Thank you, Jillian, and good afternoon everyone.
Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are gathered today – the Turrbal and Yuggera People. I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.
I also acknowledge the many Traditional Owners and Indigenous groups across Australia on whose lands BHP operates every day, and with whom we form partnerships based on respect and a shared vision for the future.
It’s a great privilege to be here today, on International Women’s Day, in the company of so many incredible women and ambassadors for our industry.
Many thanks to the Queensland Resources Council for the invitation.
I also acknowledge Queensland Premier, Steven Miles, and Members of Parliament.
And most importantly, I honour today’s incredible award recipients and nominees.
Today is first and foremost about celebrating you and your inspiring achievements.
This year, the UN theme for International Women’s Day is ‘Count Her In: Invest in Women, Accelerate Progress’.
It’s a powerful statement and a compelling call to action.
Over the next 15 minutes, I’ll share some reflections from my time in this incredible industry; including the themes that have shaped my professional life – and continue to propel me forward.
I’ll also share some perspectives on our industry here in Queensland.
First, a little about me…
You can probably tell from my accent – whilst I’ve lived and worked in Australia for many years off and on, I didn’t grow up here.
I’m from a beautiful, but remote part of the world – the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland on the most westerly point in Europe.
After completing my tertiary studies in science and physics, I embarked on an adventure to Australia, some 10,000 miles from where I then called home.
I joined BHP in the mid-1990s and fell in love with the resources sector.
I’m often asked to describe this journey, even though it wasn’t a short or straight path. It’s one I have reflected on.
Instead of offering a life story, I’d rather tell you about three persistent and powerful forces that have shaped my professional life: adaptation; complexity; and scale.
I don’t believe I sought them out – or recognised them as what drove me from the outset.
Rather, they simply became the recurring themes that defined my path in this industry.
A path that continues to be both eye-opening and rewarding.
Firstly, I’ll start with adaptation – that feeling of finding yourself or even seeking out an unfamiliar setting, and learning what it takes to be impactful in that setting.
That was probably inevitable for me. Growing up in a farming community by the sea, as wonderful as it was, opportunities were limited.
So, straight out of college, I was lucky enough to get a start with an Irish engineering and construction company.
Before long, I found myself in Antwerp, Belgium working on a large petrochemical project with a workforce of many thousands.
It was disorienting, terrifying, and exhilarating… all at once.
No doubt many of you here today will know this feeling.
In the outskirts of Antwerp, it was a striking, multi-faceted experience with people from many parts of the world, very different ways of working and socialising, and an environment that was anything but familiar.
Women were rare and that brought its own unique challenges.
In a baptism of fire, I learned to adapt – and realised quickly that was a strength.
With a few more early career experiences of this ilk under my belt, the unfamiliar and far away was never a barrier to me. In fact, I was drawn to it.
Bringing me to my second theme. Another force that has been present from the start is complexity.
A few years into my career, I worked on a gas asset providing feed to a major power plant.
Getting a sense of what it takes to reliably produce some of the things we take for granted in our lives was another enlightening experience.
Gas for power generation, chemicals to support industry, oil for transportation.
It was also clear these 24/7 operations demanded so much more than the pure engineering and technical work.
Being successful meant forging constructive relationships with
- The community,
- with government and regulators,
- with the myriad of contractors and partners
It came home to me that the energy and resources sector is one of the most complex industries you can find.
The journey from the resources in the ground to a finished product is almost always convoluted.
It takes a village to do what we do.
And yet it is the source of prosperity and progress for the modern, industrialised world.
This complexity – and what it provides to the world – was fascinating to me, and still is to this day.
And finally, the third theme that has shaped my career is scale.
I think this is something anyone inside a large organisation will know.
Yes, there can be bureaucracy, maybe an abundance of process or protracted decision making.
Yet at the same time, scale creates possibilities, it creates reach, and it creates ambition.
From small beginnings, in my own case, as a project engineer to somehow leading BHP across Australia.
At each stage of my career, my successive roles required thinking in bigger terms. Bigger teams. Bigger assets with more territory. More consequences. And yes, bigger risks, and greater uncertainty.
But also, more opportunity – to build diverse and creative teams across regions, to unlock new ways of doing things, to create new possibilities for lives and livelihoods.
And the scale goes beyond our individual careers.
In our world, in the resources sector, the projects and assets are unimaginably vast.
The capital is eye watering. The timelines are long. And the sheer impact is without comparison.
Whether its coal, iron ore, copper, energy or otherwise – without what we do, the world would not enjoy the progress and standards of living it does today.
Being a part of that scale and that impact in the world, and the role we all play, is pretty cool.
In a nutshell, that is my story, and it’s what keeps me excited for the future. I can safely say – “count me in”!
Let me turn now to Queensland, where we operate the BHP Mitsubishi Alliance, an integrated network of metallurgical coal mines.
At BHP, we’re incredibly proud of the role BMA is playing – as a first step in the steelmaking process – and our team who make it all possible, many of whom are here today.
As we know, steel remains one of the most widely used building materials on earth.
And industrialisation and green infrastructure will drive demand for decades to come. In India, BMA’s biggest customer, steel production could more than double by 2030.
Not hard to imagine when, right now, every mid-sized vehicle contains around a tonne of met coal.
And offshore wind turbines require three times more steel per megawatt installed capacity than a conventional power plant.
This all bodes very well for Queensland, where over 40 per cent of the world’s met coal export comes from.
The commodity outlook is positive. Resource endowment is strong. Talent is abundant, never more so than in this room today.
Indeed, as a sector, there is a compelling case to be optimistic – but this will only remain true if Queensland can attract the capital and outcompete investment opportunities in South Australia, in Western Australia and overseas.
Investment also features in today’s theme. And the case is clear.
Our industry has taken great strides. Today, 36 per cent of BHP’s employees are women, a figure that has doubled since 2016.
A far cry from my experiences in Antwerp.
And just this month, BHP became the first mining company in Chile to surpass 40 per cent female representation.
Even more remarkable, when by law women were not allowed to work on mine sites in Chile until 1996.
Of course, these achievements are no coincidence. It’s taken disruptive policies and sustained investment.
Investing in entry and career pathways, investing in training, in development and career progression, in culture and facilities.
And the results speak for themselves – more diverse teams are safer and more productive.
It’s clear that diversity brings compelling opportunities to individual livelihoods and to business.
Speaking of that opportunity – I’d like to conclude by personally recognising all those nominated and awarded today.
- Starting with our QMEA students: Lexi, Aileen, and Cadence.
- In the I&D champions category: Kanae, Catherine, and Tamsin.
- Now to the exceptional achievers:
- Exceptional tradeswomen and technicians: Tanya, Leticia, and Vanessa.
- Exceptional technological innovators: Claire, Danita and Ginna.
- Exceptional young women: Renee, Lindsey, and Ashara; and
- Exceptional women: Katrina, Shona, and Sonia.
- A shout-out also to Anglo American. It’s great to learn more about your diversity programs.
Thank you for all counting yourselves in.
As I said earlier, I’m in too. Let’s continue investing in ourselves and each other. And let’s double down. In doing so, we can and will accelerate progress.
Thank you.
