Towards Transparency of the Extractive Industries

Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Australia, in partnership with ActionAid Australia, published a report in 2017 to show the extent of Australia’s extensive and global extractives industry presence. For that year alone, Australian mining, oil, and gas companies had projects in 106 countries. Quite a large footprint when compared to the size of its economy.

However, despite being a leader in the extractive industries, Australia lags behind in terms of transparency. As of 2020, Australia is yet to implement the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global voluntary initiative that requires payment-to-government information for domestic extractive operations. In addition, Australia does not have mandatory disclosure laws at the moment that would require extractive companies to publicly and annually disclose all payments made to governments on a country-by-country and project-by-project basis. PWYP Australia and ActionAid Australia continue to call on for the introduction of a mandatory disclosure policy here in Australia.