The Argyle Participation Agreement
The Argyle mining lease area is on the traditional country of the Miriuwung, Gidja, Malgnin and Woolah peoples.
Following several years of relationship building and negotiation, the Argyle Participation Agreement was registered in 2005 as an Indigenous Land Use Agreement. It is significant as a benchmark demonstration that genuine and practical reconciliation is possible - and in the interests of both industry and Indigenous people.
The Agreement, which superseded Argyle's 20-year-old Good Neighbour Agreement, acknowledges that traditional owners are the mining lease custodians, while in turn the traditional owners recognise Argyle's right to mine.
The Agreement enables financial benefits to be indexed to Argyle's net profit and put into trusts, laying the foundation for a shared commitment to employment, education and business development in the East Kimberley.
To provide flexibility in managing the day-to-day relationship between traditional owners and Argyle, a Relationship Committee was set up by the Argyle Participation Agreement. The committee consists of 26 traditional owners and four Argyle representatives. The Committee's role is to monitor the implementation of the Participation Agreement and review the Management Plans which span the following key areas:
Land rights
Under the Participation Agreement, Argyle agrees to hold the grazing lease on trust for traditional owners for the life of the mining operation, at the end of which time the lease will be transferred to them. This transfer will enable the traditional owners to lodge a claim for full-strength native title over the grazing lease area, which Argyle will support.
Income generation
An important element of the Participation Agreement is a joint commitment to improve community and social infrastructure for Aboriginal communities in the East Kimberley region. To this end, a portion of the traditional owners' income from the Agreement will be allocated on an annual basis to fund community development initiatives.
Employment and contracting opportunities
Another important commitment of the Participation Agreement is to give support and preference to local Aboriginal people for jobs and training. A number of training and employment programmes are already in place to increase Aboriginal representation in the Argyle workforce while the position of Business Development Facilitator has been specifically created to provide assistance, support and referral to prospective Aboriginal businesses for the first three years of the Agreement. About twelve Aboriginal people are currently working with the Business Development Facilitator to develop their business ideas, which span the earthmoving, transport, manufacturing, horticulture and tourism industries. At the same time, a jointly created Business Development Taskforce is looking for business development opportunities within the Argyle mine. All mine contracts worth more than A$250,000 are provided to the Business Development Taskforce prior to being put to Tender so that traditional owners have the best opportunity to successfully compete for the contract tender.
Land management
Under the Agreement, traditional owners have the right to tour the mine site operations each year and raise any matters they wish to discuss. They also have a mechanism to raise any land management or water management concerns they have at any time. Furthermore, Argyle is required to submit to traditional owners any major rehabilitation or decommissioning proposals and must seek the views of traditional owners before proceeding.
Aboriginal site protection
More than 50 Aboriginal heritage sites have been identified on the Argyle lease with another 25 within a few kilometres of the lease boundary. Argyle acknowledges that the mining lease area is rich in both archaeological and ethnographic Aboriginal sites and that the Participation Agreement needs to provide the strongest protection possible for these sites in the future. In the Site Protection Management Plan, traditional owners have indicated that in areas of past and current operations, Argyle needs no further clearances from them to continue its work, which includes the proposed underground operation. For all areas outside the current operation, Argyle has agreed that it will submit a work programme to traditional owners before conducting any ground-disturbing work. It has also agreed to a mechanism of discussion in the field with traditional owners to ensure that any work that Argyle proposes does not interfere with Aboriginal sites. This represents the high point in site protection agreements between Aboriginal people and mining companies in Western Australia.
"Our people went through two or three years fighting to get this agreement, to fix the old agreement and get this new agreement going. It made us realise that our people are important and that they need to get involved in what happens on their country."
Marjorie Brown, traditional owner, Bilbildjing Dawawang
