BHP called out over Yes support for Indigenous Voice to Parliament

A company that gave $2million to support the Indigenous Voice to Parliament has been accused of ‘virtue signalling’ and ‘greenwashing’ over the huge donation. 

BHP – Australia’s largest company and the world’s biggest miner – said its relationship with Indigenous Australians is ‘fundamentally important to our company’.

‘We operate on traditional lands and we engage and partner widely with Indigenous communities and traditional owners,’ BHP’s Australian president Geraldine Slattery told the Australian Financial Review in June.

But its $2million donation to the Yes campaign for the referendum to be held on October 14 – a key initiative of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – has been slammed by lawyers leading a $70billion class action against BHP.

Around 700,000 people, many of whom are Indigenous, are suing BHP in the UK for its role in a catastrophic dam failure in Brazil that killed 19 people.

On November 5 2015, millions of cubic metres of iron ore mining waste burst from a dam in the state of Minas Gerais, flattening the nearby town of Bento Rodrigues and damaging other villages.

The flood of mining waste, known as tailings, left about 800 homeless and polluted a major river, in what the government called Brazil’s worst-ever environmental disaster.

The mine is run by a company called Samarco, part owned by BHP and Brazilian mining company Vale SA. 

Lawyers from the UK-based Pogust Goodhead have arrived in Australia to highlight their campaign against BHP and are meeting with Indigenous groups. 

‘BHP’s donation to the Voice campaign is an absolute textbook example of greenwashing. I think it’s effectively virtue signalling from a large corporation,’ CEO Tom Goodhead told news.com.au. 

‘It’s very easy to virtue signal with a donation to a political campaign to put some nice puffery on your website. It’s different to actually resolving issues as seen in Brazil.’ 

Mr Goodhead, who is also meeting with MPs, superannuation funds, investors and unions while in Australia, has been pleased by the response he has had, given it happened eight years ago in another continent. 

He said the Samarco dam collapse has had a huge impact on thousands of people and that it’s vital to tell people what happened there. 

BHP is defending against the compensation claims, saying they are doubling up on the company’s ongoing work to help communities affected by the disaster. 

A company spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia it will continue to defend the UK group action and denies the claims in their entirety. 

‘This action is also unnecessary as it duplicates matters already covered by the existing and ongoing work of the Renova Foundation and other legal proceedings in Brazil,’ they said.

The legal criticism of one of the biggest financial backers of the Yes campaign comes as its support continues to fall in all published polls. 

The latest poll show support for the referendum has fallen to new lows, with every state bar Tasmania set to vote No. 

On November 5 2015, millions of cubic metres of iron ore mining waste burst from a BHP-co-owned dam (pictured) in Brazil, killing 19 people

The Resolve Political Monitor survey, published in the Nine newspapers, showed 43 per cent of voters supported a plan to enshrine an Indigenous Voice into the constitution, down 20 points from a year ago. 

In the past month, the percentage of voters who are certain about voting No has risen from 33 per cent to 37 per cent, whereas the percentage of those who say they will probably vote No remains unchanged at 12 per cent. 

The percentage of Australians in favour of the referendum dropped for the fifth month in a row. 

It was also the third month in the row the No vote has been ahead.