#BOUNDLESS GAME IRON DEPOSITES TRIAL#
#BOUNDLESS GAME IRON DEPOSITES FREE#

'You know, I am a great believer in free speech,' he continues. 'If you follow the kind of Hegel way or even Karl Popper, you want a good argument and you have a debate and then through argument you get greater,' he says, moving on before that thought is finished. 'Probably scientists start off a lot less certain about what they say than often politicians or policymakers, because they're used to the kind of hypothesis and the challenge, if you like, or thesis and antithesis,' he continues. Whether we appreciate it or not, this is the scientific method in action. Positions were taken, a debate was had, positions were changed, the right decision was made and everyone moves on. And I actually think this country does it rather well,' Mackenzie says.īHP Billiton chief executive Andrew Mackenzie. It's part of being in a global democracy.

And, you know, I take the rough with the smooth. 'I mean … we have these tax debates and we know about it. 'Transparency is your best form of defence,' he starts. This, he suggests spikily, expresses a basic and profound misunderstanding of the purpose of argument, be it with a competitor, a tax office or a global regulator. His successful vigour left Mackenzie accused of stifling debate in the name of corporate self-interest. It would be a national distraction, a threat to our standing with major customers and 'an amazing gift to our competitor, Brazil', he warned. A government inquiry would be a 'ridiculous waste of taxpayers' money on providing a basic economics course on supply and demand'. Mackenzie had effectively ended the iron ore debate with a brutal performance on news radio. These threatening national debates were then punctuated by the conclusion of a seven-year investigation of BHP by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which left the miner an uncomfortable poster boy for global efforts to constrain the way business deals with government officials generally and executives of state-owned entities specifically.

#BOUNDLESS GAME IRON DEPOSITES TRIAL#

Mackenzie arrives at a meeting room on level 18 of BHP's very modern Collins Street headquarters after a period of rare public trial for the Global Australian.įorrest's easy siren song had briefly lured government interest in accusations that BHP and Rio Tinto were manipulating iron ore markets to smash competitors just as a Senate committee and the Australian Taxation Office pondered the efficacy of the big miner's tax arrangements. This is a scientist's mind at work.īHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie in his office in Melbourne. Germany's father of rationalism and 20th century Britain's Austrian-born defender of the rational are both deployed by Mackenzie to illuminate how the world's biggest mining company defends the way it sells iron ore. And it is just as far from Karl Popper's reassertion of the certainty of the scientific method to the Australian government's unstructured dithering over iron ore inquiries.īut BHP Billiton chief executive Andrew Mackenzie finds himself joining these disparate rhetorical dots in reviewing his recent spirited rejection of a proposed parliamentary review of the iron ore market. It is a long way from Andrew Forrest to Georg Hegel.

Boundless game iron deposites