⏩ Issue 17: Glencore

Last week we looked at Transgrid and community consent, through the lens of Victoria legislating compulsory acquisition of easements to keep renewable energy targets on track. This week, we turn to the company operating the mine at the centre of another native title compensation award - Glencore: $54 million, for cultural losses compounded over three decades of operation.

Some background first, because this area of law is new to many, including a lot of people in mining. When a government grants mining leases over land where native title exists, the native title holders are legally entitled to compensation. It works like compulsory acquisition of a house: you must be paid for what was taken or damaged. The largest part of the compensation in this case is cultural loss, the damage to the connection between people and country, and it is not capped. Courts have only ever priced it three times, and two of those judgments were decided this year, three months apart.

The one I’m looking at today is McArthur River, handed down in February. Important detail: the court ordered the Northern Territory Government to pay, not the mine operator, because it was the Territory that granted the leases back in the 1990s. Glencore signed off its 2025 Sustainability Report two months after the court made its decision. So, this week I read that report with one question in mind: did Glencore provide any detail on the relationship and commercial outcome in its annual narrative? If the financial impact is to the government and not the proponent, should they even need to?

— Bronwyn

Source: 2025 Sustainability Report (57pp) · Published 30 April 2026 · Prepared with reference to the Global Reporting Initiative standards, including the GRI 14 mining sector standard · Member of the International Council on Mining and Metals · Independently assured by ERM CVS

Glencore is one of the world's largest resource companies: around 40 industrial mining and processing assets across more than 30 countries, and over 140,000 employees and contractors. One of those assets is the McArthur River zinc and lead mine near Borroloola in the Northern Territory, on the country of the Gudanji, Yanyuwa and Yanyuwa-Marra peoples. The mine has operated since the mid 1990s, and its expansion included diverting the McArthur River itself.

MRM is McArthur River Mining, the Glencore subsidiary that operates the mine. An Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) is a voluntary, legally registered agreement between a company and native title holders about how land will be used and what the native title holders receive in return. This page of the sustainability report reads as a good news story: a Cooperation Agreement, a Cultural Heritage Management Agreement, and this ILUA, all signed with the Traditional Owners' corporation in 2025.

What the report does not mention is that two months after the ILUA was signed, the Federal Court handed down its compensation judgment. The court first assessed the Traditional Owners' cultural loss at $60 million. It then asked whether anything the Traditional Owners were already receiving should reduce that figure. The answer was in the December 2025 ILUA. The court reduced the award by 10 percent, to $54 million, to account for the benefits flowing under the ILUA. Essentially, the court put a dollar value on the ILUA, and that value was $6 million against a $60 million loss.

The Territory pays the award, not Glencore, so there was no legal need to report it, but on a page describing the state of this relationship, some might suggest it’s noteworthy.

$112 million is Glencore's global social investment contribution for 2025, across every operation in every country. The cultural loss award for this one mine was $54 million, roughly half that. McArthur River was not a site that neglected community: the mine's community benefits trust has invested more than $22 million across 160 local projects since 2007.

The Traditional Owners still took the claim to court, and won.

Why? Because community investment and compensation are two different things. Investment is voluntary, chosen by the company, and reported every year. Compensation is a legal entitlement the Traditional Owners have held since the leases were granted, priced by a court, based on damage to country. The Northern Land Council, which ran the claim, notes the Traditional Owners sought to negotiate compensation from the mid 1990s and the Territory declined until native title was formally established.

We asked whether anything in the report lets you see a judgment like this coming. The answer in my view is, not really. The judgment is invisible because sustainability reporting measures the company's side of the relationship: dollars contributed, agreements signed, incidents recorded. The court priced the other side: what was lost, to whom, for how many generations.

This is not an argument that Glencore behaved badly or that the claim was excessive. Every party did what its own system provided for. The lesson is that the two systems produce numbers that never touch.

Two practical takeaways for anyone operating on native title land:

Native title. The entitlement of native title holders to be paid, on just terms, for acts like mining lease grants that impair native title. Who is liable depends on the regime: under WA's Mining Act the tenement holder pays, while in the Territory cases the government paid.

Native title compensation. The entitlement of native title holders to be paid, on just terms, for acts like mining lease grants that impair or extinguish their native title.

Cultural loss. The part of compensation covering damage to the connection between native title holders and country: harm to sacred sites, Dreamings, ceremony and the passing of culture between generations. Assessed as a whole, not per hectare, and not capped at the land's market value.

Traditional Owners. The Aboriginal people who hold traditional rights and connection to a particular area of country. At McArthur River, the Gudanji, Yanyuwa and Yanyuwa-Marra peoples.

ILUA (Indigenous Land Use Agreement). A voluntary agreement under the Native Title Act between native title parties and others, such as a mining company, about the use of land and the benefits provided in return. Registered with the National Native Title Tribunal. An ILUA can settle compensation, but only if it is written to do so.

Timber Creek. Northern Territory v Griffiths (2019), the High Court case that set the rules for valuing native title compensation, including that cultural loss is real, significant, and not capped. The total award was about $2.5 million.