think we are speaking for many Australians, of European, of Aboriginal, and increasingly, of Asian descent. And as we welcome consultation, we are also aware of our wide citizenship responsibilities.
THE MINING INDUSTRY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The Minister for Home Affairs and the Environment, must be feeling, by now, somewhat aggrieved. We have given him, and the issues over which he presides, all too little attention. Let me conclude my remarks by noting some of the problems which his department and his portfolio have generated for the industry.
First I must draw attention to the remarks of Joe Fisher, President of AusIMM, in his presidential address last night, when he referred to "the cancerous growth of national parks in the N.T." The comments by the Minister concerning declaration of the two large pastoral bases Gimbat and Goodparla, as part of Kakadu National Park, show that this cancerous growth is to continue. There is clearly a long way to go before the concept that
"National Parks were made for man; not man for National Parks"
is accepted. His department has become a major cost centre for the industry. It duplicates activities which have, traditionally and constitutionally, been the prerogative of State Governments. The Foreign Affairs Power and the power to prohibit exports have been used to usurp State prerogatives. There is no evidence, that I am aware of, to suggest that environmental wisdom is more profound in Canberra than in the State Capitals. Canberra is where political power is -- a different commodity.
The passions of the environmentalists have been focussed onto Canberra, and then refocussed onto an unfashionable industry, the mining industry.
If employment is a genuine concern of the Federal Government, then international competitiveness must likewise be of concern. A major contribution to our international competitiveness would be made here in Canberra, if the Federal Government ensured only one tier of supervision of environmental matters in lieu of the duplicate system now established at the behest of the Commonwealth.
ENDNOTES
1. Incommensurable: immeasurable, beyond cost (ed.)
2. Executive Director of the Australian Mining Industry Council. (ed.)
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