It’s known as ‘The Big Australian’, but is BHP really just the ‘Lucky Company’; the corporate version of Donald Horne’s 1964 book describing Australia as ‘a lucky country run mainly by second-rate people who share its luck’?

BHP has been rescued from its China-prompted iron ore doldrums by soaring prices for fossil fuels due to the Ukraine war’s energy crisis, with the hated coal providing the largest slice of BHP’s 2021-22 record profit.