ABSTRACT
In 1998, the Australian-based international non-governmental organization (NGO), Community Aid Abroad (later Oxfam Australia) released a report titled Undermined: The Impact of Australian Mining Companies Operating in Developing Countries (Atkinson, 1998). The cover of the report depicts an Indonesian woman, described on the inside front cover as a small-scale miner, selling her gold in a local trading shop. Immersed in the task of weighing the tiny amount of gold dust to sell for cash, the image presents a highly localized transaction in familiar surroundings. This stands in contrast to the large-scale, foreign-owned mining enterprise that disrupted the lives and livelihoods of people in this same location. In its entirety, the publication describes various offshore activities of the Australian mining industry, the problems associated with its operations in remote, poor and vulnerable communities in the Asia Pacific, and the absence of avenues available to them to raise their
concerns. This publication marked the beginnings of Oxfam Australia’s long-running Mining Ombudsman campaign, established at the turn of the new millennium to address the industry’s apparent lack of commitment to a formal complaints mechanism.
