Executive Chairman Speech Hancock Iron Ore – Ten Year Service Awards at Roy Hill Mine Site

Speech by Mrs Gina Rinehart AO 

Good evening, good to see you. 

Tonight, a very warm Pilbara welcome to our very special guests our two hard-working Australian Olympic Swimmers, Sam and Ben.

Our dear swimmers, Sam and Ben, you are joining us, for a very, very special night, as our company and long-term staff celebrate 10 plus years of our Roy production and export, and the huge contribution to Australia this has meant. And when Australians are going through bad times, be they struggling in agriculture, struggling businesses, those struggling to pay mortgages with yet another interest rate rise, on fixed incomes or just struggling to make ends meet, in no small measure your dedicated training and successes on the world stage, help to lift the spirits of Australians across our country. We look forward to hearing from you towards the end of the evening.

Please join me in giving all our guests a very very enthusiastic Roy welcome.

Tonight is one of my favourite Pilbara occasions, where we recognise our much valued and loyal staff who have given 10 years plus of service and loyalty to make our mining company the best in Australia. A huge thank you to each of you. So tonight let us think about what we have achieved, a mega project from scratch that we can all be incredibly proud of.

Since building this mega project, from 2015, you have loaded more than 17 thousand trains and delivered to port just shy of 600 million tonnes!

I would like to raise my glass in a toast to celebrate what you have built and achieved and to thank you all, please raise your glasses not with water, and join me,

Cheers.

And, please give yourselves a warm and very enthusiastic round of applause.

I’ll be leaving the Pilbara tomorrow to also celebrate this 10 plus years achievement in Japan, hence tonight Tad and CEO Gerhard are accompanying me for this 10-year celebration with you, together with your then COO Sanjiv, and then CFO Garry, both now CEOs of our Hancock companies.  And we are delighted to have representatives from our partners, Posco, with us.

And tomorrow, before we depart, Tad and CEO Sanjiv, Posco and I, will be celebrating something important to our future, the opening of the McPhee Mine at Gintasan, which when in full production, will add an extra 8 mtpa of iron ore to our exports. This will help to extend Roy’s life, help to extend the years these jobs can help you pay off your mortgages and help your families.

And now for some more impressive 10-year figures.

Since operations began here at Roy the mine has delivered more than $12 Billion in taxes and royalties to Governments helping fund roads, hospitals, nurses, defence, police, aged care, emergency services and more.  In addition to the estimated more than 50,000 people that have been employed at Roy from construction through to ongoing operations, more than $26 billion dollars’ worth of contracts have been awarded to small, medium and large Australian businesses, over $15 billion of those contracts, to help West Aussie businesses.

Roy is not just a mine, it is a place to make lifelong friends and is an economic powerhouse – one that has supported businesses, regional areas and livelihoods here in the north and across Australia. I don’t get the left hypocrisy that loves to spend the money you earn, but espouse mining is a dirty word.

One of the things that makes me especially proud is our company’s industry leading support for veterans.  You might like to know that we’ve added 3 more veteran buildings now in Brisbane to those we’ve opened in Perth, our very first one in Perth named in honour of Victorian Cross achiever, Ben Roberts Smith. An incredible SAS soldier dedicated to keeping his soldiers safe, indeed risking his life to doing so. Some of our veterans will be accompanying me to CPAC, and then on Monday afternoon, strait after CPAC, accompanying me to a veteran building naming in honour of another VC achiever, Daniel Keighran. Our vets will be able to meet Daniel, as he’ll be giving a speech at this naming occasion. I can never properly express my thanks for your service and for the fine Australians you are. I hope my speaking out in the interests of veterans, in particular re right to work as much as you may like, without effecting your very well-deserved pensions, and speaking out in the interests of homeless veterans, that they be permitted to use unused or scarcely used defence barracks becomes helpful, really needs veteran organisations to also support. In the interim we’ll keep spending the rest of that $200 million I’ve set aside to house veterans, but as you know, this is not enough, without the army barracks.

You know we are facing low iron ore prices and consequent changes, but veterans please keep your eyes out when jobs appear, as my first wish as Gerhard well knows, is that more veterans fill those spaces.

Each and every one of you here tonight have helped build not just a great company, but the best mining company. One that has gone from bare earth to strength, winning many awards including international ones and being recognised as Australia’s premier and most successful private iron ore operation with record low staff turnover.

Next month on National Mining and Related Industries Day, November 22, especially and always, please continue to stand up for our essential industry and be proud of what you do, and of mining’s contribution to Australia and the opportunities our essential industry has helped create for so many Australian families. Because without the investment in our industry, without our mining industry, Australia would be a very different place, taxes and government charges would have to be much higher, and living standards would be much lower.

If you wonder about this, take a look at Victoria, said to be the worst managed state in the western world, that has scarcely opened a new mine for many years, and where about 2 thirds of their population are currently struggling, having to choose between eating, heating or buying the medicines they need.  I prefer, “dig baby dig!”.

A warm thank you to all our long-serving dig baby diggers and veterans recognised tonight. Please enjoy the evening and be deservedly proud of what we have achieved together.