Human rights

We recognise that our risk profile is constantly evolving and we are committed to identifying and addressing modern slavery risks within our operations and supply chains.

Our approach to modern slavery is consistent with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which informs how our business practices and reporting entities may cause, contribute to or be directly linked to modern slavery practices across our value chain.

To understand our exposure, we follow a risk-based approach to identify suppliers that may have an elevated risk of adverse human rights impacts, including modern slavery.

This includes two components:

Country risk: we use a combination of the Global Slavery Index, Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index and the Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas List.

Industry risk: using Tier 1 supply chain analysis, we have identified and assessed several high-risk industries such as labour hire and short-term contract workers, construction services and sourcing of safety supplies and garments.

We are governed by Australian Federal and State Government legislation, which promotes fair trading and competition while protecting the environment and the community.

From a labour and industrial relations perspective, the Fair Work Act 2009 and the Fair Work Regulations 2009 govern the employee/employer relationship in Australia.

This legislation prescribes a safety net of minimum entitlements, enabling flexible working arrangements, fairness at work and preventing discrimination against employees.

Key recruitment and labour management processes include, but are not limited to:

• undertaking checks before entering into an employment contract, including requesting a copy of identification documents to confirm age and identity
• providing all workers with a written employment contract with employment terms clearly defined
• paying all workers their legal pay entitlements on time and providing all employees with pay slips that define wage payments and leave entitlements
• providing safe accommodation at our mine-site accommodation villages and at our construction sites that our workers are free to leave at will
• providing access to a confidential mailbox where employees can raise and seek resolution to disputes or grievances.

We follow a risk-based approach to identify suppliers with elevated risks of modern slavery.

All new suppliers are screened via our third-party risk assessment software, which assesses the risk of the supplier across modern slavery indicators and other risk factors such as sanctions and anti-bribery and corruption practices. This assessment returns a risk rating based on defined criteria.

All suppliers that represent a potentially high-risk of modern slavery are required to complete a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ).

The SAQ process provides us with an opportunity to engage and share good practice measures to support suppliers on effective identification of human rights risks within their supply chains, as well as identification of any potential areas for improvement within their own operations.

Where a ‘red flag’ response to the SAQ has been identified, we will engage with the supplier to clarify their response and obtain further information.

MinRes is committed to engaging and working collaboratively with relevant authorities concerning any allegations of adverse human rights impacts at our operations or along our supply chain. This includes appropriate remediation of any adverse human rights impacts we may have inadvertently caused or contributed towards.

Our Supply Chain – Human Rights Incident Management Procedure aims to provide our business, and particularly those individuals in roles that directly engage and work with our suppliers, with examples of modern slavery indicators. The procedure outlines the strategies available to appropriately investigate any incidents.​

We develop remediation plans on a case-by-case basis to ensure an appropriate response from our suppliers, with primary consideration given to safeguarding impacted people.​

To support the detection, reporting and prevention of modern slavery within our operations and supply chain, we encourage all stakeholders to raise concerns through the various reporting channels we have available.

Our Whistleblower Policy and Whistleblower Procedure demonstrate our commitment to promoting a culture of ethical and corporate behaviour and outline the processes by which stakeholders can report matters they believe are in breach of our Code of Conduct and Business Integrity.

We provide for a whistleblower to qualify for appropriate protection even if their disclosure turns out to be incorrect or if they make the disclosure anonymously.

We have also an established independent external whistleblowing service, MinRes Integrity Assist, which provides an avenue for stakeholders to raise concerns about suspected or actual misconduct in the workplace, including those related to human rights.