Friends of the Earth Brisbane
Anti-Nuclear Collective
Member Queensland Nuclear Free Alliance (QNFA)
PO Box 5702 West End Qld 4101
Mobile: 0411 118 737

JOINT MEDIA RELEASE

Mineral Policy Institute - BHP Shareholders for Social Responsibility- Friends of the Earth Brisbane

November 28, 2006

BHP Billiton called on to relinquish ability to operate outside the law at Olympic Dam Uranium Mine

BHP Billiton AGM Brisbane: Brisbane Convention Centre Wednesday November 29 2006, 10:30am

Ethical shareholders and environmentalists will be calling upon BHP Billiton to relinquish extravagant exceptions to environmental and cultural heritage legislation that effectively place  its Olympic Dam mine above the law in South Australia.

At the company's Australian AGM, they will be asking the board to live up to its publicly stated commitments to strict environmental and social standards, starting at home in Australia with the Roxby Downs Olympic Dam uranium project.

BHP Chairman Don Argus was quoted in the company's London AGM held last month as stating; "as a major producer of uranium, we have to meet the strictest environmental, health and safety standards."

This statement is seemingly incongruous with the current regime under which the company's largest uranium operation is not required to comply with fundamental public interest legislation that bind all other actors in society.

The Olympic Dam operations secured exemptions to the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988, the Development Act 1993, the Environmental Protection Act 1993, the Freedom of Information Act 1991, the Mining Act 1971, and Natural Resources Act 2004 (including the Water Resources Act 1997)

This raft of exemptions embodied in the Roxby Downs Indenture Act effectively places this mine outside the law protecting accepted social, environmental and cultural values, and makes the company's commitments to complying with strict standards manifestly unbelievable.

Concerned shareholders are also asking BHP Billiton to comply with its commitments to the World Bank Guidelines on Involuntary resettlement in its operations at the El Cerrejon mine in Colombia. Communities forcibly displaced by the operations have sought since 2001 for relocation to a site where they can continue to live according to their traditional social and cultural structures, a request that is consistent requirements of the World Bank guidelines.

Proxy shareholder and Executive Director of the Mineral Policy Institute, Techa Beaumont, states "BHP Billiton continues to express its commitments to the World Bank guidelines, and generally to high social and environmental performance.”

“Their ability to step forward and address these issues will be the best test of whether these commitments are rhetoric or reality."

For further information contact:

Techa Beaumont Executive Director Mineral Policy Institute 0428 970 434, www.mpi.org.au; 

John Poppins, BHP Shareholders for Social Responsibility, 0429 306 699, www.bhpethical.shares.green.net.au;

Kim Stewart, Friends of the Earth Brisbane, 0413 397 839 or 0411 118 737