From mega carbon emitter to … eco-warrior? What drives Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest‘ -
June 24, 2022

Becoming Australia’s second-richest person? An accident, he reckons. If it’s hard getting your head around Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s many business interests, and his conversion from mega miner to climate evangelist, try getting a handle on the man himself. It ain’t easy, darl.

By Jane Cadzow

Andrew Forrest is sitting at the head of a long dining table in his gracious old house in the Perth beachside suburb of Cottesloe. He has just returned from a meeting in the city with Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia – a meeting at which Forrest discussed contributing to the cost of rebuilding the war-torn country. His mood is upbeat. He points out that he passed up lunch with the ambassador in order to keep his promise to eat with me. “This is Grace, by the way,” he says, as a young woman bearing food approaches. “Been with us forever. Champion.”

Grace sets down the plates and explains what is on them: ricotta-stuffed zucchini flowers topped with salmon roe and honey vinaigrette. “Wow,” says Forrest who, at 60, has grey curly hair and a round, weathered face. In photographs, his hooded blue eyes can look calculating. In person, he is chatty and engaging. Grace heads back to the kitchen and returns with another dish: spiced mulloway fillet with lemon and anchovy dressing on a bed of vegetables. The sumptuousness of the repast, the size and elegance of the room, the presence of the loyal family retainer … I feel like I’m in an episode of Downton Abbey: Down Under. Grace hovers for a minute, checking that everything is in order before she withdraws. “Thanks, darl,” says Forrest. “Perfect!”

In May, The Australian Financial Review estimated Forrest’s fortune at $30.72 billion, putting him in second spot on the masthead’s annual list of the country’s richest people (after fellow iron-mining magnate Gina Rinehart). In the 12 months to June 2021, his Fortescue Metals Group made a net profit of $14 billion, of which it paid $11 billion in dividends to shareholders. Forrest owns 36 per cent of the company, so he took home $4 billion. That’s the equivalent of $77 million a week, or $11 million a day.

Keep in mind that, like most mineral deposits, the iron ore Fortescue extracts from the Western Australian desert and sells for enormous sums to Chinese steel-makers theoretically belongs to the state. Fortescue holds licences to mine it. Back in 2010, Kevin Rudd’s federal Labor government announced its intention to introduce a tax on mining companies’ “super profits”. The aim was to deliver to the nation’s coffers an increased proportion of the astronomical earnings from digging up and shipping out our non-renewable resources.

The plan was foiled thanks in part to vigorous campaigning by Forrest, whose wealth had been estimated at $9.4 billion when he topped the rich list two years earlier. That he was able to help swing public opinion against the tax, claiming it would be an intolerable burden on him and other miners, attests not only to the skill of his spin doctors and his own powers of persuasion but to the willingness of Australians to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Twiggy, as he is known to everyone but his family and friends – who call him Andrew – has always presented himself as a knockabout bloke made good, the maverick entrepreneur who took on the multinational mining behemoths, BHP and Rio Tinto, and won. His popularity is boosted by his highly publicised philanthropy. He and his wife, Nicola, through their Minderoo Foundation, have invested $2.6 billion in programs with such worthy goals as ridding the oceans of plastic waste, broadening access to high-quality early-childhood education and ending the disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

In the past couple of years, Forrest has won more fans by becoming a climate activist and throwing himself into the race to substitute clean energy for global-warming fossil fuels. He’s a kind of folk hero. The big-hearted business baron. The lovable billionaire.

To some of us, Forrest is a puzzle. Why put all that effort into killing the mining tax if he was going to give away so much money anyway?

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(The Sydney Morning Herald)