Two questions lodged at Rio Tinto's 2022 AGM
May 5, 2022
Two questions lodged at 2022 Rio Tinto AGM and click here to read the detailed pre-AGM letter.
1. Given the Juukan Gorge fiasco which showed London headquartered Rio Tinto was so out of touch with Australia, why don't you move the head office to Australia and commit to having a majority of Australian-based directors. Could the English chairman Simon Thompson please allow the Australian directors to comment on this issue, including our first ever Indigenous director, Ben Wyatt? Could incoming chair Dominic Barton also outline his connections to Australia.
2. Australia's former Treasurer and US Ambassador Joe Hockey recently revealed on Sky News that then US President Barack Obama asked him and then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to stop sending iron ore to China in 2014. Australia-China relations have subsequently deteriorated markedly to the point where China has banned many Australian exports. Under what circumstances would London-based Rio Tinto, which has a Chinese Government controlled entity as its largest shareholder, stop sending Australian iron ore to feed China's military machine? Could the CEO and incoming chair Dominic Barton, a former Beijing-based Ambassador for Canada, please explain the tools or laws that the Federal or WA governments have at their disposal to prevent shipments of our iron ore to China? Would we ever contemplate voluntarily doing that, like hundreds of companies have done with Russia after the Ukraine invasion.
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