That would be Fortescue, the only major company in the past 15 years to continue mining in the Pilbara without a native title agreement with traditional owners. Justice of the Federal Court Steven Rares ripped Fortescue in 2017 over his attempts to orchestrate a land-use deal with a separatist Aboriginal corporation that offered its members $400 Woolworths vouchers to vote for him.
And that would be Forrest, whose great, great uncle, Mr John Forrestsaid Ballarat Star in 1907 that “chaining the aborigines by the neck is the only effectual way of preventing their escape”.
I’m not seriously blaming Twiggy for his ancestor’s outdated attitudes, but then why should Rinehart be blamed for her dead father’s remarks nearly 40 years ago?
Where is the cancellation line drawn, exactly? Do we hold people accountable for the sins of their parents but not their grandparents? Maybe there is a 70 year limit like music royalties? And if Lang had only been Gina’s stepfather, or maybe her uncle, would she have been untied?
Gina Rinehart’s record is much cleaner than Andrew Forrest’s when it comes to Aboriginal people. There is no suggestion that he ever tried to manipulate his way out of paying fair compensation to the traditional owners.
Rinehart’s Roy Hill mine is good enough for the NAIDOC awards in Perth, which it sponsors, but not its netball team.
Before Netball WA signed the sponsorship with Fortescue last week, West Coast Fever players were asked “if anyone has any concerns about a particular mining company”.
According to Fever CEO Simon Hansen“I provided the opportunity for [players] to bring up whether there were certain companies they had concerns with and no one came back with any concerns.”
Which would suggest that netballers would be willing to wear the logo of Rio Tinto, a company that in this day and age, not decades ago, is blowing up Aboriginal cultural heritage over the protests of its traditional owners.
If Rinehart’s sponsorship is objectionable to netizens based on her contribution to man-made climate change, it would be equally difficult to rationalize Forrest being considered a reliable source of financial support.
Based on the latest figures available from the Clean Energy Regulator, from financial year 2021, Hancock Prospecting emitted 588,884 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, while Fortescue emitted 2.1 million tonnes. That means Forrest’s carbon footprint is more than triple Rinehart’s.
Perhaps the firing offense here is not what they do, but what they say. Rinehart says humans aren’t causing global warming, while Forrest maniacally traverses the global conference circuit promising to fix it.
It seems that in Australian sport, as long as you talk the talk, you don’t absolutely have to walk the walk.