Pinnacle Awards: Beament’s call for united front amid virus crisis

Northern Star Resources’ Bill Beament has called on industry leaders to stand together to ensure the sector weathers the fallout from a global pandemic that threatens to cripple businesses across the board.

While the coronavirus has sent global markets into meltdown and forced drastic containment measures in countries around the world, Mr Beament said it was important to remain positive.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s resources or Government or the community or in your household — everyone has a leadership role and this is the time when you step up and be a leader,” he said.

“We’ll be remembered by how we tackle this pandemic as a community and leaders in the community, we’ll be remembered by how we approach this and deliver it and how we get out of it.

“The health and safety of everyone’s workforce is front and centre at the moment and our business continuity will come with that as long as we look after our people.”

Mr Beament made the comments on Thursday night as he accepted the business leader of the year prize at the WA Pinnacle Awards, which are run by the Australian Institute of Management WA.

Gary Martin, chief executive of AIM, said it was not surprising that dinner-table conversation at the annual event turned to speculation over what the next few months would mean for WA businesses.

“The consensus was that businesses were focused on weathering the storm having accepted that they would have to deal with unprecedented challenges — with many hoping to come out better on the other side,” he said.

Mr Beament also used his acceptance speech to make a rallying defence of a resources industry which has often been accused of environmental mismanagement.

“Mining is essential to the fabric of society and if we do it responsibly and ethically it’s a sustainable industry,” he said.

Last December, Mr Beament secured a deal to buy Newmont Goldcorp’s 50 per cent operating stake in Kalgoorlie’s Super Pit, just weeks after fellow WA-based gold miner Saracen Mineral Holdings bought Barrick’s share of the famous Goldfields mine.

The two purchases put the mega operation back in local hands for the first time since it was conceived by the late Alan Bond in the 1980s.

“We as a State wouldn’t benefit without a healthy mining industry. and the rest of the world wouldn’t enjoy the standard of living without mining.”

Mr Beament joined Northern Star in 2007 and took the company from an industry penny stock to Australia’s second-biggest gold miner and, arguably, its most successful.

He said his practical experience in underground mining after graduating from the WA School of Mines had help to define his leadership career.

“If you go and study and do a degree you ultimate want to get into management, and if you can’t do what your workforce is able to do — and be at the coalface and say ‘I’ve been there and done that’ — it’s very hard to manage from afar,” he said.

“It makes it easy to manage people when you’ve actually done their job.”

Other Pinnacle Award winners included: RAC (Corporate Social Responsibility), the City of Fremantle (Customer Service Excellence); Starling Energy Group (Emerging Business Excellence); Green Skills (Green Business Excellence); Brida (Human Resource Management Excellence); WA Country Health Service (Innovation Excellence); The Livestock Collective, trading as The Sheep Collective (Marketing Excellence); and FMG (Workplace Diversity Excellence), which was accepted by Linda O’Farrell, pictured left with Vikas Rambal from Perdaman Workplace Diversity.