Broken Hill Proprietary Company and the Development of Corporate Conservation Thought in Australia during the 1950s and 1960s

Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (better known as just BHP, which is now its official name) is an iconic Australian mining company that was central to the history of Australian mining and metal manufacturing in the post-war period. While the broad outlines of the economic importance of the company to Australian economic history is well-known, the firm’s cultural impacts have not been explored. This paper will argue that the company played a significant role in shaping popular attitudes towards the natural environment via its appropriation of conservationism. It shows that BHP responded to the nascent conservation movement by conveying a nominal commitment to its principles while simultaneously reshaping what conservation meant in order to serve the needs of post-war corporate-capitalism. Towards this end, the company limited conservation to mean the ‘efficient’, non-wasteful exploitation of natural resources. By doing so, BHP was creating the impression that a private company could be highly productive in a way that benefited Australia’s people and its habitat. In the post-WWII, Cold War context, this helped bolster its credentials as a defender of capitalism and a rising Australian nationalism. By analysing a variety of sources from the coal fields of New South Wales, and BHP’s industrial manufacturing satellite cities, the paper will reveal how corporate interests sought to shape and constrain the way everyday Australians considered environmentalism in a formative era.