A Marathon dummy spit!

Despite heroic attempts at capital raising to fund its pathetic existence, Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary despoiler Marathon Resources is sitting on the bones of its corporate arse.

Share prices that had once stood at $7-$8 fell to a new low of 44 cents overnight.
Boy, are we sad!

A terse announcement from the company states:

In order to protect cash reserves, Marathon continues to, where possible, take appropriate steps to reduce operating costs, including corporate administration expenses and the cost of services at the exploration site.

The number of personnel within our corporate office has been minimised and corporate, accommodation and other commercial commitments to the Arkaroola Village – for which Marathon has paid in excess of $1.9m over the past 4 years – have been terminated.

This all but signals the failure of the rebadging process that the company underwent when Shad Lynley was appointed a non-executive director in June 2008.

Lynley did an official mea culpa over the waste burial scandal and undertook an extensive PR campaign to prove that Marathon had had a “change of heart”, that it was a clean, green mining machine with a social conscience. In particular, he promised a new relationship with all stakeholders, including the operators of the Sanctuary, Doug Sprigg and Marg Sprigg.

In various shareholder chatrooms the parasitic wisdom was that the Spriggs were dependent on Marathon because it accommodated its exploration staff at the Arkaroola Village. The Spriggs needed this income, and when push came to shove, they would bend to the will of the company.

Pigs could also fly!

Doug and Marg have remained resolute in their opposition to mining in the Sanctuary.

Then came the state government’s Department of Primary Resources (PIRSA) and its Seeking a Balance report that defined a hierarchy of access zones in the northern Flinders Ranges (which encompasses Arkaoola).

“Getting the balance right” has fast become an excuse for every neo-liberal crime that the social democrats at state and federal level want to continue with but which they are too afraid to endorse in an explicitly neo-liberal format.

A deadline for public comment on the Seeking a Balance report has now been extended by about 6 weeks. This is what is behind the giant Marathon dummy spit.

This cash-strapped cowboy outfit thought it had the contacts (ex-Labor heavyweight Chris Schacht) and the financial backers (China’s giant CITIC and the corrupt Queensland coal magnate Ken Talbot) to just drive into Arkaroola and start ripping uranium out of the place.

It hasn’t worked out for them to date, so the urbane, sophisticated patience they tried to portray has run out of steam and they’ve turned nasty, venting their spleen on the Arkaroola Village.

That’s why this is the announcement of a failed strategy.

No more pretending to be Mr Nice Guy.

So let’s clarify this once and for all and have legislation that rejects “balance” and “compromise” and every other weasel-worded way of letting mining continue in Arkaroola.

We want Arkaroola protected by law!!!