BHP called out over Yes support for Indigenous Voice to Parliament

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

BHP – Australia’s largest company and the world’s largest miner – said its relationship with Indigenous Australians is “fundamental to our business”.

“We operate on traditional lands and we work closely with indigenous communities and traditional owners,” said Geraldine Slattery, BHP’s Australian president. Australian Financial Statement in June.

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

About 700,000 people, many of them indigenous, are suing BHP in Britain over its role in the catastrophic dam failure in Brazil that killed 19 people.

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

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

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

Lawyers from British firm 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 a textbook example of greenwashing. I think it’s actually a virtue signaling from a major company,” says CEO Tom Goodhead news.com.au.

‘It is very easy to send a good signal with a donation to a political campaign to put something nice on your website. It is different from actually solving problems as we see in Brazil.’

Mr Goodhead, who is also meeting with MPs, pension funds, investors and unions in Australia, is pleased with the response he has received considering it happened on another continent eight years ago.

He said the collapse of the Samarco Dam has had a huge impact on thousands of people and it is crucial to tell people what happened there.

BHP is defending itself against the compensation claims, saying it is doubling the company’s ongoing work to help communities affected by the disaster.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted BHP for comment.

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

The latest poll shows support for the referendum has fallen to a new low, with every state bar in Tasmania on the verge of voting ‘no’.

On November 5, 2015, millions of cubic meters of iron ore mine waste burst from a BHP dam (pictured) in Brazil, killing 19 people.

The Resolve Political Monitor survey, published in the Nine Newspapers, found that 43 percent of voters supported a plan to enshrine an Indigenous voice in the constitution, a drop of 20 points from a year ago.

Over the past month, the percentage of voters who are certain they will vote no increased from 33 percent to 37 percent, while the percentage of voters who say they are likely to vote no remains unchanged at 12 percent.

The percentage of Australians in favor of the referendum has fallen for the fifth month in a row.

It was also the third month in a row that the no vote took precedence.