The PNG environmental defenders taking on Australian mining giants — what is extractive justice and its toll?

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Hello, it's Lisa Leong from This Working Life, helping to make your work life better with advice from the world's top experts like psychotherapist Esther Perel.

Theonila Roka Matbob (0:18)

Many conflicts are about power. Power is when I dismiss what you're bringing up.

Emmanuel Peni (0:22)

Power is when I magnify a problem.

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And Professor Adam Grant.

Luke Fletcher (0:27)

We need to take our critics and our cheerleaders and turn them into coaches.

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Free coaching. Search for This Working Life on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

Natasha Mitchell (0:37)

When big mining moves in next door, or just across the Coral Sea, what happens when the neighbours say no thanks or clean up your mess? And what does it take to resist, to seek justice and sometimes win?

That's today on Big Ideas.

Theonila Roka Matbob (1:05)

Fix your mess. I didn't ask for it. I did not tell my ancestors to paddle to Australia to sign the deal.

Natasha Mitchell (1:13)

No.

Theonila Roka Matbob (1:14)

Come back and fix your mess. That's all. I know I'm not alone.

I'm just a physical face of an invisible army.

Natasha Mitchell (1:24)

Former member of the Papua New Guinean Parliament, Theonila Matbob from Central Bougainville, who won this year's internationally prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her leadership in a successful human rights complaint against mining giant Rio Tinto over its Panguna copper gold mine operation. Over 17 years, it dumped over a billion tonnes of tailings into local rivers, harming the health of waterways and thousands of people downstream.

Luke Fletcher (1:55)

They have got one of the world's biggest companies, and I think maybe the second biggest mining company in the world, Rio Tinto, to admit that their mine caused this damage, and they've now agreed to at least pay for some of the cleanup. That sort of stuff is unprecedented.

Natasha Mitchell (2:15)

Dr. Luke Fletcher, Executive Director of Jubilee Australia, a not-for-profit research and advocacy centre, focused on economic justice in the Asia-Pacific.

Emmanuel Peni (2:25)

Our culture is built on not accumulating wealth and not hoarding wealth. It works in our favour, and in the capitalistic world, it ruins us. When I get on a flight and go back to my village, if I live in them for a month there, I will not spend a single cent or a single dollar.

I can survive and be completely healthy.

Natasha Mitchell (2:52)

Emmanuel or Manu Peni, who is in Australia for this weekend's Melbourne International Film Festival screening of a documentary he co-produced. Sukundimi Walks Before Me is about the fight against the copper gold mine proposal by Panost, a Chinese-owned Australian-based company. The Freida River Project is pitched by Panost as a nation-building opportunity for PNG and a transformative sustainable development opportunity for the Sepik region. But as executive director of Project Sepik, a community-led organisation running a campaign against the mine, Manu is fighting to protect the Sepik River, often described as the second Amazon. At 1100 kilometres long and covering a catchment area of 7.7 million hectares, it is one of PNG's last remaining pristine rivers.

On Big Ideas, hi Natasha Mitchell, taking you to the recent Extracting Justice, Mining Accountability and Community Power in the Pacific Conference, held at the University of Sydney on Gadigal Country, to hear stories from PNG environmental and human rights defenders holding Australian mining companies to account for their actions, past, present and future. They join Walkley award-winning journalist with Guardian Australia, a former foreign correspondent covering South East Asia, Ben Doherty.

Ben Doherty (4:22)

Theonila, if I can start by asking you, the last time we met was deep in this valley in Pangoonah, on the island of Boganville, amid the sort of decaying ruins of what was once the largest mine on earth. We were nearby to a river that was bright blue with copper contamination.

We meet now in very different circumstances, but Pangoonah, once this proud mountain on your country is still a vast hole in the ground, the river is still an unearthly blue. Can you tell our audience the story of Pangoonah? What happened to your land and to your people?

Theonila Roka Matbob (4:55)

Pangoonah is a mine on Bougainville that was done for 17 years back in the late 1960s going into the 70s, and it ran for 17 years. It was a British Australian mine, a British Australian mine, Rio Tinto, and leaving us behind with almost a billion tons of waste that people are living with now.

And that project, it was Papua New Guinea's project that have led Bougainville to go into civil unrest, which still remains an unresolved project in the country, and Papua New Guinea's first project mistake on record.