Safety is core union business. Ensuring every mining and energy worker returns home to their loved ones safely is our top priority. Remembering tragedies of the past motivates us to learn the lessons, ramp up our safety efforts and ensure they never happen again.
The MEU prides ourselves on our uncompromising, outcome-focused approach to safety. On the front line of this effort are our Site Safety and Health Representatives (SSHRs) – workers who are voted up by their workmates to stand up for safety on the job. From the earliest days of our industry, workers understood that safety was too important to be left to profit-driven employers.
More than 70 of our SSHRs from across Queensland gathered in Mackay in June for the 2025 SSHR Conference – an intensive five-day event focused on equipping workplace safety leaders with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to keep their workmates safe.
With 20 first-time attendees, the conference underscored the growing importance of SSHRs in Queensland’s mining industry and the need to keep up to date with emerging issues. Topics ranged from respiratory health and fatigue management to risk assessment and hazard identification.
It also addressed emerging risks, such as the psychosocial impacts of digitalisation and algorithmic-managed work, bringing the discussion around the tension between productivity and safety into the AI- era.
It is a poignant time of year to reflect on the importance of mine safety, and of the mineworkers who have lost their lives due to insufficient protections at work. To the MEU, it’s known as Deadly July – the month that Australia’s coal mining communities have endured some of the worst disasters in our industry’s history.
Hundreds of mineworkers in Queensland and NSW lost their lives this month through mass-casualty events at their worksites. It underscores the importance of upholding and improving the systems that keep us safe, as well as of never becoming complacent in a dangerous industry like ours. It’s also a reminder that the safety structures that we all work under weren’t given over freely but rather paid for with the blood of unsuspecting workers.
On 31 July 1972, 18 workers were killed following an underground explosion at Box Flat in the worst industrial disaster to ever hit the Ipswich area. Of the men killed, eight were members of the Mines Rescue squad that had been deployed when a fire was detected underground. It is because of this disaster, mines are required by law to have modern firefighting equipment available underground, and personal self-rescuers became mandatory for all workers.
Similarly, on 16 July 1986, 12 miners were killed instantly in an underground explosion at Moura No. 4 mine, out of 19 working underground at the time. The seven survivors helped themselves to the surface, while high gas levels and near-zero visibility postponed recovery operations. Investigations found that the explosion was most likely ignited by a lock flame safety lamp used to detect methane. The Moura No. 4 disaster led to flame safety lamps being banned underground after well over a century of use, as well as changes to continuous gas monitoring in all sections of the mine. It also led to compulsory safety and evacuation induction training for all mineworkers, and the requirement for secondary extraction plans to be developed and approved.
Over the border, July also saw several major disasters that upended safety standards in the NSW coal industry. 96 were killed in an explosion at Mount Kembla in 1902, 14 at Appin in 1979, and three at South Bulli in 1991. These events led to a deeper understanding of underground safety, particularly concerning gas, which continues to inform our design and application of mine safety standards to this day.
Workers shouldn’t need to pay the ultimate price to improve safety in the mining industry. This is why MEU officials and safety representatives work to constantly progress the safety standards in our mines to prevent disasters like these from occurring. We work to prevent disasters, so we no longer have to learn from them.
Mitch Hughes
President Mining and Energy Union Queensland District
