Food for thought. This community perception survey given to...

Food for thought. This community perception survey given to DMITRE.

Community Perception Survey Results Rex Minerals Hillside Project

"The performance section included in the same statements as the importance section (described above), though in this section the group was asked to think about how they thought Rex would manage each of the items listed. Based on what the group knew and had heard about Rex’s management they were given another 1 to 5 rating scale on how they thought Rex was likely to perform in each of the areas concerned. It was also explained to the CCG that if they were unable to comment on Rex specifically, that they could answer the question based on their comfort with the mining regulations ensuring that the concerns were managed.
Performance was rated by ability, ranging from ‘Poor ability’ to ‘Excellent ability’. Participants felt that Rex would perform very good (67%) and good (20%) in managing their impact on the community/ environment of dust generated by mining activity.
Participants results also show that they believed Rex would consult with the community on its preferences for location and function of an accommodation camp, with a total of 80% suggesting that Rex’s ability was very good to excellent ability. A further 13% believed that Rex had a good ability to manage this task.
Moreover, the graph shows that a total of 94% of the participants thought Rex would manage their relationships with Indigenous people with a very good to excellent ability. The only other result with this question was minor in that 6% answered that they did not know how Rex would perform.
Three statements registered a response by participants that indicated they thought Rex had ‘poor’ ability to manage. These were:
i) manages their use of water resources responsibly,
ii) manages their impact on other land users such as forestry, farm and agriculture, and
iii) contributes to the economic diversity of the region including tourism, heritage and local
business capacity.
It must be noted however, that these received just one response each that indicated ‘poor ability’; the majority of other respondents indicated Rex would manage these to a ‘very good’ ability.
Figure F05 shows the results of the performance participants hoped to expect from the project."

Other Importance / Performance
In other importance / performance, the participants were asked to list any other issues they wanted to raise. They were as follows:
• Biodiversity of area, which was rated as ‘somewhat important’ and ‘very good’ ability of Rex to manage.
• Endangered species, which was rated as ‘somewhat important’ and ‘very good’ ability of Rex to manage.
• Whilst the mine was in operation would Rex be willing to change any operation if the community thought that it wasn’t in their best interest, which was rated as ‘very important’ and ‘???’ ability of Rex to manage.
Importance / Performance
When comparing the importance and performance sections, results showed that participants had the belief that Rex had the ability to manage what they found to be very important, to a very good to excellent ability in most cases.
When a comparison was made between importance and perceived performance, the following consistencies and gaps were identified:
• Q1- Impact on community/ environment of dust: 67% of participants found this to be very important, and believed Rex would manage this with a very good ability (67%).
• Q23- Communicates regularly with the community: 80% of participants found this to be very important, and that Rex would manage this well (80% very good to excellent ability).
• Q13 – Protects the visual amenity of the area by taking care of how the mine looks: 67% found this to be very important and 60% of the participants thought Rex would manage this with a very good to excellent ability, although 33% thought that Rex would manage this to a fair to good ability.
• Q22- Engages local communities with important issues: 93% of participants listing this to be very important. Although 67% of the group thought Rex would manage this with a very good to excellent ability, the results also showed a high ‘don’t know’ response of 27%.
• Q8, Q16 – Noise associated with construction and Depletes workforce available to other smaller businesses in the area: 20% of respondents to both of these statements felt Rex’s ability to manage these potential impacts was only ‘fair’. Their general importance was high.
Figure F06 shows the results of the performance vs importance participants believed in the project. Note that for each question the importance score is matched against the performance score (ie, Q1I = Q1 Importance, Q1P = Q1 Performance).