They blew up 46,000 years for $135 Million: how mining is devouring itself

Australia’s mining sector isn’t collapsing; it’s devouring its own future while the PR machine drowns out the sound of detonators. Here’s what happens when an industry offshores its profits, abandons 80,000 toxic craters, and calls it nation-building.

They blew up 46,000 years of human history for $135 million worth of iron ore. And it was legal.

On May 24, 2020, Rio Tinto loaded explosives into the Juukan Gorge caves in Western Australia’s Pilbara and pushed the button. The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people had pleaded for a stay five days earlier. Rio Tinto kept loading. They detonated during Reconciliation Week. Two days before Sorry Day.

That’s not mining; it’s vandalism with a ministerial stamp. It captures the rot at the core of an industry quietly devouring itself while loudly proclaiming nation-builder status through a $541 million lobbying megaphone, bolstered by the IPA and coordinated bot armies flooding social media to protect vested interests.

Welcome to Australian mining in 2025: where profits fly offshore faster than heritage approvals, where 86% of the wealth vanishes into foreign pockets, where the industry claiming to keep the lights on has left us with 80,000 abandoned toxic wounds and an invoice coming due.

The Great Disappearing Act: Where Your Resources Actually Go

Let’s start with the con at the heart of it all.

According to Federal Treasury, Australia’s mining industry is 86% foreign owned. BHP is 76% foreign owned. Rio Tinto is 83%. Between them, they control 70% of listed mining company resources. Under Australian law, they’re foreign corporations operating on our land, extracting our finite resources, then shipping the profits to London, New York, and Beijing.

The sales pitch: “Mining built this nation! We’re the backbone of the economy! We keep your lights on!”

The reality: Mining company tax payments make up less than three cents in every dollar of government revenue. Over the last decade, the industry paid $254 billion in tax while total government revenue reached almost $6.8 trillion.

Add royalties, which aren’t taxes but payment for public resources, and the sector’s contribution hits just 6% of total government revenue.

And those profits? Gone. Offshored. Vanished into the global financial ether while Australians inherit depleted ore bodies and a cleanup bill that would make a Greek tragedy look like light entertainment.

The $10 Billion Lie

Speaking of cleanup bills, let’s talk about Australia’s 80,000 ghost mines.

Researchers have identified, classified and georeferenced more than 95,000 active and inactive hard rock mine sites across Australia. More than 80,000 are currently inactive. Of these, 68% are classified as neglected, while just 4% were noted as rehabilitated.

Four. Per. Cent.

Australian governments hold around $10 billion in environmental bonds to assist with rehabilitation if companies abandon their sites. Sounds responsible, right?

Except a single mine’s rehabilitation may cost hundreds of millions, often many times greater than the token amount governments hold in bonds.

Try this calculation: 80,000 sites. Ten billion in bonds. Large open-cut mines costing hundreds of millions; sometimes billions, to rehabilitate properly. The numbers don’t compute.

Conservative academic estimates quote tens of billions required for 50,000–60,000 mines. Extrapolate this, with hundreds of mines costing up to $2 billion each, thousands more costing millions, and a worst-case total exceeds $100 billion for all 80,000 sites, especially factoring legacy uranium, asbestos, lead, or complex tailings remediation.

BHP, The Big Australian, as it is hilariously framed, mostly owned by US interests, and other major miners took the ore, banked the profits offshore, and left Australians holding the invoice for a continental-scale Superfund site. There are no examples of major, modern open-cut mines completing rehabilitation to the point where the site can be relinquished.

Not one.

But at least we’ve got those promotional videos about “sustainable mining practices.”

When Heritage Becomes Inconvenient

Back to Juukan Gorge, because this story deserves to haunt every mining CEO’s sleep.

The caves contained archaeological evidence spanning over 46,000 years; the only inland site in Australia with evidence of continuous human occupation through the last Ice Age. Inside: thousands of flaked stone artefacts, rare faunal remains, unique stone tools, preserved human hair, and sediment containing a pollen record charting millennia of environmental change.

The PKKP heritage manager told Rio Tinto the site was one of the “top five” most significant in the Pilbara. An archaeologist told them Juukan 2 was of “the highest archaeological significance in Australia,” saying its significance “could not be overstated.”

Rio Tinto’s response? They demolished it anyway. For eight million tons of high-grade iron ore worth $135 million.

Let that ratio sink in: 46,000 years of irreplaceable human heritage for $135 million. That’s the calculus. That’s what “nation-building” actually looks like.

Yes, Rio Tinto acted within the law. In 2013, they received ministerial consent under WA’s Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972. Even after a 2014 archaeological dig revealed the site was far older and more significant than originally thought, the law offered no provisions to reverse the decision.

The blast was as legal as it was obscene. And Rio Tinto’s initial response wasn’t an apology; it was corporate speak about being “sorry” the traditional owners were “aggrieved.” Like they’d dinged someone’s Camry in a car park, not obliterated 46,000 years of humanity’s story.

Five years on, the reputational crater runs deeper than the mine ever did. In December 2021, a contentious bill to replace the deeply flawed 1972 Act was passed by the WA government. The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021 has since been repealed, and the 1972 legislation reinstated.

Nothing changed. The law that allowed the destruction still stands. But trust? Social licence? The industry’s ability to get projects approved without communities fighting tooth and nail?

Blown up. Just like the caves. Disgraceful, even for WA, a totally mining-captured state.

The Profit Crash Nobody’s Talking About

While mining executives defended their heritage destruction and offshored profits, something interesting happened to their bottom line.

In 2023-24, total selected industries’ operating profit before tax declined $60.0 billion, down 8.6%. Mining had the largest fall: $66.7 billion, a catastrophic 27.4% drop.

The high LNG, thermal coal, and spodumene prices from the previous year unwound as global demand stabilised.

The boom went bust. Commodity prices moderated from the 2022-23 sugar rush, and suddenly the “backbone of the economy” looked suspiciously spineless.

This isn’t just cyclical volatility. This is structural rot. Witness Queensland’s coal royalties: a fiscal yo-yo tied to commodity prices that swing wildly, triggering state budget shortfalls and job cuts every time the market farts. That’s not prosperity. That’s punting the housekeeping on the Dapto Dogs while claiming responsible economic stewardship.

And when prices fall? Workers’ jobs get cut. Communities crater. The “jobs for regional Australia” disappear faster than the profits heading overseas. But you won’t hear a peep from Murdoch’s mob.

The Robots Are Coming (For Your Political Base)

Speaking of jobs, let’s examine mining’s spectacular act of political self-immolation.

For decades, the sector has chanted “regional employment” like a sacred mantra. Every time someone suggests stronger environmental regulations or heritage protections, out comes the threat: “You’ll kill mining jobs! Regional communities will die!” It’s in all the major papers.

Now? Driverless trucks. AI-controlled drills. Automated haulage systems. Remote operation centres running mines from air-conditioned offices in Perth or Brisbane.

The mining sector employed about 270,000 people in 2021; about 2.0% of the total labour force. And that number’s shrinking as automation accelerates.

The industry calls it “productivity gains.” Regional towns call it betrayal. Meanwhile, renewables are creating real jobs, tens of thousands, in installation, maintenance, and manufacturing.

But when renewables generate employment, the mining lobby screams “socialism” and “green fantasies.” When mining destroys jobs through automation, it’s “innovation” and “efficiency.”

Can’t have it both ways, digger.

The stranded industry is sawing off its own political legs, eliminating the workers who formed its base of public support, while wondering why communities are increasingly hostile to new projects.

The Financial Noose Tightens

While mining executives defend the indefensible and offshore profits, the world moves on.

Leading banks and insurers have exited thermal coal. Projects now rely on captive or niche insurers, facing tighter terms and higher costs. It’s not dramatic; it’s death by a thousand paper cuts: policy updates, no press releases, no fanfare. Just quietly shrinking access to capital.

Meanwhile, climate regulations tighten from both ends. Domestically, the Safeguard Mechanism’s emission baselines fall approximately 4.9% annually until 2030. Internationally, the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism hits high-carbon exports from 2026.

That’s not some distant threat. That’s a regulatory noose tightening right now. Mining spent so much time lobbying against climate action that it failed to adapt.

Heat waves disrupt operations. Cyclones shut down ports. Floods destroy infrastructure. Droughts strain water supplies. Insurance costs soar. These aren’t “acts of God”; they’re predictable, climate-amplified operational risks that the industry spent decades denying while funding climate denialist think tanks.

Now the bill’s coming due in rising costs, tighter margins, and stranded assets.

The Contradictions Consuming Themselves

Let’s tally the absurdities.

The industry claims it “keeps the lights on” while shipping 86% of profits overseas and leaving taxpayers with billions in cleanup costs.

It proclaims itself “nation-builder” while systematically underfunding closure liabilities and abandoning 80,000 toxic sites.

It demands Indigenous consultation while blowing up 46,000-year-old sacred sites and calling it “legal compliance.”

It warns about job losses from regulation while replacing workers with robots and calling it progress.

It lobbies furiously to weaken environmental protections while facing mounting climate disruptions to its own operations.

It publishes glossy sustainability reports while fighting every meaningful heritage reform and carbon pricing mechanism.

This isn’t cognitive dissonance. This is a business model devouring its own guts and complaining about the flavour.

The Reckoning

Here’s what mining has actually built: a continental landscape pockmarked with 80,000 abandoned toxic holes; a $10 billion rehabilitation fund that won’t cover a fraction of the cleanup; a political environment where communities fight every new project; a workforce being automated into obsolescence; a foreign ownership structure that vacuums 86% of wealth overseas; a heritage destruction legacy epitomised by Juukan Gorge; a climate policy stance that’s left it unprepared for the transition; and a social licence so shredded that “never again” has become a parliamentary catchphrase.

Operating profits crashed 27.4% in a single year. Insurance and finance are quietly retreating. Climate risks are escalating. Heritage laws are tightening (however inadequately). Automation is hollowing out the political base. And commodity prices are increasingly tied to a global economy transitioning away from fossil fuels; a world economy at serious risk as Trump plays Russian Roulette with tariff-mania.

This isn’t a sector going from strength to strength. This is an industry cannibalising its own future; financially haemorrhaging profits, politically burning bridges, strategically failing to adapt to the decarbonising world, and morally bankrupt after Juukan Gorge.

The boom didn’t just end. It’s devouring itself. And it’s barely past the canapés.

The Bottom Line

$10 billion in bonds. 80,000 abandoned sites. 86% foreign ownership. 46,000 years of heritage blown up for $135 million. A 27.4% profit crash. Zero successfully rehabilitated major open-cut mines.

They took our resources. They shipped the profits offshore. They left us the holes, the cleanup bill, and the ashes of 46,000 years of human history.

And they’re still running ads about nation-building.

That’s not mining. That’s a smash-and-grab operation with a better PR budget, an expiration date stamped on every automation upgrade and climate impact report, and an invoice that’ll arrive long after the executives have collected their bonuses and moved on.

When the music stops, taxpayers will be left holding the bag and a continent full of toxic holes.

But sure, tell us again how you keep the lights on. This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES

Urban Wronski writes fearless independent commentary on Australian politics, economics, and the industries eating themselves from within. This piece is about accountability; something mining has spent $541 million in lobbying to avoid.

See also:

The Worst Deal in History: Why Mining Has Ransacked Australia While the Press Looked Away

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