23 January 2019

Australian companies dominate African mining. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade counts 175 ASX-listed companies operating in 35 African countries. Professional services company PwC reckons there are more than 200, and that “a golden age of Australia-Africa relations has begun”.

But Australian miners also arguably stand implicated in both human rights and environmental abuses in pursuit of Africa’s mineral wealth....

Right now the spotlight is on a bitter dispute between local people in the Xolobeni region on the east coast of South Africa and an Autralian-created mining company that wants to excavate a strip of coastal land, 22 km long and 1.5 km wide, for titanium....

Other countries are doing more....

Australia law makers...can do both local communities overseas and domestic investors at home a favour by putting in place adequate mechanisms to ensure Australian companies cause no harm overseas.