SYDNEY — A roof collapse at the Ballarat Gold Mine, owned by Victory Minerals, in central Victoria March 13 killed miner Kurt Hourigan and critically injured 21-year-old Connor Smith. Hourigan lived in Bruthen, a small town more than five hours away. The two contract workers had been brought in specifically to carry out ‘air-leg’ mining there, the company said. This is a dangerous form of manual mining using hand-held drills with compressed air and water.
There were 28 other miners in the mine who were able to take refuge in a safety pod.
“This death could have been avoided,” Ronnie Hayden, the Victorian branch secretary of the Australian Workers Union, which represents workers at the mine, told news media the next day. “They should not have been doing that task in that mine.” The company had only taken control of the mine last December. The two miners were working 1,640 feet underground.
Hayden said ‘air-legging’ is typically used to put anchors into the rock to hold it back. But in this case, he said, it was being used to create a tunnel. He said this method hadn’t been used at the Ballarat mine for years, and most mine companies had stopped doing it because it is unsafe.
“Our members are angry. They’ve raised concerns about this style of mining. It seems to have fallen on deaf ears,” he said. “It’s devastating because we’ve lost another worker and no worker should be injured or die at work.”
This was just “a quick, cheap and easy way to chase gold,” he said.
Investigations by the police and the government agency Worksafe Victoria will take months, but the agency gave the company the go-ahead to reopen the mine the day after Hourigan’s body was recovered.
The Australian Workers Union said, “There will be no air-legging going forward.” The company said it has suspended its use indefinitely.
Safework Australia reports that in the last 10 years more than 1,850 workers have been killed on the job across Australia. Over a million have made workers compensation claims for injuries causing one week or more off work.
Bob Aiken is the Communist League candidate for mayor of Liverpool in southwest Sydney.