mining – Page 11 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Tasmanian mine safety review

Safety in mines in Tasmania has received great attention in the aftermath of Larry Knight’s death at Beaconsfield gold mine. On 13 December 2009, the Tasmanian Workplace Relations Minister, Lisa Singh released a regulatory impact statement and information paper on proposed amendments to the Workplace Health and Safety Act 1995.

This legislative package, according to the Minister’s media release:

“The proposed package considerably expands upon existing legislation, by including both general duties and hazard specific regulations for the mining industry.

“A key focus is the requirement for each mine to implement a health and safety management system, which must include risk management processes and procedures.”

Any OHS review should be welcomed but what is this trend of short periods of public comment? There were many complaints of the Federal Government for short periods of review on national model OHS laws and now the Tasmanian Government wants responses by 14 January 2010!!??

Just one month for responses and that month includes Christmas holidays and New Year. This brings the consultation period to around 19 working days.

A spokesperson for Workplace Standards Tasmania (WST) said that the various reviews and coronial reports over recent years have put pressure on the Government to improve mine safety legislation. She also said that comments on the Regulatory Impact Statement is an important and necessary step in drafting the relevant legislation.

The spokesperson said that WST is effectively closed down between Christmas and New Year but has an emergency response. Any enquiries from the public about the RIS will be handled by the WST Helpline on other working days untill relevant staff return. The Helpline is being briefed on the RIS this week.

WST emphasised that the consultation on the legislative amendments has been occurring for months. SafetyAtWorkBlog acknowledges this is the case but the Public Comment period is very tight.

The Minister, Lisa Singh, has said in her media release that

“I encourage comment from persons connected with the mining industry, including workers, mine operators and contractors.”

SafetyAtWorkBlog contacted the Minister’s Office and a spokesperson said that the timing of the Public Comment period is unfortunate but that the Government does not want to delay the process any longer than it has too. She advised that the minimum time period for comments on an RIS is three weeks and that the comment window on this particular process is four weeks.

There is no accusation of a conspiracy here but the unfortunate scheduling highlights a legitimate conflict between the aims of an effective public comment phase and legislative development that seems endemic through Australian politics.

Kevin Jones

Management – the importance of what comes before

A special guest for the Safe Work Australia events in Queensland was Matthew Gill, former Beaconsfield Gold mine manager. According to a media statement from the Government

“Matthew Gill who was the public face of the Beaconsfield mine rescue will speak about how he immediately took control of the emergency and then implemented rescue operations for the three missing miners,” [Workplace Health and Safety Queensland Executive Director, Dr Simon Blackwood] said. “Mr Gill maintained an unwavering commitment to the safety of the people conducting the rescue and to the trapped miners.

“He oversaw the rescue teams which battled 24 hours a day for 14 days to release the two miners trapped almost 1km underground. Mr Gill will relive the emotional story of finding Larry Knight’s body and having to talk to his family afterwards.

“Previously he has been involved with mine rescue at rock falls at Mt Lyell in Tasmania and in Papua New Guinea, but Beaconsfield was the first time that he had such ‘hands on’ involvement.”

Matthew Gill has a lot of skills to share on disaster management and media handling but a lot of that skill seems to come about after the rockfall in 2006 that killed Larry Knight.

Cover KNIGHT,_Larry_Paul_-_2009_TASCD_25 Prior to that time, in 1995 to 1997, Matthew Gill was the Responsible Officer for the mine. From 1997, Gill appointed other people to undertake the role that is required by legislation. Sometimes there were three people in the role at the same time. Professor Michael Quinlan was quoted in the Coroner’s report saying that

“……….the very notion of appointing a Responsible Officer would have little meaning unless that person so appointed exercised overall control of the workplace and could therefore make critical decisions in relation to OHS not simply recommend them, be part of them, or make decisions but not others than might affect safety. For example, as Responsible Officer Mr Ball was a participant in decisions on mine design and mining methods – decisions that have a critical effect on the safety of underground workings – but he was not the only or final decision maker.”

The Tasmanian coroner Rod Chandler,agreed that there should be only one Responsible Officer and that the legislation be amended to reflect this.

Media reports of the inquest into Larry Knight’s death reported that after rockfalls in October 2005 and various risk consultants’ reports Matthew Gill undertook some remedial work on the mine and in February 2006, Gill declared the mine safe to restart mining. The decisions made on the basis of those consultants’ reports came under close scrutiny in the coronial inquest.

On 10 November 2008, AAP’s Paul Carter reported the following:

Lawyer Kamal Faroque [representing the Knight family and the Australian Workers’ Union] told Coroner Rod Chandler in Launceston that Allstate’s management failures contributed to Mr Knight’s death…. Mr Faroque said mine manager Matthew Gill was ultimately responsible for deficiencies in the mine’s ground supports. “It is submitted that deficiencies in ground support contributed to the Anzac Day rockfall which killed Mr Knight,” he said.

He also said there was no reasonable basis for Allstate to conclude that it was safe for workers to return to the area after two earlier rockfalls.

“Mr Gill accepted responsibility for the decision to recommence stoping in the western zone following the October (2005) rockfalls,” Mr Faroque said. Stoping is a mining method in which underground chambers are opened up deep beneath the surface.

Mr Faroque said the risk management process conducted following the October 2005 rockfalls was inadequate. “It is submitted that these failures are a sound foundation for a finding that Allstate contributed to the death of Larry Knight,” Mr Faroque told the court.

There is no doubt that Matthew Gill was integral to the successful rescue of Brant Webb and Todd Russell but Gill had been employed at the mine for over a decade before the fatal rockfall and therefore was also involved with the decision-making leading up to the rockfall. The decisions made by the company over many years should be analysed to see the combination of bad, poor, or short-term decisions that ultimately led to Larry Knight’s death and the entrapment of his colleagues.

The rescue of Webb and Russell is an exciting tale with a happy ending and at least one book and several long articles (even a school lesson plan) have been written about this. The most lasting lessons for safety professionals, mine managers and business operators would be what contributed to the bad decisions leading to Larry Knight, Brant Webb and Todd Russell being in an unsafe working environment during a rockfall.

This is a more complex story that requires knowledge of geology, the stock markets, corporate accountability, OHS and mine safety regulations. If this story had been Matthew Gill’s presentation during Safe Work Australia Week, it would have been worth travelling to Queensland to hear.

Kevin Jones

The OHS obligations of global corporations

BHP Billiton has issued a media statement concerning the death of a miner, Gregory Goslett, at its coalmine in Khutala in South Africa. Due to the number of deaths the company has had over the last two years, attention on any safety issue at BHP is intense. BHP’s short statement reads:

“It is with deep regret and sadness that BHP Billiton announces a fatal incident at its Khutala Colliery opencast operations in South Africa. At approximately 05:02 am on Tuesday, 20 October 2009 Gregory Goslett (27), Mining Operations Supervisor, was fatally injured whilst driving a light vehicle at the mine.

An initial investigation indicates that Gregory was travelling in a light vehicle when a piece of coal fell from a loaded 25 ton haul truck travelling in the opposite direction. The piece of coal went through the windscreen of the light vehicle and struck Gregory causing fatal injuries to him.

The company is offering all comfort, assistance and support to Gregory’s fiancée Tarryn, his parents and those affected at the operations. Our thoughts are with Gregory’s family, friends and colleagues at this difficult time.

Mining at the opencast area has been suspended and investigations are underway.”

The Age newspaper points out that

“The accident was of the type that BHP has previously moved to eliminate from its Pilbara iron ore mines in Western Australia after several deaths last year…..”

“A key safety change made by BHP in the Pilbara in response to last year’s run of fatal accidents was the improved management of the interaction of light vehicles with heavy vehicles.”

The circumstances of Goslett’s death illustrates the obligations, some would say challenges, that multi-jurisdictional corporations need to ensure that safety improvements are consistently applied across their workplaces, regardless of location or remoteness.

BHP Billiton has been tragically reminded of this but BHP is only one corporation in the global mining industry. Safety solutions and initiatives must extend beyond jurisdictions, countries and commercial entities to each workplace where similar hazards exist. (The oil refinery industry was reminded of this with the Texas City Refinery explosion) The communication and sharing of solutions is a crucial element of the safety profession around the world.

Kevin Jones

CFMEU, IPA, Gretley Mine – political lessons

Readers outside of New South Wales may vaguely remember that in 1996 four miners died in a coalmine in the Hunter Valley 0f New South Wales. They may also remember that the was some press about the prosecution of some directors of the mining company. It was one of those incidents and court cases that should have gained broader attention that it did.

As OHS stakeholders in Australia ponder the ramifications of the Government’s proposed Safe Work Bill, it is important to also ponder the legal legacy of the Gretley mine disasater. It may provide non-NSW and non-mining readers with a better understanding of the resistance to the new harmonised laws from the mining industry in both New South Wales and Western Australia.

On 15 October 2009, Andrew Vickers of the Construction Forestry Mining & Energy Union used the Gretley saga as a justification to call for the harmoinised legislation and support systems to allow for variations to meet the special needs of the mining sector.

cover PHILLIPS 5.04925E-210RETLEY On the other side of political fence, Ken Phillips of the Institute of Public Affairs, a conservative thinktank, produced a document about the politics of the Gretley saga. The publication was supported by a video, available below. Phillips’ paper is a useful illustration of business’ opinions of the unions and New South Wales’ OHS legislation. This legislation is a centrepiece to the ACTU and union movement’s concerns and opposition to many elements of the current draft Safe Work Bill.

Prominent sociologist, Andrew Hopkins, has written about the OHS management issues raised by the disaster and its aftermath.

SafetyAtWorkBlog believes that these political and safety resources can provide a primer to many of the issues being discussed in the current debate on OHS laws.

Kevin Jones

OHS model law remains divisive

An article in the Australian Financial Review (not available on line) on 16 October 2009 provided some additional legal opinions on the implementation and aims of Australia’s draft Safe Work Bill.

Other than Michael Tooma’s well established thoughts on the draft law, Liberty Sanger of Maurice Blackburn, a law firm with strong trade union links, is said to support the capacity for jurisdictional variations in the harmonisation process. She is quoted as saying there

“need to be regional difference in a country as vast as ours and with such a different industry composition as ours…”

This position is supported by a call from the CFMEU’s General Secretary, Andrew Vickers. In a media statement released on 15 October 2009, Vickers uses the aftermath of the Gretley mining disaster of 1996 as an indication of the need for OHS laws specific to the mining industry. He says

“Under the Federal Government’s National OH&S Harmonisation Review, there is a growing view among lawyers and bureaucrats that industry specific safety laws – laws that protect coal and metalliferous miners for example – ought to be scrapped.

The trouble is miners and their families and their union have been left in the dark. We still do not know if the new laws will be tailored to meet the safety needs of our industry. Despite this, the Federal Government is pressing on with its changes.

Yet the reality remains that the safety of miners and their families and the future of our mining communities are too important to ignore. And we have fought too long and too hard for tough safety standards in our industry to give them up now.”

The AFR article also quotes Miles Bastick of Freehills. The article says Bastick believes that the jurisdictional changes that have so alarmed some are likely to relate to only peripheral issues. The article says that although Bastick generally supports to the Safe Work Bill

“….he said, that in practical terms, OHS laws were likely to be enforced differently across Australia, even if laws were nationally consistent because of the different prosecution policies of OHS authorities and the approaches of different courts and tribunals that would hear prosecutions.”

SafetyAtWorkBlog would argue that the variations Bastick identifies provide very strong reasons for the Government to take the big step forward of one national OHS law supported by a nationally consistent enforcement policy through a single national safety authority and a coordinated court system. This may be a fantasy but it remains an option for the Federal government. Some lawyers believe the Government has not dismissed the application of the Corporations Act in the OHS field as it has already unified the IR system through a similar process.

Such a national system would achieve many of the aims of the government by

reducing red tape across States, businesses and Courts,
reducing the number of OHS regulatory authorities saving considerable expenditure from many areas of duplication from administrative staff to publications and advertising,
providing a single focus to business for clarity and consistency of information; and
still allowing for industry-specific variations that can be coordinated consistently with the general OHS principles.

If Australia is looking for an OHS regulatory system that it expects to last as long as the previous system, all stakeholders may need to look in a slightly longer term and broader perspective than they are currently.

Kevin Jones

Another mining death in Western Australia

Rarely have workplace fatalities gained as much political attention as the current spate of deaths in Western Australia. Most have related to the iron ore operations of BHP Billiton but, according to one media report, on 8 August 2009

“New Zealander Daniel Williams, 26, died … at the Kanowna Belle mine site near Kalgoorlie, operated by Barrick Gold, after falling from an iron ore path into a hole.”

The media report clearly indicates that there are wider issues in the enforcement of OHS in that State other than just the operations of Barrick Gold.

Not surprisingly the unions are calling for a broader inquiry into safety of the industry.

SafetyAtWorkBlog has heard that Daniel Williams fell over 30 metres while checking a blockage in an ore pass grizzly shortly after midnight. Perhaps, this should be considered an example of a fall from height moreso than a mining death.

Barrick Gold has been contacted for any additional information

Kevin Jones

BHP Billiton’s safety record is again in the Australian media

BHP Billiton’s production report has generated some OHS-related interest in the Australian business media on 23 July 2009, but not all. [SafetyAtWorkBlog has written several pieces about BHP Billiton‘s safety record]

The company’s iron ore production has fallen short of its May 2009 guidance. Iron ore is the only division where production has dropped. The Age newspaper reports that the five deaths “forced a production slowdown” and noted the Western Australian government’s review of BHP’s safety management.

Malcolm Maiden’s commentary in the same newspaper mentions the BHP production results but describes the five workplace fatalities as “production glitches”. He writes

“Production glitches for both companies [BHP Billiton & Rio Tinto] might have been handled better if their iron ore operations were merged, as is now proposed.”

Safety management may have been improved. Rio Tinto’s OHS performance is considerably better but the description of the fatalities as “production glitches” is cold.

This contrasts considerably with the coverage provided to the BHP results by the Australian Financial Review (AFR) which listed the issue on the front page with the headline “Poor safety record hits BHP output” (full article not available online without a subscription). AFR says

“the safety issues overshadowed better than expected results from BHP’s petroleum and metallurgical coal units….”

There was no overshadowing according to the writers in The Age.

The AFR article identifies a raft of safety matters that illustrates well the OHS status of BHP Billiton and emphasises just how serious the workplace fatalities are.

“Tensions with the WA government [over a variety of issues, including safety] have escalated…”
Seven BHP workers died in Australia and South Africa in 2008/09.
“Eleven BHP staff… died while on the job in 2008.”
On 22 July 2009 WA Minister for Mines & Petroleum, Norman Moore, praised BHP’s efforts to improve safety but said “It is very difficult to understand sometimes why fatalities occur within the safety frameworks that operate in most major mining companies…” said on 22 July 2009

Warren Edney, an analyst with the Royal Bank of Scotland and occasional media commentator, spoke in relation to the safety record of BHP’s Pilbara operations, where five workers died. He said in the AFR article:

“It’s better than Chinese underground coalmining but that’s not a big tick, is it?… In part you’d say that we’ve undergone this mining boom in WA so you’ve got workers who haven’t had the safety brainwashing that other parts of the workforce may have had over the last 10 years. Part of it reflects that and part of it may be that people get pressed to do things quicker.” [my emphasis]

It seems odd to compare the safety performance of an open-cut Australian iron ore mine with “Chinese underground coalmining”. Similarly describing safety education and training as “safety brainwashing” is unusual. SafetyAtWorkBlog has contacted the Royal Bank of Scotland for clarification of Warren Edney’s comments.

The AFR has almost been leading the Australian media pack on reporting of safety management in 2009, partly due to the OHS harmonisation regulatory program and its impact on business costs. This may also be due to some of the concerns about increased union activity on worksites under the new industrial relations legislation. The AFR should be congratulated for discussing the OHS context of BHP’s iron ore production figures and providing a front page prominence.

Kevin Jones

Category: mining

Tasmanian mine safety review

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Management – the importance of what comes before

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The OHS obligations of global corporations

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CFMEU, IPA, Gretley Mine – political lessons

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OHS model law remains divisive

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Another mining death in Western Australia

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BHP Billiton’s safety record is again in the Australian media

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