Good evening. ll is overwhelming to stand here and receive the recognition for the Project of the Year 2016.
This would not have been possible without the vision and leadership of the Hancock Prospecting and Roy Hill Chairman, Gina Rinehart, who pegged the Roy Hill tenements after becoming chair, back in 1992, tenements not thought of value by other exploration and mining companies.
It is important that Hancock Prospecting’s drilling and studies eventually showed differently. Feasibility studies were undertaken with the final positive bankable feasibility study completed in January 2011. Many years of risk, persistence, investment and hard work in doing the successful exploration, studies, planning and preparation – including obtaining many, many government approvals – is a testimony to the perseverance and efforts of Mrs Rinehart and Hancock Prospecting.
Infrastructure construction started in 2012, followed by the award of EPC Contract for mine, rail and port to Samsung C&T in April 2013.
The project has spent over 38 million hours, with over 37,000 different people working on the project over its duration, and a peak workforce in excess of 6300 staying at eight different locations.
The air miles travelled by the charter plane between Perth and mine site in the 30 months are equivalent to three return flights between the earth and the moon.
On behalf of our CEO, Barry Fitzgerald. [who) I quote: ‘I am immensely proud of the contribution of all the people involved in delivering the project, and in particular I thank Mrs Rinehart for her leadership, as well as her support and confidence in the Roy Hill leadership team’.
One of the major challenges for the project has been the multitudinous government approvals. permits, licences and obligations that the project has complied with. T.he project had over 400 primary and secondary approvals to comply with, [and] over 4000 obligations and conditions that we had to manage. This is in addition to extensive legislative and regulatory obligations from the occupational health and safety requirements.
To make this achievement possible, I would like to acknowledge and thank the support from the shareholders of Hancock Prospecting, and minority shareholders POSCO, Marubeni and China Steel, and for the support and steadfast enthusiasm of our Chairman, Mrs Rinehart.
And I wish to thank each of those who contributed to the outcome for this project, as detailed on our website.
Mrs Gina Rinehart
Thank you, Sanjiv. I am so very happy that you’re receiving this so well-deserved award. I’d like to add my sincere thanks for each and all those who made our high-tech mega project, Roy Hill – a project within budget and with the fastest construction time in Australia for such a project – possible.
Of course, this achievement couldn’t have occurred without the support of 19 major banks and five ECAs – continuing thanks. Our CFO, Garry Korte – who led this historic and complicated financing, as he says at times, under ‘blow torch pressure’ – is with me tonight. Garry, can you please stand?
I’d also like to support what Sanjiv has said in relation to the negative burden of onerous, costly and time consuming government red tape.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Australia has the fastest growth in government spending among 17 comparable countries.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Australia has the third-highest growth in net government debt among 1 7 comparable countries.
According to the IPA’s calculations, the cost of red tape to the Australian economy makes red tape ‘Australia’s largest industry’.
I ask, how is this going to encourage more projects in Australia?
The decline in investment in Australia is occurring. As an industry, what are we doing to point this out to our federal and state governments – even media – and drive necessary change? Very clearly, not enough.
As I’ve said publicly before, in this commodity-prices crash, we need to cut costs to stay competitive internationally and to stay in business so that we can continue to contribute revenue and help to protect Australia’s living standards. Yet, there’s one giant cost slab that isn’t decreasing – government!
If Barry, Sanjiv and I are three of only a very few executives urging for significant reduction in government tape and expenses, we won’t get the government cost-burden reductions our country urgently needs.
So, please think about the foregoing, and take every opportunity to help to do something about it, be that public speaking, getting the issues out further into the public domain and driving reductions.
We hope you’ll go home tonight and write to all politicians, and then keep the letters going, to their chiefs of staff and industry organisations that should be driving this and more. Write cartoons and songs even! Just keep going.
I would like to leave you with a song, written by a fantastic friend of mine, Jim Viets. It’s called ‘Mining Permit Blues’, also known as, ‘Project Permit Blues’!
But firstly, it’s very special to be an executive on a major project from start to finish, spanning decades. This doesn’t happen usually, and then to get an award, tool Thank you, Project Management Institute Australian Chapters.
