Australian Mine Safety Journal is digital publication on mining industry

New laws requiring organisations to protect whistleblowers and implement whistleblowing policies have passed through the Australian Government and is expected to come into effect on 1 July. On 19 February 2019, the House of Representatives passed the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Whistleblower Protections) Bill 2018 . The Bill is due to receive royal assent and commence operation 1st July 2019. Professor A J Brown, Professor of Public Policy and Law at Griffith University, has highlighted a few key aspects of changes. Professor Brown said that legal protections do not only kick in after a whistleblower starts to experience reprisals.  Only taking action on reprisals after the event is like giving a band-aid to an amputee – by the time compensation rights are triggered, it is usually too late. All public and large proprietary companies are required to have whistleblowing policies which spell out how they will “support and protect” those who speak up...

Today Roy Hill welcomed the Minister for Transport, the Minister for Environment and MP for the Pilbara, Kevin Michel MLA to open the completed Roy Hill Rail Bridge . The Roy Hill funded bridge is a $18.66 million new single span rail bridge carrying the Great Northern Highway over the Roy Hill rail line, leading into Port Hedland’s port. The new bridge replaces an existing level crossing, enabling the free movement of traffic over the rail line, and removes the potential for a railroad accident at the intersection. Main Roads WA have overseen the design, procurement process and construction of the project, and now the project is complete, will oversee the future operations and ongoing maintenance of the bridge. Main Roads WA appointed WA business Georgiou Pty Ltd the contract to construct the bridge, and local Pilbara Aboriginal business Gebro Contracting as the project site supervisor, with the construction of the bridge generating 65 ...

A safety and health research project completed in the Western Australian mining industry has discovered that the most important factor that enabled or hindered Safety and Health Representatives work effectiveness was management support and communication. Shibani Chakraborti, a 2018 PhD candidate at Curtin’s School of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering , thesis ‘The Influence of Safety & Health Representatives in the Western Australian Mining Industries’ has uncovered a range of issues associated with the effectiveness of health and safety representatives. The aim of Shibani’s research was to identify what influence and support Safety and Health Representatives (SH &R) had in the Western Australian mining industries to facilitate the achievement of a high standard of workplace safety. The study explored the Western Australian mining industries SHR experiences in their role using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Shibani conducted an ...

SPONSORED Aggreko the global provider of modular, mobile power, has launched a new proposition – the Global Cooling Tower (GT) Series.  The GT Series, Aggreko’s first mobile and modular cooling tower which can be deployed on a global level, aims to support and increase efficiency for customers operating in an increasingly decentralised and digitalised energy market. Aggreko has already installed GT Series products at customer sites across the world from Japan to North America.  Engineered by Aggreko, the GT Series’ unique modular design aims to reduce customer energy costs and save space on industrial sites. Uniquely, the new cooling towers are built into a standard shipping container frame that can be installed quickly and easily on new sites, or integrated as part of existing Aggreko projects typically within a few days following delivery. To support the frame, Aggreko has developed new extendable legs, housed within the frame, which can adjust the...