MEDIA BRIEFING BY ANDREW FORREST, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF FORTESCUE METALS GROUP LTD (FMG)

“Media Briefing on the Australian Employment Centre - Diggers and Dealers Forum, Kalgoorlie”

http://www.brr.com.au/event/49281

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2008, 1:30 PM.

            FMG    The Australian Employment Covenant is quite simply this. The government

10                    sector covenants with the Aboriginal people of Australia to provide the industry-relevant, specific, short-course, intense training which the industry wants. The Australian Children’s Trust, which is the promoter of the Australian Employment Covenant, calculates the 18 major industry streams across our economy of which mining is only one, only one. The Aboriginal

15                    people of Australia who want to get off that lofty pedestal. It is a step down in most cases to a lower income in order to get on the staircase of much, much higher incomes and most importantly self-determination. The employers of Australia covenant to those people who do that and pass those intensive training courses guaranteed full-time, full-pay, permanent employment. Now

20                    that sounds pretty tough and it gets tougher again because you say to all of those companies, “Not only do we want you to let people who are not particularly skilled who do not have your culture into your most precious asset, your workforce, but we want you to allow some of your workforce to be distracted from their day-to-day jobs and put key performance indicators

25                    (inaudible) (0:01:26) to meet all those Aboriginal people who had come into your workforce. So they stay there. So they grow to love their place of work. So they grow to actually love themselves and determine their own future. I have seen it work and I have been doing this for 15 years. I have done it in two major companies and I am now shedding this enormously collateral

30                    goodwill across Australia by everyone I have spoken to. I had a phone call out of the blue from one of these guys, I could quote them, but this guy I am sure will forgive me. Jamie Packer contacted me. At last, there was a real pathway. There was a real way out of hell for the Aboriginal people which we see up and down our Northern Territory, Kimberley and Queensland Cattle

35                    Station, which is stocking these communities on (inaudible) (0:02:15) without jobs or any meaningful future. It is (inaudible) (0:02:19). I want to commit our industries to a minimum target of 500 people, 1% of 50,000 gone in a phone call. The government responding to this level of enthusiasm is exactly correct and I think we all, in our generation and particularly those people in the

40                    media, we get behind this. We will create an industry across Australia where people believe that they do not just come to work to generate work for their shareholders, but also with a non-balance sheet effect and a non-profit loss effect, help an Aboriginal person stay employed to become meaningful in their professional contribution, and therefore, love their employer, and we will

45                    break this cycle of this hideous social and monetary poverty cycle of Aboriginal people comfortably in our generation.

MEDIA BRIEFING CONCLUDED

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