In the lead-up to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, several documents were published by the mining industry declaring the important role that public sustainability reporting had to play in driving sustainable development and pointing to the Global Reporting Initiative???s (GRI) 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines as a suitable vehicle for this. With the aim of finding ways to improve the quantity and quality of public sustainability reporting within the Australian coal mining industry, this study set out to investigate the current sustainability reporting practices of companies involved in the industry. A survey was conducted of the public financial and non-financial reporting practices of all companies with a significant interest in a New South Wales or Queensland coal mine. Three survey cycles were completed covering the 2001, 2002 and 2003 calendar years and the 2001/02, 2002/03 and 2003/04 financial years. The reporting practices were determined both in terms of frequency of report production and contents of reports. A GRI-based content analysis tool was used to measure the amount of sustainability information contained in the company reports. It was found that only around a quarter of companies produced a nonfinancial report and that almost half did not produce any public reports, with the number of unlisted companies publicly reporting particularly low. Whilst a wide range of reporting practices were observed with regard to content, the frequency of Economic, Environmental and Social Performance Indicators in reports was generally found to be low. An investigation of the regulatory reporting requirements on companies was then conducted to determine what sustainability information companies could report with data that they already had at hand. The same GRI-based content analysis tool was used to analyse a variety of regulatory documents. It was found that companies did not publicly disclose a significant amount of the environmental data that they are required to report to regulators. The study also evaluated the reporting capacity of non-reporters and found that, with the exception of Governance Structure and Management Systems elements, large unlisted companies had similar regulatory reporting requirements to listed companies. However, smaller unlisted companies had fewer requirements to report Profile and Economic elements. Finally, the influences of company ownership structure, non-financial reporting status, industrial sector, nationality and participation in voluntary initiatives on sustainability reporting practices were investigated. It was concluded that in order for public sustainability reporting to be a useful tool in driving sustainable development, focus needed to shift from ???best practice??? to ???common practice??? so that a critical mass of reporters is amassed to allow benchmarking of performance.

In the lead-up to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, several documents were published by the mining industry declaring the important role that public sustainability reporting had to play in driving sustainable development and pointing to the Global Reporting Initiative???s (GRI) 2002 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines as a suitable vehicle for this. With the aim of finding ways to improve the quantity and quality of public sustainability reporting within the Australian coal mining industry, this study set out to investigate the current sustainability reporting practices of companies involved in the industry. A survey was conducted of the public financial and non-financial reporting practices of all companies with a significant interest in a New South Wales or Queensland coal mine. Three survey cycles were completed covering the 2001, 2002 and 2003 calendar years and the 2001/02, 2002/03 and 2003/04 financial years. The reporting practices were determined both in terms of frequency of report production and contents of reports. A GRI-based content analysis tool was used to measure the amount of sustainability information contained in the company reports. It was found that only around a quarter of companies produced a nonfinancial report and that almost half did not produce any public reports, with the number of unlisted companies publicly reporting particularly low. Whilst a wide range of reporting practices were observed with regard to content, the frequency of Economic, Environmental and Social Performance Indicators in reports was generally found to be low. An investigation of the regulatory reporting requirements on companies was then conducted to determine what sustainability information companies could report with data that they already had at hand. The same GRI-based content analysis tool was used to analyse a variety of regulatory documents. It was found that companies did not publicly disclose a significant amount of the environmental data that they are required to report to regulators. The study also evaluated the reporting capacity of non-reporters and found that, with the exception of Governance Structure and Management Systems elements, large unlisted companies had similar regulatory reporting requirements to listed companies. However, smaller unlisted companies had fewer requirements to report Profile and Economic elements. Finally, the influences of company ownership structure, non-financial reporting status, industrial sector, nationality and participation in voluntary initiatives on sustainability reporting practices were investigated. It was concluded that in order for public sustainability reporting to be a useful tool in driving sustainable development, focus needed to shift from ???best practice??? to ???common practice??? so that a critical mass of reporters is amassed to allow benchmarking of performance.