The Grosvenor files: Leaked documents prove mine safety inquiry doesn’t go far enough
Queensland’s coal mine safety board of inquiry needs to investigate high-methane incidents at Anglo American’s Grosvenor mine going back four years.
In the past two years, eight men went to work in coalmines and quarries in Queensland and did not come home.
After their deaths, forensic structural engineer Sean Brady found very few deaths in the industry in the past two decades had been freak accidents.
Almost all were the result of “systemic, organisational, supervision or training failures, either with or without the presence of human error”, he found.
Brady’s February report contained a damning warning: 12 more miners will die in the state in the next five years unless the industry breaks the “fatality cycle”. Tragically, it appears little has changed.
In May, there was an explosion of methane at Anglo American’s Grosvenor underground coalmine. Five miners were caught in the blast, and suffered terrible burns. It was incredible they survived.
An extraordinary leak of documents reveals Anglo battled to contain methane — a natural by-product of the deep coal seams in that part of the Bowen Basin — at Grosvenor ever since the mine started operating.
Mines Minister Anthony Lynham has already ordered a rare board of inquiry into the explosion, but its terms of reference do not go far enough.
The probe must look further than one year of high-methane incidents at Grosvenor and other Bowen Basin mines.
It must go back to 2016, and investigate the 98 dangerously high methane incidents at Grosvenor since then.
It is vital the inquiry critically examines the work of the government’s mines inspectorate, which knew of Anglo’s continued methane problems yet never issued a directive for the company to suspend operations.
The inspectorate needs a serious shake-up.
Queensland’s mine workers, and their families, deserve nothing less.
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