A Culture War Backlash Hits the Mining Industry: David Fickling

Politics moves in pendulum swings from one extreme to the other. In many parts of the world, the backlash against the “woke” politics of the early 2020s appears to be foundering. That’s far from being the case in Australia’s mining industry.

Consider the end of a two-decade series of legal battles this week between Australia’s richest man and the Yindjibarndi, a First Nations group in the Pilbara region of the country’s northwest.

Fortescue Ltd., the iron-ore miner founded by billionaire Andrew Forrest, has been ordered to pay A$150 million ($108 million) to the Yindjibarndi after Australia’s Federal Court found it had built its Solomon Hub project on their land ...