WHEN Don Argus leaves BHP Billiton's Lonsdale Street offices this month after a decade in the chairman's seat, the "Big Australian" will not only lose one of the nation's most influential and proudly patriotic businessmen but, for the first time, it won't have a chairman who calls Australia home.

While it will still have an Australian, in Michigan-based, dual Australian/US citizen Jac Nasser, running the board, some of BHP's Australian credentials -- for better or for worse -- will walk out the door with Argus, who has sometimes been seen as attempting to combine the national interest with that of BHP.

BHP's lobbying tactics -- which involved Argus personally visiting government ministers with public affairs chief and former ALP national secretary Geoff Walsh during Rio Tinto's attempt to team up with Chinese aluminium giant Chinalco -- are also expected to change.

"Don Argus has been very effective in Canberra -- he and Geoff Walsh are two of the best operators around," says one Canberra insider. "It is hard to see Jac Nasser working the same way."

Others, however, including former treasurer Peter Costello who put in place conditions to keep BHP Australia-based when it merged with South Africa's Billiton, say Nasser's influence in Canberra won't be less than that of Argus, and that his ability to run BHP won't be diminished by spending only half his time here.

BHP has shied away from its "Big Australian" tag in a globalised industry where just 40 per cent of its revenue is derived here (compared with two-thirds just after it merged with Billiton), but there is no doubt it is concerned about keeping its Australian credentials.

Chief executive Marius Kloppers has this year ordered chief commercial officer Alberto Calderon to Melbourne from London, placing five of BHP's seven-strong executive team at head office. Two respected Australian directors, Malcolm Broomhead and Carolyn Hewson, will also join the board the day after Argus leaves.

Argus and Nasser this week made introductory visits to Australian investors and analysts.

Among investors and analysts, the nationalist side of Argus's departure does not register much concern -- the issue is the relationship between Nasser and Kloppers and how that will work with Nasser only here half the time.

Whether it was a lesson to BHP or not is unclear, but Rio found out just how important it was to keep an Australian presence when it took its proposed merger with Chinalco to Canberra last year.

It was left under no illusions that a perceived failure to fulfil commitments made in 1995 when CRA and Rio Tinto Zinc merged had harmed its plight.

Now Rio is moving to strengthen its own Australian credentials.

With its head office and top executives in London, Rio knows it will always be seen as the away player. But it has given more power to Perth-based iron ore chief executive Sam Walsh, who has taken a board seat, and it has promoted former global strategy head Doug Ritchie to its executive team, in charge of energy.

Some in mining circles have suggested that with Argus gone, and Nasser in, BHP could be a less effective force for the industry in Canberra.

Costello, however, backs the rules he put in place that stipulated only BHP's chief executive and chief financial officer should be Australian-based.

"The fact Jac Nasser is taking over from Don Argus is good for the company and Australia; he grew up here, he knows the country well," Costello says. "Everyone who has been in Australian business and Australian government knows Jac Nasser because he built his career here."

Source: The Australian