Several readers have asked for information about what is happening at the Tasmanian coronial inquest into the death of Larry Knight at Beaconsfield Mine in 2006. Since the return of Beaconsfield’s legal team, media reporting has been fairly quiet as expert opinions and risk consultant reports are argued over. There is considerable effort being expended to determine what the mining company knew and when.
Conspiracy theorists could benefit from reading about the late appearance of, apparently, important documents. The underground mine manager, Pat Ball, had taken notes at mine meetings where seismicity issues were discussed in 2005 and 2006. The notes were only presented to the inquest last week as Mr Ball had only just relocated them. As these notes were missing, the previous investigations, such as that by Greg Mellick, could not draw on the information.
This has lead the legal team for Larry Knight’s family and the Australian Workers’ Union to issue
“a request for all such documents, later defined to include all notes, memoranda, minutes and diary entries relating to daily head of department and weekly planning meetings between October 9, 2005 and April 25, 2006. This includes any such documents generated by Mr Ball, mine manager Matthew Gill and chief geologist Peter Hills.”
Conspiracy or stuff-up? Always go for the stuff-up first.