Document Type
Conference Paper
Publication Date
1998
Abstract
The tragedy of the Moura No.2 incident has lost much of its emotional mileage for those organisations that thrive on loss and suffering. However, for the families, workers, mine owners and operators in the Queensland underground coalfields, the challenge of delivering a positive outcome, though well underway, is in its infancy. The pressure created by interested parties is necessary for overcoming the inertia involved in change; but they cannot deliver the change. The responsibility ultimately resides at each individual minesite with the people who work there each day. Moura No.2 has progressed through a number of stages. The Warden's Inquiry generated a wide range of recommendations for the industry to address. Representatives from Government organisations, mine management, union bodies and the general workforce were then organised into taskgroups and delegated the responsibility of expanding the recommendations so that they could be practically integrated into mining operations. A number of sub-committees were also initiated in order to adequately cover particular, often individual issues in detail. The results of the taskgroup and subcommittee efforts has generally fallen into the areas of legislative changes, operational changes, or research activities. At the time of delivering the Moura No.2 recommendations, the then Queensland Labor Government unequivocally committed to instigating each and every one. This was also accepted by the following Liberal Government. This has been fairly controversial for the Queensland industry at the time because it has brought wide sweeping changes very quickly and will continue to do so for an extended period of time. The focus of this paper is on the practical application and integration of the suggested or required changes into an underground coal mine in Queensland. It is not exhaustive but concentrates on those recommendations that have already provided safety , operational or financial benefits. It is specifically related to Central Colliery but will have a general similarity to other underground coal mines in Queensland due to the overriding mechanism for change, that is legislation.
Publication Details
This conference paper was originally published as Reece, D, Implementations of the Moura recommendations - a managers perspective, in Aziz, N (ed), Coal 1998: Coal Operators' Conference, University of Wollongong & the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 1998, 668-671.