Central Queensland bureaucrats proposed pausing coal production when medical professionals are in short supply.
Isaac Regional Council (IRC) recently raised the prospect of halting all mining activity when too few primary healthcare workers are available to respond to a workplace incident.
“Historically, IRC elected members have been advised that site safety and health representatives have been called on to enact their power to suspend mining activities when the Moranbah Hospital has not been adequately staffed,” the local government said in its submission to the Queensland parliamentary inquiry into coal mining industry safety.
Council expressed “mounting concerns” about multiple Bowen Basin operations with “inadequate” emergency plans in place.
“Lives would have been lost if not for the coincidental presence of a visiting doctor at Moranbah Hospital,” it said according to News Limited.
The authority also questioned employers for relying too heavily on labour hire service providers and increasing the chance of a “high potential” incident occurring.
Meanwhile, an Australian National University (ANU) expert believes overly ambitious targets contributed to the 2020 explosion that injured five employees at Anglo American’s Grosvenor Coal Mine, 199km southwest of Mackay.
“[The] Grosvenor mine would be constantly bumping against the limits of the ventilation and drainage system and that it would be plagued by what were viewed as nuisance gas exceedances,” ANU sociology emeritus professor Andrew Hopkins said in his submission to the inquiry.
He suspects the incident could have been minimised or even avoided, if Anglo simply followed recommendations from the company’s head of technical services against using “time pressures” to lift productivity.
“The advice of the technical expert in Brisbane was overridden by the mine’s management in order to maintain the production schedule,” he said according to the media outlet.
“This was one of the reasons the goaf was dangerously full of methane as the LW104 was being extracted.”
The proponent confirmed it had already implemented “all relevant” board of inquiry recommendations.
Anglo head of safety and health Marc Kristen revealed his employer held 77 safety resets across multiple Queensland operations during 2021. He claimed these sessions focused on making each participant “feel confident enough” to speak up, share ideas and information – and “be heard”.
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“The advice of the technical expert in Brisbane was overridden by the mine’s management in order to maintain the production schedule,” he said according to the media outlet.
This should mean prison time for mine managers where lives are lost as a result of them putting profit over people.