Key points
- The Australian Attitudes Towards Mining 2024 report was released in October 2024.
- It provides crucial insights for policymakers, industry leaders and communities.
- A key finding of the report shows us that public trust in the mining industry has improved, but there are conditions.
Together with the data-science and community engagement company Voconiq, we've been conducting the Australian Attitudes toward Mining survey across ten years. In that time, the mining industry has earned more than $2.1 trillion in export revenue, paid $241 billion in wages and $132 billion in company taxes. That equates to 21 per cent of Australia’s economic growth over the decade.
While the economic benefits are clear, community attitudes toward the mining industry are in many cases conflicted.
The latest survey was launched at the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) in Sydney in October. It revealed a significant positive shift in public attitudes toward the industry.
Dr Kieren Moffat is founder and CEO of Voconiq. Kieren worked with us for almost 14 years before community-engagement research firm Voconiq became one of our spinout companies in 2019.
“We see a substantive improvement in community trust in the mining industry and acceptance of its activities,” Kieren says.
The mean trust score was 2.8 in 2014 and 2017. It rose to 3.1 in the 2024 survey, which engaged 6,448 respondents.
“That jump might not look like much, but as a social scientist I can tell you that is a statistically significant increase. Quite a big jump,” Kieren says.
The need for energy transition minerals is growing in volume and urgency. It is more important than ever to bring citizen voices into the conversation about how our national resources are managed. This will help ensure that miners have a robust social licence to operate.
Dr Louise Fisher is Science Director and Deputy Director of our Mineral Resources research unit.
“As Australia’s national science agency, we undertake research that supports industry and the Australian community. Adding to this longitudinal data set is very important,” Louise says.
“The growth in trust the survey found is linked to meeting expectations around environmental management and how mining companies engage with communities and their workforce. Trust is very hard to win and sustaining trust has to be taken very seriously.”
Engaging communities as mining expands
“The mining industry in Australia is central to tackling one of the world’s great challenges: the climate emergency,” Kieren says.
“Energy transition minerals are vital to the energy transformation and Australia is well placed to support it. However, the forecast for required minerals is clear: we need significantly more.”
At the same time, many of these energy transition minerals are depleting in grade or becoming harder to access.
“That means they will need to be mined in areas where mining does not have a history, where people are not comfortable or accustomed to this kind of activity, predominantly on First Nations lands,” Kieren says.
“The industry needs to build its social acceptability of this activity to avoid delays and social rejection.”
The 2024 survey maintained consistency by asking the same questions as the previous two surveys. However, this year the survey also included questions on critical and energy transition minerals. These were designed to measure community sentiment regarding the mining industry's role in renewable energy efforts.
The Voconiq approach was developed over nearly 15 years of research at CSIRO. It emphasises that successful engagement science for any sector involves surveying people who are neither advocates nor protestors.
“That’s how we get to a deeper, more constructive place. The loudest voices are available to us every day on social platforms and newspapers and that’s not our constituency,” Kieren says.
“This report is a reflection of the core constituency for social licence, that middle 90 per cent per cent of our community who aren’t at the extreme. They have nuanced views.
Australians are very passionate about environmental impact and management, climate change and renewable energy, but they’re also pragmatic. They’re saying, ‘I'm okay with expanded mining so long as you’re treating your people well and managing your environmental impacts effectively’.”
Other key findings from the survey include:
- 73 per cent of respondents acknowledge that access to critical minerals is essential to achieve net zero emissions.
- 71 per cent agree that mining is important to the Australian way of life.
- 72 per cent believe mining will support Australia’s future prosperity.
- Despite the above, 61 per cent agree that mining has negative environmental impacts.
- 32 per cent of respondents believe Australia should reduce mining activity, even if it delays the transition to net zero emissions.
- Ensuring fair distribution of mining’s benefits and actively engaging communities are key to maintaining the industry’s social licence (52 per cent of participants agree that mining communities receive a fair share of benefit).
To bring a representative sample of citizen voices into the conversation about how mining is being managed, Voconiq’s normal panel-based selection gathered 89 per cent of the respondents.
The rest came from our decision to throw the survey wide open via media releases, social media and LinkedIn advertising.
“We also made sure we collected data from the places where mining happens, as well as all the spaces in between, and 9.6 per cent of our sample identified as First Nations people,” Kieren says.
How the survey informs research and development
For us, in many ways the 10-year survey data validates what the agency is already doing for the mining industry.
“We are already working on delivering the science and technology solutions that help address the environmental, workforce and mine-safety issues that were raised in the survey,” Louise says.
“That includes research and technology development for a range of issues, including to improve dust and water management and automation to take humans out of the most hazardous parts of mining environments.
That work helps the industry to meet those social acceptance criteria of looking after people and the environment. It also really focuses us on building our ongoing research that will continue to enable the industry to progress on those goals.”
Waste and emissions reduction and advancing the circular economy are other key areas of our research teams.
“We are working on technologies that support recovery of critical minerals from tailings and developing new processing technologies that reduce energy and water consumption. We're also working on technologies for carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere through a process known as enhanced mineralisation or mineral carbonation,” Louise says.
Strengthening the scaffold of trust
We recognise that the mining industry needs to be competitive. To do this, improving social and environmental outcomes and being able to meet more stringent environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements are key.
“This survey demonstrates the need to support the Australian community and the industry in their ongoing and increasingly close relationship,” Louise says.
“It was so important to have the survey include the voices of people living in mining communities and the traditional owners of lands where mining is taking place and who have that lived experience.”
For those who want to dig into the survey results, the data is publicly available via an online dashboard.
“In recent years, the industry has responded by being quite open about the steps they’re taking to address community concerns. They've discussed where things have gone wrong and improvements they are making,” Louise says.
“There’s a tendency to want to share good news stories, but transparency about all the news builds trust in a way that’s more authentic.”
Mining companies are encouraged to see the report as a way forward rather than an end point.
“The good news is that public trust in the mining industry to act responsibly and acceptance of mining has increased, but there’s still a lot of room to grow,” Louise says.
“The report in some ways provides a blueprint. When you meet these expectations, you’ll build trust. Industry can treat it as a roadmap for what they should build on.”
Kieren says the report can be a useful launchpad for deep reflection by mining companies, acknowledging that it’s a complex task.
“It takes real grunt for a team to reflect on this data in the context of what is in our control, what is in our interests and what is in the interest of communities we work alongside, in line with our commitments to those people,” Kieren says.
“Building trust includes demonstrating vulnerability. That’s what communities are doing every day when they’re living alongside a large mining operation.
The survey shows that when companies demonstrate they are trustworthy by being vulnerable and authentic with communities they are more successful at getting to constructive discussions. The risk of not doing that is significant.”
Look beyond the good-news headlines
While it’s tempting to focus on the survey’s finding of increased trust, the true indicators of long-term value are found deeper in the results.
Katie Valentine is the Head of Integration & Execution of Fortescue’s Decarbonisation Program.
“The findings in this report reiterate the urgency for the mining and resources sector to accelerate its decarbonisation efforts,” Katie says.
“Fortescue is leading the way in this respect through our progress in decarbonising our iron ore operations to achieve real zero by 2030. We will continue to make the case for all other heavy industrialists to join us.”
Experienced mining executive Christine Charles is Non-executive Director of Tivan Ltd and chair of EnviroCopper.
“The data is saying that trust is ours to lose,” Christine says.
“Mining has a complex relationship with the community. People want the benefits of mining but not at any cost. The complex message in this research is that really good regulation is just as important as performance.”
“Both local and national communities need to believe the benefits of mining activity will outweigh the costs, and that the process by which the energy transition happens is fair and just,” Kieren says.
“Directly impacted communities must be supported through this transition. That’s why bringing citizen voices into the conversation about how these important resources are managed is vital at this time for Australia.”
The third survey in this series won’t be the last.
“There’s value in continuing to add to this longitudinal data,” Louise says.
“We will continue to assess how the conversation around mining, its role in the energy transition and impact on communities evolves. That will give us the pointers as to when it’s the right time to launch the next iteration of this survey.”