Mr Mitchell H. Hooke

Mitch Hooke has been Chief Executive of the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) since April 2002.  The MCA is one of the nation’s most significant industry bodies and represents minerals exploration, production and processing companies nationally and internationally which produce around 90 percent of Australian’s annual mineral output and exports.

The companies account for nearly 40 per cent of Australian goods exports and one-tenth of annual national output.

In this role he recently chaired the first APEC Mining Industry Forum held in conjunction with the Ministers Responsible for Mining meeting in Perth. This gave the minerals industry an unprecedented opportunity to make recommendations to APEC ministers on issues critical to further expanding the resources sector.

He has reinvigorated and restructured the MCA, lifting its profile and engaging in debate about important issues facing the industry and Australia including climate change, energy security, skills and labour shortages, trade, constraints to growth and the need for continued economic reform.

Mr Hooke’s current appointment is the latest in a range of industry leadership roles he has held over the past two decades. Before joining the MCA, Mr Hooke served as inaugural Chief Executive of the Australian Food and Grocery Council from 1995 to 2002.  Earlier, he was Executive Director of the Grains Council of Australia. Mr Hooke began his career as an Agricultural Adviser on Queensland’s Darling Downs where he pioneered zero-tillage ecological farming systems.

Over the past two decades, Mr Hooke has made a prominent contribution to the development of Australia’s trade, economic and industry policy and as a leader in ‘change management’.  He has played a prominent role on the Australian Trade Minister’s World Trade Organisation Advisory Council and Free Trade  (FTA) Agreement Export Advisory Panel and has been a member of the official Australian delegation to every Ministerial Meeting since the WTO’s formation in 1994. He is an emeritus member of the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council and chairs China Business Focus – a multi sector industry grouping established to promote an FTA between Australia and China, and chairs the Trade Policy Group of the International Council of Mining and Metals.

Mr Hooke is a past chairman of the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, was part of Australia’s official delegation to the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, and a former Governor of the Crawford Fund for International Agricultural Research. He has been a member of the Executive of the Business Coalition for Tax Reform since its inception in 1996.

Mr Hooke was raised on a sheep property in Victoria’s Western District and was educated at The Geelong College.  He completed a Bachelor of Rural Science and an Honours Thesis in agricultural industrial politics at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW. He also distinguished himself as a sportsman including as Captain of the University Australian football and cricket teams, as Captain of the All Australian Intervarsity Football team, as a member of the champion Australian Intervarsity Cricket XI, was awarded a University Full Blue for services to sport, and admitted to the University’s Sportsman’s Hall of Fame. He also represented NSW Country in both Australian football and cricket, and subsequently played professionally in the Queensland Australian Football League.

Mr Hooke is married with three daughters and lives in Canberra.