Mining 2017 – ’The ghosts of politics past’
- By: John P Sykes
Posted in: Blog, Media, Mineral Policy, Mining, PhD, Publications
0
Allan Trench (University of Western Australia – UWA) and I start the Strictly Boardroom column on MiningNewPremium.net this year, with the first in a three-part Dickensian inspired piece on mining and politics, that looks to explain the political ructions of 2016 and what they mean for the future of the mining sector. The work is inspired by and drawn from the final CET scenarios workshop on the future of minerals exploration, which I ran as part of my PhD research at the Centre for Exploration Targeting, UWA, last June.
This article looks at the evolution of political ideology in the late 20th and early 20th centuries and its impact on the mining sector. It considers how politicians as varied as George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Tony Blair, David Cameron, Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull were involved in a global consolidation of ideology around free-market capitalism and progressive economic, environmental and social values. In turn, this allowed mining companies unprecedented global opportunities for expansion, but also mired them in complex development and operating situations.
This global consensus was challenged last year, by the likes of Donald Trump and the successful Brexit referendum – the subject of next week’s article.
This week’s article was entitled: Mining 2017 – ‘The ghosts of politics past’ and is available to MiningNewsPremium.net subscribers online. Otherwise contact me for a copy.
For keen followers of the Strictly Boardroom column, our new book “Strictly (Mining) Boardroom Volume II: A Practitioners Guide for Next Generation Directors” is out now and available as a hard copy or e-book from Major Street Publishing or Amazon.
Image: ‘Scrooge Extinguishes the First of the Three Spirits’ from A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens, and illustrated by John Leech.