Australia’s major mining companies have bankrolled a new ad campaign “Australia does well when Australian minerals do well” that links the record $63 billion in taxes and royalties paid by the firms to government in 2022 to public services.
Created by the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA), which counts the likes of BHP, Rio Tinto, Glencore and Whitehaven among its members, the campaign comes ahead of the Albanese government’s second round of industrial relations reforms and the shake-up of environmental approvals and tougher rules around greenwashing.
The MCA said that the $63 billion paid in taxes and royalties constituted a third of all company taxes paid and gave governments the money to fund “priority needs” such as “healthcare, education and infrastructure both today and in the future.
The amount paid to the government last year was up by $21 billion compared to 2021. The MCA’s chief exec, Tania Constable even said that the amount contributed in taxes by the miners was “equivalent of paying for the entire Medicare scheme or the childcare subsidy for two years.”
The campaign marks a change in tack for the mining group. It had previously spent $22 million for a six-week campaign in 2010 attacking Kevin Rudd’s plan for a resource super profit tax and prompted Labor MPs to replace him with Julia Gillard.
“The MCA campaign reflected the size and nature of that threat,” said a spokesman for the MCA at the time.
“The RSPT would have destroyed shareholder value, shelved projects and acted as a massive disincentive to future minerals industry investment, with negative flow-on consequences for every Australian.”
However, rather than stoking the fears about the potential impacts of mining reform, this latest campaign chooses to focus on the benefits that the mining money brings.
“Australia’s vulnerability to competition for this investment from resources-rich economies … will only grow as they seek to seize the opportunity to supply the minerals and metals needed (for) global net zero emissions,” said Constable.
“Investment should be placed at the centre of government’s policymaking to attract a significant proportion of this investment that will create tens of thousands of new regional jobs and business growth.
“Workplace relations, tax, environment, climate change and energy policies that impose unexpected costs on the mining industry threaten the capital investment that underpins its contribution to the economy and global efforts to decarbonise.”
While many agencies are choosing to focus on purpose in their work and avoid potentially ethically dubious work, mining companies can prove a very lucrative source of income — especially as economic conditions tighten.
OMD won BHP’s media account at the end of 2021. Big Red has handled its creative work since 2017.
M&C Saatchi currently holds Rio Tinto’s creative account. Fellow Publicis shop Zenith handles its media account.
Bastion, meanwhile, is understood to have produced Glencore’s most recent creative work while it also has Brother & Co, Wahoo, Adoni Media and Campaign Edge Sprout on its books.
