Fantastic article and read, thank you for sharing the link. I...

Fantastic article and read, thank you for sharing the link. I think it's one of the few profiles out there of the future Australian of the Year.

MO'K is a quintessential Australian hero and these hero's will never be done. As for him writing a book I think there will be many others in the future writing books about his humbling life story (which we can all relate to- myself particularly) and legendary business achievements including in business school textbooks as exemplary lessons in doing contrarian business the Australian Maverick way.

With regards to RIO selling Diavik I agree that this is a good possibility because RIO has a reputation to uphold in looking after the local community in the best way possible, especially at this stage of that project that requires more entrepreneurial style focus, energy and innovation. There is synergy with the local Ekati mine and selling the mine soon would release RIOs energy and focus to work on the many other up and coming big mega projects around the world in resources they tend to focus on more on as their core strategy (other than diamonds) as evidenced by their moving away from the Star Orion project.

I don't think there is any bad feeling with RIO regarding the previous transactions, remember MO'K wasn't flipping assets for a profit, he spent years building from the ground up including the ever important and often overlooked human dynamic/positive stakeholder factor- the example I can think of is being a passionate antique collector and restoring an antique to pristine condition and selling it for a profit to the buyer, but going further and giving after sales support and offering genuine learned advice to the buyer on how to maintain the condition of the item so that it's value may increase over time and having the buyer say it's all good, thank you and walk away. The leadership that ran RIO then and those guys are long gone. I would assume that today's leadership takes a different view just as many others in the business community- MO'K played fair and open and isn't that the most valued and sacred part of doing business (albeit rare these days unfortunately)- you win some you lose some but fair and open play is the core of integrity, and sound business dealings, and MO'K has got that to a tee.

Finally I was reading some of the comments at the bottom of the article we're talking about ( smh and the age) and some clowns or bots were talking gibberish about lab grown diamonds instead of heaping praise on MO'K. So if you can guys, get on there and set the record straight!