COAL WORKERS’ PNEUMOCONIOSIS SELECT COMMITTEE€¦ · Mr B McMillan (Barrister at Law) Staff present: Dr J Dewar (Research Director) Mr S Finnimore (Principal Legal Advisor) Ms

This is an uncorrected proof of evidence taken before the committee and it is made available under the condition it is recognised as such.

COAL WORKERS’ PNEUMOCONIOSIS SELECT COMMITTEE

Members present: Mrs JR Miller MP (Chair) Mr JN Costigan MP Mr JP Kelly MP Mr S Knuth MP Hon. LJ Springborg MP

Counsel assisting: Mr B McMillan (Barrister at Law)

Staff present: Dr J Dewar (Research Director) Mr S Finnimore (Principal Legal Advisor) Ms L Manderson (Acting Inquiry Secretary) Ms K Moule (Principal Research Director)

PUBLIC HEARING—INQUIRY INTO COAL WORKERS’ PNEUMOCONIOSIS

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

TUESDAY, 31 JANUARY 2017 Brisbane

Public Hearing—Inquiry into Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis

Brisbane - 1 - 31 Jan 2017

TUESDAY, 31 JANUARY 2017 ____________

Committee met at 10.27 am CHAIR: Good morning everyone. I declare open this public hearing on the coal workers’

pneumoconiosis inquiry. Thank you for your attendance here today. I am Jo-Ann Miller, member for Bundamba, and I am chair of the Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis Select Committee. The other committee members here today are Mr Lawrence Springborg MP, member for Southern Downs and deputy chair; Mr Joe Kelly MP, member for Greenslopes; and Mr Shane Knuth, member for Dalrymple. The other members of the committee Mr Craig Crawford MP, member for Barron River and Mr Jason Costigan MP, member for Whitsunday are unable to attend today.

Those here today should note that the hearing is being broadcast and transcribed by Hansard and that media may be present, so you may be filmed or photographed. Before we commence I ask that mobile devices be switched off or put on silent mode. For the benefit of Hansard I ask that any witness please state your name and position when you first speak and speak clearly into the microphone.

These proceedings are similar to parliament and are subject to the Legislative Assembly’s standing rules and orders. The guide for appearing as a witness before a committee has been provided to those appearing today. The committee will also observe schedules 3 and 8 of the standing orders.

Firstly this morning I would like to welcome representatives from WorkCover Queensland, that is Bruce Watson, the CEO, Paul Abernethy, who is the Lead, Customer Experience, and Janine Reid, the legal counsel. I particularly thank you and your colleagues here this morning for your cooperation in accommodating some late changes to the committee’s program; we really appreciate it. I now invite you to make an opening statement after which I will invite counsel assisting the committee, Ben McMillan to ask questions. The committee members will then follow with other questions for you. I ask Bruce Watson if he would like to make an opening statement, thank you.

ABERNETHY, Mr Paul, Lead Customer Experience

REID, Mrs Janine, Legal Counsel

WATSON, Mr Bruce, Chief Executive, WorkCover Queensland Mr Watson: Thank you, and good morning chair and committee members. We appreciate the

invitation to appear today. As you are probably aware, I was only recently appointed on 1 January this year as WorkCover CEO. I do have an affinity with the coal industry over many years. Having started working as electrician underground in the coal sector, I spent 11.5 years underground in the southern coal fields of NSW. After that period, I spent 13 years with the miners union, the CFMEU, of which for 10 years I was the national secretary of the CFMEU mining energy division. During that time I was involved with superannuation, a lot of safety matters and, of course, long service leave which was portable in the coal industry. After that I went to the AUSCOAL superannuation, which is now called Mine Wealth and Wellbeing, where I was CEO for the last 10 years before taking on this role.

Unfortunately, during that period I have witnessed a lot of injury to coal miners and of course the injury that goes to the community and families as well. With me today who I will have assisting me with my shortness of tenure as mentioned, Paul Abernethy who looks after the claim process of the CWP claims and Janine Reid who is our legal counsel, so I will defer to them if I could.

I note the office of industrial relations provided a comprehensive summary of the Queensland workers comp scheme during their appearance before the committee on 14 October 2016 and in further material provided to the committee. I do not intend to repeat any of that information but I thought it would be useful to provide a brief explanation of WorkCover Queensland’s role and a further update of claims lodgements and decisions since the Office of Industrial Relations provided that prior information in October 2016. If that is acceptable to the committee, we can then answer any additional questions the committee may have.



By way of background, WorkCover Queensland insures approximately 150,000 Queensland businesses and assists more than 65,000 workers recover and return to work each year from injuries sustained. We are funded by premiums paid by those 150,000 Queensland businesses. We do not cover every coal mine worker. I understand that the Office of Industrial Relations provided data to the committee that suggests we cover 63 per cent of all coal industry workers in Queensland. The remainder are covered by self-insurers, Glencore and BHP. We work closely with employers and stakeholders including medical and allied health providers, hospitals, unions, industry associations and lawyers to help people recover from their injuries and return to work. More than 90 per cent of workers return to work after their injury, and we continue to work to improve these outcomes for Queenslanders.

In terms of claims for Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis, which I will call CWP for easier reference, we have a centralised claims team which has significant experience in managing these types of claims, based on our experience with asbestos-related conditions. They are very experienced claims managers who talk to workers, employers, medical experts and lawyers every day to ensure our customers are properly supported and receive accurate decisions and benefits in a timely fashion. Obviously we are always trying to improve and I will explain a few things we have been working on to improve how we manage these claims. The Office of Industrial Relations has previously explained our claims process and provided a flow chart of our process. I am happy to answer any questions you might have about that later.

In terms of our role in the scheme, we have a good working relationship with workplace health and safety and the scheme regulator, and support their role in terms of educating the scheme’s stakeholders about rights and entitlements and promoting injury prevention messages. We provide comprehensive claims data to them regularly and of course we have been working closely with them to understand the claims experience we are seeing in terms of CWP claims. We also have a good working relationship with the ASIEQ, the self-insurers association, although I obviously cannot talk about their claims processes.

For the purpose of today’s appearance, I thought it would be useful to share an update on our claims lodgements and decisions and the work we have been doing with the Office of Industrial Relations and Natural Resources and Mines to improve our processes and the support we provide workers and employers.

Firstly, to update the claims information that we provided to the Office of Industrial Relations on 14 October 2016, we have prepared at summary that I am happy to hand up to the committee. We have excluded any personal information for privacy reasons and we have only included claims lodged with WorkCover Queensland. This does not include self-insurer information as we are not privy to that. We are happy for this information to be publicly available.

The key points from the table are that we have received 26 claims from 24 people since 2015. Two of those people have lodged both statutory and common law claims, so we have had 24 statutory claims and two common law claims. We have accepted nine claims in total, including six claims for CWP only. One claim has been accepted for other respiratory conditions, but not CWP. Two claims have been accepted for multiple conditions, including CWP and other respiratory conditions. Two claims have been rejected. In one case the worker had no coal dust exposure in the state of Queensland. In the other case, medical investigations did not reveal any respiratory condition.

However, given the concerns about diagnosis, in November 2016 we made an offer to that worker that we would refer his scans to Dr Coen in the US for further review. That worker has accepted our offer but to date has not passed on scans to us to forward on to Dr Coen. As at today we have seven claims that we have not been able to decide as yet. They are waiting for information about employment history or diagnosis. Common law claims are currently in the pre-proceedings process and we will soon finalise investigations and commence negotiations on those common law claims.

We have also been reviewing our historical claims data at the request of the committee to identify any potential claims for CWP that may have been missed due to problems with ensuring a correct diagnosis. We are finalising that data analysis and will be in a position to provide the results of that analysis to the committee by the end of February as committed.

Before I take your questions I thought I would also provide an update on our claims processes and the work we have been doing to improve over the last few months. I understand that there have been questions raised about what costs we will cover for investigations and medical expenses. I understand the Office of Industrial Relations has provided information about the overall scheme approach to this issue, but I can comment on WorkCover’s approach. We do not want any worker to



be out of pocket for their screening or treatment costs if they have a work-related injury. This applies to all workers who lodge claims with us. We try to keep the lodgement process for our claims as simple and as streamlined as possible. People who want to make a claim can lodge a simple 2-page claim form or just their medical certificate with us and we can start the investigation and decision-making process. Some workers have been to a specialist and might have radiology results already, but this is not required. We are happy to pay for all of those costs. We will either pay the providers directly if we have a claim, or we can reimburse the worker for the costs if they have already paid themselves.

With increasing knowledge amongst the medical fraternity, we will probably see more claims lodged directly from the GP or specialist and then we can cover investigation costs from that point onwards. That is probably the simplest option for workers. We can also pay for travel costs under the legislation. This is helpful, especially with people being in regional areas. We want our Queensland workers to have access to the best available investigation and diagnostic resources.

At the moment, Dr Coen from the USA is helping us confirm the diagnosis if local doctors are uncertain. We will need to develop more capability here in the state of Queensland so that we can offer a streamlined process for workers, so they can learn as quickly as possible about their diagnosis and we can help support them. We are working with the Department of Natural Resources and Mines and the Office of Industrial Relations to help upskill local experts, and we have been discussing a forum for the medical experts and our stakeholders in the near future.

While radiology results are really important, we also need support from local thoracic surgeons who can help workers manage their condition and help with return to work. We have met with a substantial number of local thoracic surgeons to discuss how we can work with each of them. We have been talking to treating thoracic surgeons on particular cases. Many workers are presenting with respiratory conditions which are not necessarily CWP but which still cause them problems. We will still accept their claims, even though they do not have CWP or might not have that diagnosis as yet. We just need to confirm that their condition was caused by their employment here in Queensland. This is something that we have been talking to the thoracic surgeons about.

Return to work will be very challenging for these workers. As we know, many of them are very passionate about continuing their careers in the coal mining industry. We want to help them do that but, if the doctors advise otherwise, we will help them find alternative employment through our recover at work program that helps find host employment and hopefully long-term jobs with other safe and secure employers or through support from local providers. But this is definitely work in progress for us as we need to work with employers, workers and the medical and allied health providers to find the right long-term employment solution. But we are very committed to this as it is our purpose to help all workers return to work after a work-related injury or disease. Thank you.

CHAIR: Thank you very much, Mr Watson. I now turn to counsel assisting, Ben McMillan. Mr McMILLAN: Thank you, Mr Watson. Can I ask you to expand upon some of your most

recent evidence? You said, "We will still accept claims even if they do not have CWP." I have a series of questions that I want to ask you about the definition of ‘injury’ in the Workers Compensation and Rehabilitation Act and about how WorkCover approaches coal mine workers who may not yet have a diagnosis of CWP, silicosis, sarcoidosis but have experienced significant exposure events that may make them susceptible to those illnesses in future?

Mr Watson: I shall defer to Mrs Reid. Mrs Reid: Under the legislation WorkCover covers people with injuries and that is defined in

the Act, and you do need a medical diagnosis, you need medical support that you have suffered some sort of injury or disease as a result of your employment. In all of our claims, we do not get too caught up in the actual diagnosis that people have, because everyone has their own individual symptoms and impact on their impairment or their function. We want to resolve what the diagnosis is because that is really important to direct the right sort of treatment, but in the first instance people do need to have some sort of medical condition. Most of the people presenting to their doctors do have respiratory symptoms, which suggests that some medical condition exists. We are obviously not medical experts. We defer to the opinion of the treating doctors or independent medical opinion if we need it to confirm what the diagnosis might be.

Obviously it is quite critical in these cases, because it does determine the return to work options for people. If they do have CWP, obviously we need to make sure they are not in that environment anymore. But the first critical thing is checking that they have some respiratory condition as a result of their work. The diagnosis becomes more apparent often over the course of the claim. That is similar to a lot of claims that we manage, not just the respiratory conditions.



Mr McMILLAN: In terms of the definition of any injury, some form of respiratory condition, so long as it is given a name by a physician, will generally be sufficient to have a claim accepted?

Ms Reid: That is right. Mr McMILLAN: Once a claim is accepted, the worker then has access, for example, to the

costs of medical investigations? You need to answer orally if you would not mind. Ms Reid: Yes, sorry. Mr McMILLAN: Travel to and from those medical investigations? Ms Reid: That is correct. Mr McMILLAN: And time off work to attend those medical investigations? Ms Reid: That is right. Mr McMILLAN: As well as any treatment that arises from those investigations? Ms Reid: That is correct—and any time off work as a result of their medical condition. Mr McMILLAN: As it stands presently, in the absence of actual symptoms does a worker have

any right to any form of assistance or compensation under a WorkCover policy? Ms Reid: Under the act at the moment you do need to have an injury. If people lodge a claim

with us, we have committed to funding the investigation costs for those claims. For example, if someone presented to their GP with some concerns that they might have a respiratory condition but that was as far as the investigations had gone, the doctor or the worker can send us the medical certificate based on that consultation alone. We will receive that and take that as initiation of a claim. Then we can talk to the worker and their doctor about what investigations might be required from that point and then we will fund those investigations as part of our decision-making process on a claim.

Mr McMILLAN: A worker presents to their doctor and says, ‘I’m aware that I have had an exposure event at work because I have been given dust-monitoring results that say I have had an exposure event at work and my own experience of the event tells me that that is what happened. I am extremely concerned about my respiratory health as a result of that but I don’t have any symptoms at present.’ You are saying that the doctor can produce a medical certificate which says that there is no illness or injury but the person is concerned. Would that be sufficient for WorkCover to accept a claim?

Ms Reid: We would start the investigations definitely, and then it depends on what those investigations revealed in terms of respiratory conditions.

Mr McMILLAN: What you are saying, if I understand it correctly, is that WorkCover would pay for the investigations but there would not necessarily be access to other compensation until further resolution of the claim?

Ms Reid: Until there is a diagnosis. We know that some people are presenting with no symptoms related to CWP for the moment but there might be symptoms related to another condition. That is why they have turned up to see their doctor, but if investigations reveal there is a medical condition we will accept the claim.

Mr McMILLAN: Is that approach by WorkCover a consequence of the recent reidentification of CWP in the last two years or has that approach been consistent over a number of years?

Ms Reid: It is pretty much our approach to all claims. We receive a large number of our claims by a simple medical certificate from a doctor or even from the hospital they present to. Then we will investigate whether it is a back injury, a shoulder injury or a respiratory condition. We will investigate that and we pay for those investigations.

Mr McMILLAN: The committee has heard evidence from a number of workers including one who gave evidence at a public hearing in Moranbah who has had chest X-ray results read by Dr Cohen in the United States and who has had, if I can use this expression, a pre-CWP diagnosis—using the International Labour Organization classification, a 0/1 classification. As I understand it, that would not constitute an injury because there is no actual diagnosis and, in the absence of that worker suffering any symptoms, he falls into the category of someone who does not have a medical condition at present. Is that example one that falls into this category of being covered for future investigations if he made a claim?

Mr Abernethy: If he does not have a diagnosis at this point and wanted further investigations to confirm a diagnosis, that would certainly fall into this classification where WorkCover would fund the appropriate diagnostics to get that person to a point of diagnosis.



Mr McMILLAN: Is that a discretion essentially of WorkCover to accept a claim even though there is no actual injury yet?

Mr Abernethy: It is not accepting ongoing claim liability; it is accepting the expenses required to get to a point where we can make an appropriate decision on liability.

Mr McMILLAN: How long would you expect to fund those sorts of investigations in circumstances where workers may need monitoring over a number of years to determine whether a pre-CWP diagnosis becomes CWP?

Mr Abernethy: That may be something that we would need to take on notice. It could be the distinction between perhaps a proactive screening program or perhaps lodging a claim each time you wanted investigations done, but there would be a difference between those.

Mr McMILLAN: You might anticipate that that is where my questions are leading. A number of submitters to this inquiry, including the CFMEU and the retired miners association, have suggested that the committee consider recommending to the parliament the establishment of an entirely separate support scheme for coal workers or mineworkers generally. One of the things that both those organisations have pointed to is the need for some support for ongoing medical monitoring for people who do not yet have medical conditions but who have been exposed to adverse events at work.

You may be familiar with some recent decisions in the United States not related to mining where courts have allowed damages claims essentially for future medical monitoring. Is there any capacity within the current system to provide for future medical monitoring beyond the initial investigation of a claim? If not, is it possible, in your opinion, to modify the current scheme to provide for such a mechanism if that is the mind of the parliament, or is it preferable to create an entirely separate structure? Those are multiple questions. I am happy to lay them out again.

Ms Reid: You might need to repeat them. Mr McMILLAN: First of all, dealing with them one by one, is there any capacity within the

current scheme to deal with ongoing medical monitoring beyond the initial investigation of a claim? Ms Reid: Under the current legislation our responsibility as the insurer is to investigate when

a claim is lodged with us. We have taken a fairly open mind in terms of what that lodgement process involves to include the medical certificate lodgement. Under the current legislation our responsibility is to investigate claims and make a decision about them. Proactive monitoring and screening would fall outside the obligations under the legislation.

You mentioned some cases in the US that dealt with damages claims and liability to pay for future screening. That is something we have experienced with asbestos conditions because they tend, unfortunately, to have a series of progressions through a person’s life and damages can accommodate that. We are not sure whether workers will want to pursue the damages line with us. Certainly the statutory benefits that are there are the most immediate and simplest solution for people and covers most of what they will need. Damages, if people pursue that, could accommodate that but the statutory benefit regime as it is defined in the act would not. In terms of whether it is a good idea and policy views on that, we would probably defer to the Workers Compensation and Policy Services unit at the Office of Industrial Relations.

Mr McMILLAN: From WorkCover’s perspective, I think your answer is that it cannot be accommodated within the current structure of your insurance arrangements.

Ms Reid: That is correct. Mr McMILLAN: And you would rather not give an opinion about what amendments could be

made to the scheme to accommodate that. Is that your position? Ms Reid: Correct. Mr McMILLAN: We should take that up with the Office of Industrial Relations. Ms Reid: Yes please. Mr Watson: Can I add that we are party to the stakeholder reference group as part of this

inquiry process. That is a body of work that has been carried out to consider those options which commenced last week. We are meeting again next week.

Mr McMILLAN: In terms of considering those submissions by those bodies and others, would you support a recommendation by this committee that a working party be formed by the Office of Industrial Relations to provide options to government about how to better address those concerns in the current scheme?

Mr Watson: Yes, we would.



Mr McMILLAN: Can I ask you about the schedule of claims that you have helpfully provided to the committee? I think, Madam Chair, as a matter of protocol the document probably should be tabled.

CHAIR: I seek leave to table the document that was presented by Bruce Watson. There being no objection, leave is granted.

Mr McMILLAN: Is that a table of current, active claims only or of all claims related to CWP? Ms Reid: It is all the claims that have been lodged with us since 2015. The withdrawn claims

would not be current because people have decided not to pursue those and the rejected claims would not be current because we have made a decision to not accept ongoing liability, but the balance are either accepted or pending.

Mr McMILLAN: You will recall that in October Office of Industrial Relations’ officers gave evidence and tabled a schedule of historical claims which you have had access to. There was some evidence there that WorkCover, I think it was, was paying two claims for CWP or CWP related injuries as far back as 2006 and 2007. Can you speak to those claims at all?

Mr Abernethy: Yes, we did receive claims in, I believe, 2006 for a historical claim that we received for CWP.

Mr McMILLAN: There was only one? Mr Abernethy: Only one. Mr McMILLAN: Is that claim still active or is it closed? Mr Abernethy: No, the claim is closed. Mr McMILLAN: Is that person represented in the two common law claims that are identified

here? Mr Abernethy: No. Mr McMILLAN: In terms of how that claim fits into the other evidence that the committee has

received, could you explain to the committee the process by which WorkCover liaises with the employer when it accepts a claim and how it is that it seems WorkCover was the only entity which knew that CWP existed in Queensland in 2006? I am happy to give you more clarity about the basis of that question if you need it.

Ms Reid: Either Paul or I can answer. I can start if you like. On every claim if the employer is still in business we will contact the employer and talk to them about a claim. They have notification responsibilities with us as well. If they are aware of an injury under the legislation, they are obliged to notify us. In that particular claim I understand the employer was not in business at the time.

Mr Abernethy: I believe not. Ms Reid: They were not in business at the time the claim was lodged so there was no employer

for us to talk to. We have reviewed that claim very closely to have a look at the different stakeholders who were involved to understand whether WorkCover was the only stakeholder that knew about CWP. We are happy to provide more detail to the committee—perhaps a chronology of the claim, if it would help.

Mr McMILLAN: Yes. CHAIR: That would be good, thank you. Ms Reid: It probably contains some private information. We could perhaps talk about how we

share that with the committee if that is okay. Mr McMILLAN: If you make a request for that to be received by the committee confidentially,

it will be considered and I expect that can be accommodated. Ms Reid: Thank you. That will set out the chronology of our investigations. CHAIR: We will keep that information confidential to the committee. Ms Reid: Thanks, Chair. Mr McMILLAN: Can I ask you about the exercise of powers under section 532C of the Workers’

Compensation and Rehabilitation Act? While I do not expect others other than you, Ms Reid, to automatically recognise that provision, it is the provision that enables the insurer to require the employer to produce information that might assist them in identifying a claim. I particularly want you



to respond to a paragraph from the submission made to the committee’s inquiry by the CFMEU at page 25. There is discussion of a particular claim in that section, but it is a more general proposition I want to put to you. The CFMEU write— No written response has been provided but it was conveyed to the president—

that is, the President of the CFMEU— that WorkCover Queensland and the department had a policy of not exercising their powers to compel the employer to provide information or documentation during the investigation of a statutory workers compensation claim, no matter how relevant to the decision-making process.

Is that a policy that you do not seek to compel further information during the investigation stage of a claim?

Mr Abernethy: At the statutory level it is no fault. As we said, we have a streamlined decision-making process and we try to do that as promptly as possible. I believe they are referring to requesting dust levels and information like that from the employer. To make a decision on a CWP claim, we are looking for the diagnosis in connection with employment in Queensland. If the worker can provide that evidence, we are not asking them to also validate dust levels and things like that, which could potentially lengthen the process as well and make it more complex and harder. We are accepting those claims without that information. I would defer to Janine, but certainly at the damages stage when we are looking at liability, that could be something that we would be looking for.

Ms Reid: Paul makes the point that the reason we have not pursued that type of evidence in these cases—initially we were trying to gather that information as we were learning about the condition. Certainly our process now that we have settled on is that we do not require that level of information from the worker or from the employer. We certainly do not want to delay the claims process for workers. That is why we have not typically pursued that information.

I think the Office of Industrial Relations in some information they provided to the committee set out a bit of the legislative policy history behind those provisions and the intent of some of those sections for requesting information. It is generally not required for us to use that because we get what we need from employers. As Paul made the point, if it gets to the common law claim and those dust levels are important for both the worker pursuing their common law claim and WorkCover investigating and defending the claim, then the employer does have obligations already under the legislation for complete disclosure about relevant information and we have obligations then to pass that information to the worker and any other third parties that would be involved in the claim.

Mr McMILLAN: In terms of this example, I think the case study that has been referred to in the CFMEU’s submission, although it does not specify this, begins with the words, ‘The worker was at the time of his diagnosis working and continues on.’ I take it, therefore, that in that case there was a confirmed diagnosis of a work related injury. Is that the situation where you are saying, ‘Where we already have a diagnosis we do not need the employer to produce the information that will convince us that it was a work related injury’? Am I understanding that correctly?

Ms Reid: The dust levels do not actually contribute to the statutory claims decision in terms of whether the condition is work related or not. That will typically rest on the medical information. The doctor will tell us whether there is a link between work and their conditions. We do not need to know the levels of dust that were present to make that definitive decision. Certainly if there is a common law claim you need to know that information because you are looking at a different type of test; you are looking at negligence obviously. For a statutory claim we just need to connect the condition with work.

Mr McMILLAN: That is, of course, assuming that the doctor has identified a work related injury at first instance. In that situation you do not need the employer to provide any further information that will convince you that it was a work related injury; that is what you are saying?

Ms Reid: Correct.

Mr McMILLAN: I am not suggesting that this is the case referred to by the CFMEU, but I wonder about situations where, for example, a coalmine worker presents to a doctor with respiratory symptoms that are diagnosed as asthma or smoking related lung conditions—something similar to that. The worker is concerned that he has a work related condition arising from his exposure to coal dust, silica or other industrial hazards and makes a claim. That is a situation, is it not, where in the absence of a diagnosis of a work related condition in the investigations phase you might need to exercise your powers under 532C to gather more information from the employer about that worker’s exposure to workplace hazards?



Ms Reid: If it would help the doctor understand what sort of exposure. Sometimes the doctors have obviously heard from the worker the nature of their work conditions and they have some information from that. If that is not enough for a doctor, then we can pursue additional information. In the first instance we just ask employers to cooperate with us and provide the information, and they certainly have obligations under the act to do that. They have the obligation to notify us of the injury and then to provide us with information that we require. If we had to resort to using 532C then we would. There is no specific internal policy decision about that, but it is very, very rarely required.

Mr McMILLAN: To clarify for the purposes of the committee’s report, to clarify the submission that is made by the CFMEU that the president has been informed that WorkCover Queensland has a policy of not exercising its powers during the investigation phase of a claim, your evidence is that there is no formal policy about the use or otherwise of that power—

Ms Reid: Correct. Mr McMILLAN:—but that the practice of WorkCover would be not to exercise that power (a),

if the employer is already being cooperative— Ms Reid: Correct. Mr McMILLAN:—and (b), in circumstances where there is sufficient medical evidence to

establish a work related injury without the need for additional evidence from the employer? Ms Reid: That is correct. Mr McMILLAN: Just to clarify, of the two claims that were rejected in your table, were either of

those cases where additional evidence was required to be produced by the employer? Mr Abernethy: No. Mr McMILLAN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Those are my questions for the time being. Mr SPRINGBORG: Madam Chair, the counsel assisting asked the questions I had. Mr KNUTH: I have a question—and you may in part have answered this. Where a coal worker

is also a smoker and presents with lung disease, does he have an issue in making a claim considering smoking is not a workplace injury?

Ms Reid: We will require medical information about that. It is early days with CWP claims, but we have some history with asbestos related conditions and some of that sort of issue does arise. We will seek medical opinion about whether the respiratory condition is caused by work. The act does not require it to be the only contributing factor. If someone does have a smoking history, we will ask the worker about the extent of that and the level of smoking that they have. Then we will be seeking medical opinion about whether employment is a significant contributing factor—that is the definition in the legislation. It does not have to be the only one. Sometimes people do present with a number of other lifestyle features that help contribute to their injury. The question for us is: was employment a significant contributing factor rather than the factor?

Mr KELLY: I am interested in this case from 2006. Presumably a doctor was involved in the diagnosis of that?

Ms Reid: That is correct. In our chronology that we are happy to provide to the committee we can set out a number of the steps that went into the diagnosis and the representations on behalf of the worker to us. That might help you to understand a bit of the history of the claim.

Mr KELLY: Will that chronology provide insight into how a disease that in 2006 had effectively not been heard of since 1984 did not trigger the intellectual curiosity of the doctor diagnosing the disease or people in WorkCover who were handling this claim and did not trigger any action as to perhaps ‘there needs to be more action in this situation’?

Ms Reid: Our chronology will set out the different parties that were aware of the condition and who we talked to about the claim. I cannot say that it will answer your question about why it did not stimulate that curiosity. We will certainly detail the people we were talking to about the claim and the details of the people that the worker was talking to about their claim and their condition as well.

Mr KELLY: What is the culture now in WorkCover Queensland? We have a disease there that was identified in 2006, had not been seen in 20-something years and was previously a major issue in this state and in the coalmining industry around the world. It just seems astounding to me that that did not trigger any intellectual curiosity of a baseline or even some concern. Is the culture now one where WorkCover is looking to do more than just simply compensate people who come before them but to actually consider the overall health ramifications for workers and the broader community?



Mr Watson: Absolutely; I would echo those words. We are absolutely focused on doing the best by the worker and ensuring that any signals that we see are shared with workplace health and safety, the department. We have very strong relationships in place—that is one of the key areas that I have come in and very much focused on—to ensure that we share as much information with those close relationships. At the end of the day that is our purpose: to look after the worker from the start to the finish even if they are retired and out of work.

Mr KELLY: It would seem that there was a significant missed opportunity there in 2006—11 years. We could have perhaps been on to this many years ago. My next area of questioning probably relates to some things that counsel has asked you already. You talked about that effectively for claims to move forward beyond the investigation stage there has to be some systematic situation for the patient. What I understand from the hearing so far is that if someone is diagnosed with a very early stage of CWP they will be completely asymptomatic. The ideal recommendation I would imagine from a medical officer would be that you should remove yourself from that environment and that if you do that, your chances of having any problems related to that later in life are very negligible. From a compensation perspective, how do we deal with that? We have a person who has no symptoms, they should be removed from that job in my belief, but that obviously has ramifications for that person and it will be different depending on the person. Are the systems in WorkCover currently able to manage and cope with that situation?

Ms Reid: Yes, we think they can. In the scenario that you describe, the person would have the diagnosed CWP condition. They might be asymptomatic at the time, but the condition has been diagnosed. Our understanding of the medical advice is, as you say, that to minimise the risk of the condition progressing, the person should not continue to be exposed in that work environment. Based on their condition, the doctor would tell us then that they should not be working in their previous coalmine role. Then they are eligible for compensation if they cannot work because of their condition. In that case, we would be working with the worker and their employer if they are still employed to find either an alternative role at that workplace that is safer for them or alternative employment that will take them away from that. Whilst they are incapacitated for work because of their condition—even though they are asymptomatic, their condition dictates their return-to-work capability, so we would compensate them during that period while we are trying to get them back to work.

CHAIR: Can I prosecute that a bit further, please? For example, in Central Queensland we have quite a number of coalminers who work in the mining towns. We also have some miners who work FIFO. They might live at the Gold Coast or in Brisbane or whatever and they might be able to return home if they cannot work in coal anymore and may be able to pick up a job.

For those miners who are working and living in mining towns like Tieri, Middlemount and Blackwater—which I know quite well—company houses are provided for them if they cannot work at the mine any longer. You are talking about not only uprooting and compensating the worker but also their family if they cannot remain in the coalmining industry, for example, so what do you do about them?

Ms Reid: We know that workers and their families are impacted and we will deal with every case on its own basis. We will be talking to each worker individually and their providers such as doctors or thoracic surgeons about where they want to live and what sort of work future they want to have. If they want to continue living in that area, that is fine. Most people who we work with across Queensland with a whole range of injuries face the issue of trying to find alternative employment where they live—

CHAIR: What about the alternative salary? In other words, we have a situation where coalminers earn a certain salary which is normally a lot higher than the average Queenslander. Would you compensate them at their salary level as a coalminer, or under your Recover at Work program would you expect them to be compensated at a much lower rate?

Ms Reid: While they are receiving their statutory benefits they will be receiving the difference between their pre-injury wages and any alternative wages that we might find for them. Sometimes people return with their current employer and there might be a wages gap because of the level of overtime they might be performing or the type of role—

CHAIR: And bonuses. Ms Reid: And bonuses. The legislation sets out the different things we can take into account

in working out the pre-injury wages, and then we will pay them the difference if they are incapacitated and that is preventing them from doing their previous job. During the statutory claim the act explains what benefits they are paid during that time. There are step-down provisions set out in the act that impact those wages over the course of the statutory claim.



If someone goes on to pursue a common law claim, then that is definitely one of the factors that is taken into account in working out someone’s future economic loss. We go through the exercise of trying to predict what income and wages that person would have received but for their injury or condition, what wages they have earned since then and what wages they can expect to earn in the future. That will form a large part of the common law claim payment if people pursue common law.

Mr Watson: The stakeholder reference group has discussed this point is a key point the stakeholders need to try and work through in order to provide some recommendations back to this committee. At this stage there has been an internal working group to work through that, and Janine is party to that working group. It clearly takes into account the fact that families may need to be repositioned as well as a loss of salary and ongoing medical et cetera.

CHAIR: Also, Mr Watson, of course the impact on the community because in coalmining towns it is not just families: you also have the Public Service component of that community. If several families have to move that means they might lose teachers, police officers and health workers, for example. I ask you to please go back to your committee and point out that it is not simply the coalminer and their family who is at risk here—although we understand that that has to be of the utmost importance—but it is also the impact in relation to the coalmining community. As you know, we are already concerned about the fact that many coalmining communities are in massive decline because of FIFO. Also the coalmining industry at the moment is declining, so to speak, because of the coal price although we have had a bit of an upturn in the last few months. It is not just a workers compensation issue but also the impact on families and the community. We have two impacts: the economic impact and the community impact.

Mr Watson: I will make sure that is taken into account. CHAIR: When would you consider that the committee you are talking about would make its

evidence known to this committee? Ms Reid: The office of industrial relations is leading that work and we are not sure of the date

they are due to report back. It is a question of the office of industrial relations providing that information.

CHAIR: I would be grateful if could you could please give them a gee up, because this committee has to report by 12 April.

Mr Watson: We will take that on board and do everything that we can in our power to speed up the process.

CHAIR: I would like to refer back to counsel assisting for his final question. Mr McMILLAN: Thank you, Madam Chair. I apologise for not covering this in my earlier

examination. There is one final matter I want to ask you about, Mr Watson, and I preface my question by acknowledging that there is a vast divergence of claims that WorkCover receives and some of them are complex and require significant investigation to ascertain what the injury actually is and whether or not it is work related. The committee has heard evidence from a number of coalmine workers who have made workers compensation claims, and their experience of the time it has taken for those claims to be accepted is divergent. It seems to me that on a review of the evidence the two extremes are the experiences of a man named Percy Verrall, who gave evidence in Bundamba in October, and more recently the experience of a man named Chris Byron, who gave evidence in Mackay. At that stage Mr Verrall had been waiting more than 12 months and counting for a determination of his claim. We have not heard back from him as to whether that claim has been accepted or not. On the other hand, I think that Mr Byron’s evidence was that his claim was accepted within a week of being made. To be fair, he also gave evidence that when he made his claim he had a confirmed diagnosis of CWP made by Dr Cohen in the United States. Without necessarily delving into the complexities or otherwise of those two particular claims, has there been any policy change at WorkCover in recent months or years about your approach to accepting claims for coalmine dust lung diseases generally or CWP specifically, or does it come down purely to the complexity of individual claims as to how fast workers can expect those claims to be processed?

Mr Watson: I am not aware of the details in relation to the claims mentioned, however, I can definitely find out more information and come back to the committee in relation to that 12-month delay. I can say that, whilst it has been a short five weeks, I have made it my business to understand how the business has operated in the past. At least from 2006 onwards—and in fact even prior to that—there has been a very strong focus on making decisions on claims as quickly as possible. There have been statistics kept on that over that period of time. I know that in 2000, 55 per cent of claims were determined within one week; I believe that it is now closer to 70 per cent of claims which are determined within a week and it is much higher within 10 days. The cases that I am aware of where



there have been delays have been normally where the worker might well have been working through a legal representative, and that seems to delay the process. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with that, but it just seems to be an extra step in delaying the process. We will find out the details in relation to the specific claim and provide the committee with that information very quickly.

Mr McMILLAN: I have one supplementary question arising from that answer. As I understand the medical evidence, there is no other cause of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis other than occupational exposure to coal dust, so is it the case that a confirmed diagnosis of CWP will or should be automatically accepted as a work related injury by WorkCover?

Ms Reid: We agree that the medical evidence confirms that it is work related. One of our questions is about whether they were exposed as a worker in Queensland. In one of the claims that was rejected the individual definitely had occupational exposure, but it was in another state. I think it was New South Wales. We do have to check that they have employment exposure in Queensland, but otherwise the medical evidence is clear that it is linked to occupational exposure.

In relation to the previous question, I understand that Mr Verrall’s claim was with a self-insurer, so we obviously cannot comment on their process. There might be an opportunity to find out more about what happened with his claim from his employer.

Mr McMILLAN: I am sorry if I misrecorded that in my notes. Following up from what you have just said, if a worker has had occupational exposure to coal dust in Queensland but the majority of their working life has been in New South Wales or the United Kingdom, for example, what is the benchmark at which you will say that you have been exposed to dust in Queensland and therefore we can accept your claim? Is there a minimum period of exposure or work?

Ms Reid: Can we take that question on notice? I am aware that the question has been asked of doctors in some claims because that scenario has arisen. If we could take that question on notice and come back with specific medical information about the period of exposure that is required, we can report back.

Mr McMILLAN: To be clear, if you are satisfied that there was exposure in Queensland which meets whatever criteria you are going to come back to us with, it is irrelevant as to whether or not the employer of that worker still exists in Queensland under the WorkCover policy; is that right?

Ms Reid: That is correct. CHAIR: In relation to retired coalminers who were working underground at Ipswich, Collinsville,

Blackwater, Cook Colliery and other places throughout Queensland, if they have respiratory illnesses or have been diagnosed with asthma, what advice would you give to them? For example, should they lodge a WorkCover claim through their GP with you and then you, as WorkCover, will have them go for diagnostic testing?

Ms Reid: That is the simplest option for workers and retired workers. You do not have to be currently employed to lodge a claim with us. Provided that you were exposed while you were working as a worker in Queensland, it does not matter if you have been retired since then. There are no limits in Queensland about having to lodge claims while you are working.

CHAIR: What are you doing about making that publicly known in those areas of Queensland where there were underground minders from many years ago who were obviously exposed to significant coal dust?

Mr Watson: That is a question I asked myself. We working through with the department on trying to ensure that we have a process which is clearly understood and accepted and that we can take out. We could go out now based on the information we have shared, however, we do believe that within a very short period of time we may well have an agreed process which might be an assessment pre-claim process, for instance, that can be agreed between the stakeholders, self-insurers and coal owners that we are committed to go out and have a community engagement process to ensure that people are aware of the process, how to apply, how to instigate the process and what will be covered. For instance, we are working very closely with the self-insurers so if a claim came to us that should be for a self-insurer, we will hand it across in a very seamless manner.

CHAIR: How long do you think it will take for you to come to some agreement? Some of these men are in their 70s, 80s and 90s and they believe that the whole of the industry and government is waiting for them to fall off the perch before something will happen.

Mr Watson: We are definitely considering this as a matter of urgency. I know that the stakeholder reference group is very focused on trying to get an outcome on this within a month, so I believe that within two months we would be out there advising retired people and workers of the process that can be in place, subject to any legislation changes that might need to be made.



CHAIR: Yes, that is fine, but how are you going to find out who the miners are given that the companies do not exist anymore? I know that you will get some of the lists through the CFMEU, but how are you going to find out?

Ms Reid: The Office of Industrial Relations and Natural Resources and Mines are leading this work with their—

CHAIR: They do not know either. Ms Reid: I suspect people are talking to their doctors, so if we can elevate the level of

knowledge amongst the local medical community and also there are a range of stakeholders that are involved such as unions and the employers as well with their contacts in the community. You are right: some of the businesses do not exist anymore, but I think the more that the local community knowledge can be raised about what people should do or even who to ask means that people do not have to know the beginning and end of the claims process, but at least if they know to make contact with us then we can help them. We will follow the lead from the Office of Industrial Relations and NRM on engaging that community and that is, I understand, part of the work of the stakeholder reference group that is due to report back to the committee.

CHAIR: Good luck, and I mean that seriously given the evidence that has come before this committee from the department in particular. There being no further questions, I thank you for attending today. Thank you.

Mr Watson: Thank you. Proceedings suspended from 11.31 am to 11.47 am



BELLE, Dr Bharath, Coal Ventilation Engineering Manager, Anglo Coal

OSWELL, Mr Mike, Health, Safety and Environment Manager, Anglo Coal

SANDERSON, Ms Liz, Coal Australia Occupational Health and Rehabilitation Specialist, Anglo Coal

TAYLOR, Mr Jordan, Safety, Health and Environment Manager, Moranbah North Mine, Anglo Coal

CHAIR: Thank you for your attendance here today. My name is Jo-Ann Miller, the member for Bundamba, and, as you know, I am the chair of the Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis Select Committee. Other committee members here today are Lawrence Springborg, the member for Southern Downs and deputy chair; Joe Kelly, the member for Greenslopes; and Shane Knuth, the member for Dalrymple. Craig Crawford, the member for Barron River, is unable to be with us today and Jason Costigan, the member for Whitsunday, will be joining us later. I welcome representatives from Anglo Coal. I place on the public record the committee’s appreciation to Anglo Coal for providing the committee with a briefing and a mine visit late last year as part of this inquiry. I invite you to make any opening statement, if you wish, and after that I will be inviting Ben McMillan, our counsel assisting, to ask any questions and then committee members will follow up with any questions. Mike, are you going to start off?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Firstly, thanks for the opportunity to present to the committee. It follows up the Grasstree visit where we canvassed a whole range of issues, but this allows us to put some of those things formally on the record. In my opening statement I just want to reiterate some of the opening remarks we made in our written submission that we put in back in November 2016. Anglo American is a globally diversified mining business and in Queensland Anglo operates three underground mines and two open-cut mines, one of which is the Grasstree mine. The safety, health and wellbeing of our employees at all of our operations is Anglo American’s No. 1 priority. We are committed to providing the best and safest possible workplaces through effective technical and engineering support, risk based safety and health management systems, proactive leadership and ongoing consultation with our workforces. We, along with everyone else in the industry, are concerned about the recent identification of these new cases of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. Clearly, this is a particularly serious and debilitating disease and our Anglo American underground mines in particular have taken very substantial actions on many fronts to ensure members of our workforces are not exposed to excessive levels of dust.

Our recent submission to the committee and the information provided to the committee during its recent visit to Grasstree mine highlighted many of the additional actions Anglo American has taken over the last 18 months to ensure the continuing health and safety of the members of our workforces. These actions include, inter alia, offering and arranging further chest X-rays for employees; improved processes for appointing and communicating with our nominated medical advisers; substantially increased dust monitoring regimes at all our underground mines; introduction of real-time dust monitoring, which Jordan and Bharath hopefully will talk to later; very significant engineering and design improvements to further minimise dust emissions and all personal exposures to dust; and improved respiratory protection equipment and personal training. I am pleased to say that these actions have met with considerable success in further reducing dust exposures across our underground mines. Thank you.

CHAIR: Thank you very much, Mr Oswell. We will now go to Ben McMillan, counselling assist. Mr McMILLAN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr Oswell, could you start please by just clarifying

for me Anglo’s coal operations in Queensland at present, and I understand the company has recently divested itself of one of your assets? What coal operations does Anglo currently have in Queensland?

Mr Oswell: Correct. We have three underground coalmines—that is, the Moranbah North mine just outside of Moranbah, the new Grosvenor mine which is also a couple of kilometres out of Moranbah town and the Grasstree mine that you visited which is 20-odd kays from Middlemount. From an open-cut perspective, we have the Capcoal open-cut operations which are adjacent to where we were at Grasstree and we have Dawson open-cut mine which is located near the town of Moura. They are the current operating mines.

Mr McMILLAN: Anglo has recently divested itself of another coal asset. What was that? Mr Oswell: The two assets that were divested in 2016 were Callide mine which is located just

near Biloela and Foxleigh which is continuing to operate adjacent to the Capcoal operations.



Mr McMILLAN: As you appear before the committee today, are you aware of any intention by Anglo Australia to divest itself of other coal assets in Queensland?

Mr Oswell: You would have seen in the media the divestment process is underway for the Dawson mine and in addition the Capcoal complex, including Grasstree, is going to be subject to divestment processes. You would have seen that in the press over the last few months, yes.

Mr McMILLAN: The submission that is made by Anglo Coal refers to the very significant contribution through mining royalties that Anglo has made to the state’s economy and I am particularly interested in the fact that Anglo has reported that it has consistently met or exceeded run-of-mine production targets over the last several years at its underground operations and in fact the Grasstree mine achieved a monthly production record in 2015 of 1.2 million tonnes. Is that right?

Mr Oswell: Say that again? Where are you getting this from sorry? This is not part of our submission.

Mr McMILLAN: No, I am sorry. The first part of my question essentially related to the fact that Anglo Coal acknowledges its significant volume of production.

Mr Oswell: Yes.

Mr McMILLAN: I understand through other research done by myself and the secretariat to the committee that Grasstree in particular, for example, has achieved a number of milestones including a monthly production record in 2015 for run-of-mine tonnage in a single month. Are you aware of that?

Mr Oswell: They could well have done, yes. It was a good production year in 2016.

Mr McMILLAN: Could I ask you to take us through generally the position as it relates to coal dust management and mitigation across the Anglo underground assets before 2015? I understand that there has been a significant learning process and a significant amount of development over the last two years within the Anglo business, but could you please give the committee a picture of what the lay of the land was about coal dust and dust management in the Anglo assets before that?

Mr Oswell: That is a broad question, Ben. I guess the short answer to that is we have always had a focus on dust management in underground mines. It is recognised as a risk, so it has formed part of our whole approach to managing safety and health in the underground mines. The approaches to managing dust pre 2015 are similar in structure as to what we do now in that there has been a focus on engineering, design controls, water sprays, ventilation, which Dr Bharath Belle can talk about, and all those types of things such as the placement of people, the training of people, the rotation of people to a certain degree out of key production areas during the shift and those types of things and then of course the last line of defence with personal protective equipment.

I would have to say of course that the focus on all of those areas has ramped up very significantly since these new cases of CWP were identified. Prior to 2015 there was nothing. We had all these various approaches in place and there was nothing to indicate to our operations or indeed across the industry that there was a problem. The health assessments were coming back and there was no indication of respiratory disease or of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis. The various health assessments, as I say, that we were conducting were coming back clear and CWP just was not on the radar quite frankly. The view was, as we have heard many times, that it had been eradicated. Most certainly after these cases started to be identified, we looked at our controls and essentially ramped up the focus in all of those areas—the engineering design, which you saw a lot of at Grasstree, and the positioning of people, particularly in the longwall faces, and our PDM3700 helped us out a lot in terms of the best positions for people to stand in when they are operating the longwall to minimise their dust exposures. The rotation of people during the shift from the longwall to other areas has increased. The focus on personal protective equipment—the Airstream and the CleanSpace helmets—has increased. I guess the approach was fundamentally the same pre 2015 to post 2015. The ramp-up in focus on all of those areas has increased dramatically since 2015 and the identification of these cases, but the principles and management of the risk remain the same.

Mr McMILLAN: Prior to 2015 the safety and health management systems for each of your coalmines had to have some kind of dust management strategy as part of them, didn’t they?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: While details of those strategies may have evolved over the past two years,

they have been a consistent feature of your safety and health management system over decades or more, haven’t they?



Mr Oswell: Yes. There has always been procedures and monitoring programs and those types of things that are formally developed that go to the management of dust. But, again, they have been subject to review, of course, in the last couple of years.

Mr McMILLAN: I will get to the activities that you have undertaken in the last two years in some detail in a moment and I want to take you to some of the aspects that you have addressed in your submission. Focusing on the period prior to 2015, there was a requirement for you to periodically undertake dust exposure monitoring?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: That is a requirement under the legislation? Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: That had to be done at least every quarter, is that right? Mr Oswell: The frequency of sampling is determined in conjunction with the occupational

hygiene service provider. There are various formula worked out as to how frequently the sampling should occur and the size of the sampling group within the similarly exposed group and so on and so on. I would take that on notice unless somebody else can help me out here, but I am assuming it would have been at least four times a year in the underground sense.

Mr McMILLAN: Prior to the new regulation commencing on 1 January this year, there was no requirement previously for mine operators such as Anglo to report exceedences above the exposure standard to the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, was there?

Mr Oswell: Correct. Mr McMILLAN: But it was a matter that within your own safety and health management system

you had to have some protocol for addressing that exposure event and investigating it? Mr Oswell: Correct. Mr McMILLAN: Was respiratory protective equipment mandatory for any exposure group

within the underground mining environment prior to 2015? Mr Oswell: To be 100 per cent accurate I will have to refer back to the producers. There are

different procedures at different mines. The mandatory wearing of protection often commenced at certain points along longwalls and in development areas, but specifically I would have to come back to you on that at each of the mines: Moranbah, Grasstree.

CHAIR: Can you take that on notice, please. Mr Oswell: Sure. Mr McMILLAN: I am particularly interested to understand the historical context. Your

submission speaks obviously in the present tense, which is fine and we will get to that, but in terms of respiratory protective equipment I think your submission says that that is mandatory for longwall operators and those working in development at present?

Mr Oswell: Correct. Mr McMILLAN: That is generally consistent with your understanding? Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: But you are not able today to speak to when that mandatory requirement was

imposed; is that right? Mr Oswell: Correct. I will have to come back to you on that. Mr McMILLAN: No problem. Can I ask as a preliminary matter before I get into some more

detail with each of you individually, as a general proposition each of you, with the exception of Dr Belle, holds a senior position, if I can put it that way, within your organisation in health and safety management. Are any academic or professional qualifications required for you to attain and sustain those roles? What does Anglo generally require for safety and health managers within its organisation? Perhaps, Mike, if I can start with you and then if you can speak to the other positions in the hierarchy or otherwise I will go to those appearing with you.

Mr Oswell: Each position in Anglo has an associated position description and the various requirements of the position and the competencies and qualifications that go with that position are detailed.

CHAIR: Can you provide us with those position descriptions?



Mr Oswell: That would be easiest, yes. There is a range of potential qualifications for positions, yes.

Mr McMILLAN: Just to understand your role, your role is described as health, safety and environment manager Anglo Coal so you sit, essentially, in that role across all of Anglo’s coal operations in Queensland.

Mr Oswell: In Australia.

Mr McMILLAN: Your position is essentially the top of the health, safety and environment tree, is that fair to say?

Mr Oswell: In Australia, yes.

Mr McMILLAN: What level of the organisation sits above you in Australia?

Mr Oswell: I report to a person who is the head of safety and sustainable development across the entire coal business and he is based in London. We have other senior executives, the head of production for the open cuts, the head of production in the undergrounds, which is Glen Britton who is sitting behind us, and a number of other senior positions that exist in Australia, but I report directly to the head of S and SD in London.

Mr McMILLAN: Do you have any academic or professional qualifications in workplace health and safety?

Mr Oswell: Yes.

Mr McMILLAN: Are they required for a person to assume your position?

Mr Oswell: Very much so. There is a range of qualifications for people in positions such as mine. It is not strictly you must have this, this and this. There is a range of qualifications that could enable you to carry out that role. It is a senior leadership role so it is as much focused on leadership skills, your previous history and background—and I have been around for a while, as you can probably imagine, in the industry. And, of course, there are some fundamental qualifications that sit under that.

Mr McMILLAN: What qualifications do you have in work health and safety?

Mr Oswell: I have a bachelor of business which majored in human resources and occupational health and safety. I have a graduate diploma in sustainability science. For the formal qualifications that is it.

Mr McMILLAN: The academic qualifications that are generally undertaken by those who take up roles of health and safety managers in the Anglo business, I am trying to get to understand whether there is any academic training in health and hygiene specifically related to coalmining. Before you get to that job, other than professional or occupational experience in the coal industry, is there any academic basis to assist you to understand the dynamics of coal dust and how you can adequately monitor and mitigate it?

Mr Oswell: For me personally?

Mr McMILLAN: For people who come into the job of a health and safety manager at Anglo Coal.

Mr Oswell: Typically the qualifications of people who come into safety and health management roles are safety and health formal qualifications and typically those attaining those qualifications mean you do a number of subjects in occupational health, occupational hygiene. In terms of other roles, we have a whole raft of technical specialists dealing with certain aspects of dust management and ventilation. Dr Belle is the head of ventilation engineering. There are ventilation engineers on the sites and they have very specific qualifications dealing with the very specifics of ventilation and dust and so on and so on. I suppose the people in my type of role and our safety, health and environment managers at sites are probably in most cases best described as generalists. They have some qualifications or some experience in the occupational health and hygiene areas that we rely very much on. You can imagine, if I go a bit more broadly, there are a whole raft of risks we face in open-cut and underground mining operations. There is no way I or anybody else can possibly be around the full technical understanding of those risks and how they are managed so we have a whole raft of specialist people within our business at Bharath’s level and at site level. The people I am talking about are ventilation people, we have geotechnical people working underground, we have geotechnical people and geologists working in the open-cut mines, we have structural engineers, we have electrical management specialists, we have mechanical maintenance specialists, all of whom are responsible



for, amongst other things, the safe operation of the aspects they are considering. We as generalists, if you like, the safety, health and environmental managers, rely enormously on the technical expertise of those people.

Mr McMILLAN: Another health, safety and environment manager from another company has already given evidence to the committee and I think the effect of his evidence was that in his study there was no particular module or area of competency specifically focused on respirable dust as a health hazard that faced mine workers as opposed to dust being an environmental hazard that might affect visibility and have an explosion risk and so on. Can I ask you and perhaps Jordan, is that your experience of your education up until recently, that there was no focus upon respirable dust as a health hazard that needed to be managed in the mining environment?

Mr Oswell: No, respirable dust has always been a recognised hazard in the mining industry. I am trying to go back to early studies, but I would have to say during my 40 years plus in the industry over that time you participate in a raft of conferences, training programs, so on and so on, and certainly from an occupational health perspective respirable dust has always been one of the key issues in underground mines particularly but open-cut mines as well, alongside noise induced hearing loss, management of chemicals, all those types of things. I could say with a great deal of confidence there would not be any safety, health and environment manager who would not have some exposure to some kind of training, education or understanding of the management of those occupational health hazards including respirable dust, but maybe Jordan and Liz might want to add to that.

Mr Taylor: I will clarify first that my title has changed. I am safety, health and environment manager at Moranbah North mine. I am in an acting capacity there. I have only been in that role for a month or so. I guess I am a good example of what Mike is discussing. I have a lot of industry experience around occupational health and safety, but formally I am trained as a mining and minerals engineer. I have taken this role and I do heavily rely on those around me. For instance, I have coordinators and just recently at Moranbah North, and Grosvenor already has this in place, but Moranbah North has now approved a position for a dedicated occupational hygienist to be on site at all times. I rely heavily on those people for that. As far as formal qualifications for me related to dust or training packages, no, I do not have any of those, no, and I am not aware of anything specifically, but again that is just my experience.

Mr McMILLAN: Liz, do you have anything to add?

Ms Sanderson: I have formal qualifications in health sciences and postgraduate studies in occupational hazard management through Ballarat. That was through an engineering department. They were hygienists. Yes, we talked about dust, but we probably talked more about noise, we probably talked a lot about vibration and musculoskeletal issues which were seen to be the health hazards of mining in that period of time, which was maybe 15, 20 years ago. But, yes, dust has always been on our register of risks of things that we know to be a risk and management of dust, occupational hygiene. While we have Bharath, we have Dr Belle, and we have other occupational hygienists of very good qualifications throughout the Anglo American business who we have relied on, we have probably just as much relied on occupational physicians to help us with the health thinking around our business.

Mr McMILLAN: Thank you. I am going to take up the question about ventilation with you, Dr Belle, in a moment, but can I ask a preliminary question either to you or to Mike: do you have designated officers who are designated as ventilation officers within your underground mining workforce?

Mr Oswell: Yes.

Mr McMILLAN: What qualifications or experience are those people expected to have before appointment to that position?

Mr Oswell: Can I defer to Bharath to answer that.

Dr Belle: Thank you, Chair. The legal qualification is a ventilation officer’s ticket to become a ventilation statutory position at the mines. Probably Queensland and New South Wales applies the same thing. I am just giving you the South African background where it is a similar story where the ventilation officers have a legal qualification and certificate to become a ventilation officer. I think the specific comments you made regarding the respirable dust, that is one of the essential components to know about the ventilation management where respirable dust is seen as a health hazard as well as it is a safety hazard in terms of explosion management. There is a statutory qualification as a ventilation officer.



Just to give another slight background on the ventilation officer himself, over almost 100 years, the origin is that they used to be called ‘dust inspectors’ in South Africa. That is where the current name of ‘ventilation officers’ has come from. Therefore, ventilation officers are generally well aware of respirable dust and health hazard management is one of the aspects of it.

Mr McMILLAN: As I understand it, the Department of Natural Resources and Mines has published a guideline as to the qualifications that are required for appointment to that position?

Dr Belle: Correct. Mr McMILLAN: Dr Belle, have you had the opportunity to review the submission made to this

inquiry by the society for ventilation engineers? I think I have that name incorrect; do you know the organisation that I am referring to?

Dr Belle: That is probably the Mine Ventilation Society of Australia. I did not get a chance to read the comments made in there.

Mr McMILLAN: I wanted to ask you a question about that. That submission raises a number of concerns about the designation of ventilation officers under the Queensland regulatory scheme. As the only ventilation engineer who has appeared before us, I am afraid you are stuck with answering some of these questions for us. Please, feel free to tell me if you think that you are not in a position professionally or ethically to answer the question. I am interested particularly in one of the criticisms or concerns. For the purposes of Hansard, the submission is submission No. 38 by the Mine Ventilation Society of Australia under cover of a letter dated 5 January 2017. The society raised a number of concerns. At section 4 of their submission they say— There is no ‘Mine Ventilation Engineering’ discipline recognised by The AusIMM—

Which I think is a professional body— or ‘Mine Ventilation Engineering’ area of engineering recognised by BPEQ.

That is, the Board of Professional Engineers of Queensland. Essentially they raise a concern that the position of ventilation officer, as it is regulated in Queensland, does not have the necessary professional underpinning to perform that duty well or adequately within the Queensland regulations. They go on to explain that in this way— Throughout Australia (other than in WA), a VO—

That is, a ventilation officer—

is not necessarily a Mine Ventilation Engineer or even a Mining Engineer. While it might be thought that Mine Ventilation Engineering must be performed by Mining Engineers, with a Mine Ventilation Competency, that sadly is not always the case.

What is your experience of the ventilation officers within the Anglo business and their level of understanding of what I imagine is a particularly complex scientific area, being mine ventilation?

Dr Belle: That is a big question. Let me try to answer it in a few pieces. The ventilation officer’s statutory position is to meet a qualification of the local Queensland or the New South Wales ventilation officer’s ticket. However, you can have a mining engineering qualification where you can be part of the AusIMM register of professional engineers. You need not have that engineering qualification, but people may term it as ventilation engineer. Vent officers in all the Anglo operations are vent officer qualification. That is all it is. As you say, it is a highly qualified specialist area. I am a mining engineer by background, but I also have done extensive work on respirable dust. The Mine Ventilation Society of Australia in this case, as I said, I wish I could read it more in the context of their position.

Mr McMILLAN: I appreciate that you have not had the opportunity to do so. I do not mean to surprise you in any way.

Dr Belle: I am a past president of the Mine Ventilation Society of South Africa, where most of the members are not engineers - that is a full four-year degree—but they do have a basic qualification in terms of specific areas. There are six to seven different subjects that they need to pass and then they get the certificate, plus the most important is the underground and the surface experience.

Mr McMILLAN: In your role, do you have responsibilities for Anglo Coal operations outside of Queensland?

Dr Belle: Yes, both in Australia and in South Africa. Mr McMILLAN: The submission continues and it notes particularly, ‘South African Ventilation

Officers need to complete six years of study and experience to meet the South African Ventilation Standards’. They also refer to the minimum requirements in Western Australia. Correct me if I am wrong: Anglo does not have any assets in Western Australia.



Mr Oswell: Correct. Mr SPRINGBORG: Excuse me, Counsel Assisting and Dr Belle, but the chair has just left. We

have to go through a process of formalising a new subcommittee for the purpose of continuing discussions with our guests in the absence of the chair. We will adjourn for a moment to deal with this.

Proceedings suspended from 12.23 pm to 12.24 pm Mr SPRINGBORG: I apologise to our witnesses and also to those observing in the gallery. We

will recommence. Counsel Assisting, would you like to proceed? Mr McMILLAN: Thank you, Mr Deputy Chair. Dr Belle, I might circumvent these questions by

simply putting to you the final paragraph that I was interested in. It appears at section 4 of the submission— The MVSA is uniquely positioned to set the minimum qualifications and length of experience necessary to become accredited as a Mine Ventilation Engineer (perhaps better named the ‘Atmosphere and Environment Engineer’). This might start with the WA standard of a diploma or degree in Mining Engineering, where Mine Ventilation (or the expanded qualification Atmosphere and Environment Engineering) is a substantial part of the curriculum; or the equivalent. Objectively, most South African trained Mine Ventilation Officers fit squarely within the ‘equivalent’. The State WA Chief Mining Engineer appears to agree.

In your opinion, would it be preferable for ventilation officers in Queensland, as a minimum standard, to hold qualifications in mining engineering?

Dr Belle: That would help in the broader scheme of managing various health and safety hazards, as well as the ventilation controls.

Mr McMILLAN: Do you think that should be a requirement to attain a position as a ventilation officer in an underground mine?

Dr Belle: I think the current requirement does not need to have a minimum engineering qualification because the deputies also can get the tickets and become a ventilation officer. However, it would be preferable in the broader scheme of improving the health and safety of workers and operations, in addition to the operational experience.

Mr McMILLAN: In your opinion, are the current minimum standards as set by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines adequate to ensure appropriately qualified and experienced persons take up those positions as ventilation officers?

Dr Belle: I think for the operational requirement it is adequate, but there are specialist skills required to manage, in this case, the respirable dust or the homogenous exposure groups or the monitoring statistics, et cetera. Those additional skills would help always.

Mr McMILLAN: Thank you. Mr Oswell: If I could add to that, from an Anglo perspective to ensure ventilation and other

major risks are managed appropriately we have the people on site, but we also have the likes of Dr Bharath Belle, heads of geotechnical services in Australia and across the coal South Africa/Australian business and so on, to oversee the activities of those people; the geo-tech engineers and the ventilation officers on sites to make sure that the standards are maintained and so on. There is an audit component amongst all of that. The systems are developed. I guess what I am trying to say is that we are not totally reliant, from an expertise point of view, on the ventilation officer at the site or the geo-tech engineer at the site. There are people sitting at levels above that who oversee their activities and develop and ensure standards are maintained.

Mr McMILLAN: Mike, over your long career in the mining industry, have you always worked for Anglo or one of the multinational mining companies?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: The reason I posed a number of those questions to Dr Belle was recognising

that Anglo has the benefit of a multinational organisation behind it and the resources to employ high-level specialists such as Dr Belle, but that is not the case across all underground mining operations in Queensland or, indeed, elsewhere. I am interested in understanding the experience in smaller operations, which is why I posed that question, but I think that is probably outside of your professional experiences, so I will not ask you to comment on that unless you have some insight to offer the committee.

Mr Oswell: Correct. That is a fair question, but I cannot respond to the situation in other companies.

Mr McMILLAN: I take you to a number of aspects of the Anglo submission. Could I clarify, first of all, whether any of you were directly involved in what went into the submission?



Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: Jordan? Mr Taylor: For Grosvenor Mine, yes, the list of controls that were in place then. Mr McMILLAN: Obviously, the submission is not authored and it is made on behalf of the entire

Anglo American coal operation. To the extent that you can answer the questions that I have about the submission, please do. Otherwise, I will ask you to take them on notice and come back to us in the usual way. I wanted to ask, first of all, about the health screening system that really came as a response to the identification of new coal workers’ pneumoconiosis cases starting in 2015. You note in your submission at page 2 that from December 2015 a program of new X-rays was undertaken at Grasstree. You deal with Moranbah North and Grosvenor over the page, for your underground workforce. As I understand it from what you have written in the submission, that process was as a direct response to the identification of these new cases of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: You say in your submission that there was essentially a 100 per cent response

to the offer of new X-rays from the Grasstree workforce and that—I think I am also taking information from the presentation you gave to us at the mine—consists of some 298 workers?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: Did that include contract staff or were they only permanent staff at the

Grasstree mine? Mr Oswell: That was the permanent employees. There was a range of negotiations. There

was some dispute about offers and acceptance and all the rest of it, but clearly we cannot mandate people have X-rays. Various discussions happened at the mine—concerns about dust and respiratory health. The outcome of that was that X-rays were conducted for all of the permanent employees. From a contracting perspective, letters went from the general managers—the site senior executives; that is one in the same position—to the contracting companies expecting them to do the same.

Mr McMILLAN: That went out at the actual mine level rather than at your level? Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: You note that at Moranbah North some 122 employees, at the time of the

submission, had indicated they accepted the offer. I think at that stage only 68 workers had actually had their further chest X-rays. In relation to Grosvenor mine 100 workers had had an X-ray and a further 160 had received referrals. I think you told us at the Grasstree mine—I am just looking for the reference—in your power point presentation that there was about a 40 to 50 per cent take-up of the offer for new X-rays at Moranbah North and Grosvenor?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: Is my recollection accurate? Mr Oswell: Your recollection is accurate. That was the case. We have an update on that. Ms Sanderson: The update is that at Grosvenor, as at a couple of weeks ago, of the about

415 people the majority are contractors. Because Grosvenor is a contractor run organisation the management there offered it to everyone. Rather than send them back through their own employer they gave them X-rays through Anglo. The take-up of that has been in excess of 300. The rest of the 400 is Grosvenor employees—direct Anglo employees. I think there are about 120 employees at Grosvenor at the moment. There would have been a reasonable 60 to 70 per cent of those.

Mr McMILLAN: Have you given any thought to why there was 100 per cent take-up at Grasstree but a significantly lower take-up at your other two underground operations? Can any of you shed any insight into why that might be?

Ms Sanderson: Do you want me to answer? Mr Oswell: Yes. Ms Sanderson: I do know that the workers at Grasstree were most concerned. We have a

case of an employee there who has CWP. I think it was very much an obvious position. They were concerned about their co-worker and that concern related back to themselves. The workers from Moranbah do not have a case or did not have a case amongst their workforce. That is just a thought. The safety and health managers at the time were saying, ‘There is not a big concern here. People do not feel as concerned.’



Mr McMILLAN: You have also noted in your submission at page 2 that a specialist radiologist was engaged to review all X-rays in accordance with the ILO international classification of radiographs for pneumoconiosis. How did you go about identifying who that person should be and engaging them?

Mr Oswell: Can I defer to Ms Sanderson. Ms Sanderson: The safety health and environment manager of the day had a history of being

a physiotherapist and knew a radiologist, who also happens to be on the DNRM list—but this was before the list was published. It was good fortune that they chose this one particular radiologist who had an interest and documented interest in chest diseases. Hence he was the one contact we had to in fact look at the X-rays independently.

We are not a medical organisation, as we have pointed out, so we got this done through a third party, if you like. We cannot sit there and write X-ray referrals. We did this through a medical organisation. The end result was that this one doctor had a look at all of the X-rays. An X-ray company will not send out its X-rays without first giving their view.

They all then went to this particular doctor for review. He does review against ILO standards. I know he is not a B reader in the full sense. Mid last year they started to talk about all X-rays needing to go to B readers. Since that point the site has certainly tried to get consent forms signed for the individuals to have their X-rays—the 298 X-rays—sent to the US under the current system that DNRM has determined.

Mr McMILLAN: Liz, were you actually directly involved in the process of engaging or selecting that radiologist?

Ms Sanderson: No. Mr McMILLAN: At what level of the organisation did that occur? Ms Sanderson: That occurred at the management level of that site at Grasstree? Mr McMILLAN: I see. It was the then Grasstree health, safety and environment manager? Ms Sanderson: That is right. Mr McMILLAN: In terms of the hierarchy, that position obviously sits below the general

manager of Grasstree but also below you Mike in terms of your oversight of those positions? Mr Oswell: Yes. The direct reporting relationship is the SAT manager at the site reports to the

site general manager who is also the SSE, the senior site executive. There is a dotted line reporting relationship to me in that respect.

Mr McMILLAN: Did the local HSE manager consult with you about the selection of that radiologist and this process for referring X-rays for specialist reading?

Mr Oswell: I am trying to think specifically. There were a number of discussions around all this when the suggestion came up that these X-rays should be read by a specialist radiologist. We have to keep in mind that things were moving pretty quickly at this stage of the game. There was no second B reader process at this stage. It was simply that what we were concerned about was that some of the X-rays, particularly at Grasstree, in the past may not have been read by a specialist radiologist. That was okay. That was what the health scheme allowed.

We said, ‘No, we need to make sure that these X-rays are conducted by proper radiological service providers and they are read by specialist radiologists. They were the kind of discussions we had. In terms of the specific individual who was chosen at the time, I cannot recall the discussions precisely. It was okay from my perspective as long as that person was a recognised and registered specialist radiologist in the state of Queensland. As Liz was saying, because of this particular HSE manager’s background—he has a physiotherapist background—he had special knowledge and had some understanding of radiological services and so on. I was happy with his selection.

Mr McMILLAN: Do you know now and did you know then whether that radiologist had any experience at all in diagnosing or reviewing chest X-rays for coal workers’ pneumoconiosis in accordance with the ILO standard?

Mr Oswell: No, not specifically. The assumption we took at the time—again, at that stage of the game; this is before a lot of the questions around the ability of radiologists to determine CWP really came to light—was this was an accredited, specialist radiologist in the state of Queensland and hence through their training and their general practice they would be readily able to determine and interpret X-rays for CWP. The whole business about B readers and the rest of it really started to come to light after that.



Mr McMILLAN: I will get to that in a moment. The picture that I am gathering from your evidence thus far is essentially—recognising that you did the best you could at the time—that a local health and safety manager made contact through a professional association with someone who did not necessarily have any experience in the area.

Ms Sanderson: Can I just clarify quickly? Mr McMILLAN: If that is not accurate, please do. Ms Sanderson: We would need to find the documents, but the local safety and health manager

of the day showed evidence that this doctor was endorsed by a thoracic surgeon as having an interest in thoracic health. He was a specialist radiologist who did more than look at broken bones. He had an endorsement from a thoracic surgeon as having an interest and experience in thoracic health. If we could perhaps talk to Mr Hobson who is coming in tomorrow he will be able to verify that.

Mr McMILLAN: Could I ask you to take on notice collectively or even through Mr Hobson this question. What inquiries were made as to the experience of the proposed specialist who was engaged to read X-rays for the Grasstree workforce before his engagement and at what level was that engagement approved?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: I notice that the reference in your submission about that specialist is under the

heading of Grasstree mine. Was that specialist engaged to also review X-rays of miners at the other two underground mines or only Grasstree?

Ms Sanderson: It was only Grasstree. That was a separate process. By the time the other sites were doing their X-rays and having them appropriately read, DNRM had put out their first list of RANZCR approved specialist radiologists. It was always going to be somebody on that list, which this doctor was, but he was not used extensively or specifically.

Mr McMILLAN: Your submission refers to the appointment by Anglo American of a chief medical officer. I understand that is fairly recent appointment?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: When did that occur? Mr Oswell: Specifically— Ms Sanderson: Discussions with him started in September-October 2015 and his official

appointment went out in January 2016, although we had a lot of affiliations with him prior to that helping us on a range of other health and medical issues.

Mr McMILLAN: Did the process of engaging the specialist radiologist occur before the chief medical officer was formally appointed?

Ms Sanderson: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: Do you know whether any feedback or consultation was made with the person

who was proposed to be the chief medical officer about that process? Ms Sanderson: The chief medical officer actually managed the processes from the other two

underground pits because the process for the first Grasstree pit had been set up before we had him appointed.

Mr McMILLAN: The processes for Moranbah North and Grosvenor came on line, if I can use that inelegant expression, after the chief medical officer and so he had involvement in those processes?

Ms Sanderson: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: I see. On page 3 of your submission it is noted—

In addition to the above—

and those are the things we have been just discussing— Grasstree has recently offered all employees the opportunity to have the abovementioned chest x-rays read by a ‘B Reader’ as per the recently updated Coal Mine Worker Health Scheme’s ‘New Chest X-Ray (reading) Process’. However, uptake of this offer has been slow.

Can you give me a little more detail about that offer for the B reader process, when it was made and how it was made to the workforce?

Mr Oswell: Yes. There was a rolling series of events. Things were happening very quickly at that stage of the game. With the Grasstree X-rays, when the B reader concerns and issues came to light before the HSU set up their second B reader process we—jump in Liz if I am missing steps



here—sought to set up our own arrangement with a B reader radiological service in the states so that we could have those X-rays sent to that company and those B reader radiologists and we could have that second reading undertaken. Indeed, in July 2016 the initial DNRM advisory note or directive—call it what you will—that came out with regard to the second reading of X-rays in fact provided for companies to set up their own arrangement with a B reader in the states.

We were in the process of doing that. We had separate consent forms and so on that we were seeking. If people wanted that to happen then that was the process to go through. Soon after that, the DNRM then modified—we have these documents—their B reader process to say, ‘No. You cannot go down your own track. You must go through the HSU system to have one standard process.’ The next step in all of that was that that was okay for X-rays from then on—from August in fact when that second advisory came out. The question we had to satisfy was: were we able then to have the previous Grasstree X-rays that were taken retrospectively go through that process? We got approval that that could occur. Once that could occur we then abandoned our own process and the radiological service we had established in the States and the B readers over there. We abandoned that process and then adopted the HSU process, which of course was far easier from our perspective, going through the one process.

There was a sequence of events that happened quite quickly. There is no surprise that I was in contact—I was emailing back and forth—with Stephen Smyth, the head of the CFMEU. He had concerns around our own consent forms and so on. We explained what the circumstances were. When the second directive from DNRM came out that said, ‘No. This is the one standard process,’ that is what we adopted and that is what we have done since. There is some confusion around that. I have read transcripts. Things moved very quickly over that period of time between April and July-August. Things were changing and moving very quickly when the B reader process through DRNM was established and so on. I am not surprised that there was some confusion around the course of events in terms of that.

Mr McMILLAN: I want to break that down a little more, if I can. First of all, were you involved in the decision that your workforce needed to be offered the opportunity to have chest X-rays read by a second person other than the specialist radiologist who had already been engaged?

Mr Oswell: There was a whole range of discussions around that time and certainly with our chief medical officer. That was how the process was established.

Mr McMILLAN: At what level of the organisation was that decision ultimately taken? Mr Oswell: I will have to come back to you on that. I will have to review the various discussions

around all of that, so I will take that on notice. Mr McMILLAN: Your evidence today is that you were involved and the chief medical officer

was involved in that discussion. Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: How was the person you have described as a B reader chosen? Mr Oswell: Through our chief medical officer and his contacts with the radiological service in

the States. Do you want to add to that, Liz? Ms Sanderson: We do have the list from NIOSH, and the doctors that he had chosen to be

our B readers are on that NIOSH list. They are certified under the NIOSH scheme to be B readers. Mr McMILLAN: It is a little out of sequence but given that you have dealt with that issue I want

to take you directly to what Mr Smyth said about that in his evidence before the committee. Mr Smyth gave evidence before the committee on 14 December 2016 in Blackwater. The relevant section of the transcript that I am referring to and going to read from commences at page 8. He said— Where the disconnect has happened with a number of these employers is where corporate comes in—and I will give an example. I have been involved with Anglo at Grasstree Mine. The guys had an arrangement with the local management there that they would get everyone X-rayed, get them sent off and the process would happen. Corporate came in and said, ‘Yes, but you will use the company NMA to do this and we will send them to a B reader in the US.’ But this B reader in the US was based in Florida. No-one had ever heard of him. We fixed that.

Then he speaks about another company. Later he comes back to a reference to Anglo and said— I did a little bit of research. I wrote to the company—

that is, Anglo— and said, ‘This guy in Florida is not on the NIOSH panel of 12.’ Americans are big on publications, but the only publication he had ever done was an X-ray on the spine and that was it. I had my contacts in the US and did a bit of digging. I ended up finding out that one of the doctors that Anglo had used had contacted this guy because they met at a conference. I was just gobsmacked. That was not the process. The two-reader process that we have set up is a very clear process.



Liz, you have just given evidence that the person who was engaged in the United States was an accredited NIOSH B reader.

Ms Sanderson: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: You are satisfied that that is accurate? Ms Sanderson: For two reasons: firstly, our occupational physician, the chief medical officer,

chose them because they were a B reader and that was his research. Secondly, I went on to the NIOSH website and pulled off the list and the two doctors were on that list. We also have certification or certificates that are handed to the doctors or copies of that say, ‘You are a certified B reader.’

Mr McMILLAN: Do you have any insight into why the take-up by the workforce of that offer to have their X-rays B read was—I think the expression you used was that the uptake of the offer has been slow? Do you have any insights to offer as to why that is the case?

Ms Sanderson: There was a lot of confusion. We have spoken to the human resource manager only yesterday about the issue. There was a lot of confusion about ‘Why are we signing more than one consent form?’ That was an initial confusion. Initially we did require a consent form because we were seeking medical information to be taken from a private medical organisation and handed on to a third party, so you do need consent from each individual. There was certainly some confusion about consent forms.

As to what the most recent concern is, my understanding is that the individuals who will not sign consent forms would prefer that their local doctor handle the consent, the X-ray and the result from the US B reader and not the nominated medical advisers. They are asking the department to deal only with local doctors in whatever region of Queensland people are coming from and not to deal through the nominated medical adviser which has always been the department’s process.

Mr McMILLAN: The committee has heard evidence from a number of coalmine workers—obviously not exclusively Anglo workers but including Anglo workers—who have expressed concern about the confidentiality of medical processes involving nominated medical advisers or specialists engaged directly by mine operators. Was that a concern that was raised by the workforce in this context or, alternatively, was it something that you sought to assure your workforce, that their medical information would remain confidential if they participated in this process?

Ms Sanderson: I cannot answer that because I was not directly involved in the dealings with the people with concerns. I only know what is being reported through the mine site.

Mr McMILLAN: Mike, can you shed any light on that? Mr Oswell: Not specifically. Anecdotally there have been discussions. There have been

comments about confidentiality of information. I cannot comment specifically. Clearly these people are medical practitioners. They are sworn to confidentiality and so on. That confidentiality is never breached, but there could be some concerns out there.

Mr McMILLAN: I think I asked you earlier about when the offer for this B reader process was made. Do you know whether it was made in writing to workers or at a work group meeting? How was it made?

Mr Oswell: I am not specifically sure how the site communicated that. Mr McMILLAN: Again, do I take it that that offer was restricted to the Grasstree workforce? Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: The coal workers at Moranbah North and Grosvenor have never been offered

the opportunity to have their X-rays B read other than through the now established process by DNRM? I will rephrase that. Prior to the establishment of that process, you did not make any offer to those workforces to do it separately through your own process?

Mr Oswell: I do not believe so. Ms Sanderson: I do not believe so, but I would have to check each individual site. It has been

a rush getting things done. This is not an excuse, but there have been a lot of changes not just within our own requirements but the department has changed regularly what we can do and what we cannot do. We have tried to step ahead of the game and offer information to people or offer services like the X-rays only to find that that is not what we should be doing and that we should be doing something in a slightly a different way. There is a certain amount of confusion. I would have to step through with each site exactly the point in time that they started. I can say that both of those sites used our chief medical officer’s organisation to manage the X-ray process and the B read that follows.



Mr McMILLAN: Can I ask you to take the following questions on notice arising from the line of questions I have just asked you? What evidence can you produce to satisfy the committee that the US specialist engaged for the purposes of the B reading was qualified and accredited by NIOSH? When was the offer made to the Grasstree workforce to have chest X-rays secondary read in the United States and how was that offer conveyed? Was any similar offer made to the workforce at Moranbah North and Grosvenor prior to the establishment of the DNRM B-reading process?

Mr Oswell: As a matter of process, is somebody summarising these questions? Mr McMILLAN: We will send you a list of the questions. CHAIR: We will send you the list. Mr McMILLAN: I am reading them out so that they are on the Hansard so that it is easier for

everyone. You will be sent a copy. Can I ask you about ex-employees? You may need to take this on notice as well. The next section of the submission is 4.1.5. Your submission reads— Further to all of the above, Anglo American has recently instigated a process of offering chest x-rays for ex-employees who have concerns regarding their respiratory health. As part of this process, it will be ensured that any such chest x-rays will be read in accordance with the Coal Mine Workers Health Scheme ‘New Chest X-Ray Process’. Appropriate individual information will be provided to the DNRM such that these can be subject to the second US reader process and the information captured in the DNRM database.

How has that process that is described in that paragraph of offering chest X-rays to ex-employees been implemented?

Mr Oswell: It is a recent process. It was implemented late in 2016. Can I go back a few steps? Mr McMILLAN: Sure. Mr Oswell: There is quite a lot of planning and process that needs to be sorted out. We have

been working on this process for chest X-rays for ex-employees for quite some months, from July-August or so. You can imagine that we have ex-employees who live all around Queensland and all around Australia. In fact, there could be many ex-employees living internationally. You cannot just have any old process and say to people, ‘Send in X-rays and do whatever.’ We need to establish a formal process and that took some time. The process was established. Again, we have used our chief medical officer as the conduit and the liaison to be able to organise this so that people, wherever they live, can understand where the best radiological services are, so that the people taking the X-rays can understand what the purpose of the X-ray is and so on. We established that process.

Mr McMILLAN: I will stop you there, Mike, and ask for a clarification and then I will let you continue. When you say, ‘We established that process,’ your submission is dated November 2016. I might ask the secretariat to help me identify when the submission was actually produced. It might be dated. I do not think it is. In any event, when the submission was sent to the committee, had that offer in fact been made to any ex-employees or had you simply instigated a process for establishing that offer?

Mr Oswell: I will give you the full picture. This was a quite strange series of events. The process had been fully established. Finally, we were talking to the sites about the implementation. To be quite honest, that very week that the process was to be implemented and we had communication packages and all the rest of it, with the greatest respect that was the week that we received the summons for the document request. Our initial summation of the document request seemed to signal a bit of a frenzy, quite frankly, because we estimated that the document request in its original form would have amounted to of the order of 100,000 documents per site. We said then that we will drop everything, that we need to put a team together both at the corporate level and at each site to try and do our best to meet that document summons. The implementation, the communication packages and so on that were ready to go that very week were put on hold, because we had all of our resources at the Brisbane office and at the site S&H level such that we dropped everything to concentrate on meeting this document summons, and then you are aware of the history. There were discussions back and forth and the document listing was reduced. The actual implementation, the communication of the availability of this process, was communicated in late November, early December. I would have to look up the dates.

Mr McMILLAN: How was it communicated? Mr Oswell: There were toolbox talks, the site presentation, so on and so on. I am not quite

sure exactly when they occurred, but it was in the weeks prior to late November, early December. I would have to check the dates.

Mr McMILLAN: How did you expect that toolbox talks and site presentations about this offer would reach ex-employees?



Mr Oswell: Obviously we have contact details of ex-employees when they leave the site. Unless the employee updates our records, we do not know if they change address, phones and all the rest of it. Our ability to contact ex-employees, we feel, is pretty limited. We were hoping and planning that, by communicating that information to the current workforce and its family connections, friends, colleagues and so on and so on, the word would get out that that offer has been made, that we had a process for those who wanted to take us up on that offer and that there were various contact persons. There were a number of different ways they could institute that process.

Mr McMILLAN: Is there any intention to try to contact ex-employees through historical contact details that you might have on file?

Mr Oswell: No. Not unless there was a specific case or a specific circumstance that we wanted to chase up, because the records soon get out of date as people tend to move fairly quickly after they finish. We lose track of them. Unless they update our records, we do not know. But the word of mouth in this industry, as those who have been part of it know, gets around. People have wide groups of friends and circles and acquaintances in the industry, so our hope and our intention was that that would be communicated through the workforce generally.

Mr McMILLAN: When you prepared this submission in or about November last year, you submitted to the committee that you had instigated a process for offering these X-rays to ex-employees. At that stage, no communication of that offer had actually been made?

Mr Oswell: Correct. The intention was that in that very week—and I forget if it was a Wednesday or whatever—the implementation process was about to be undertaken and therefore in this submission we said that the process has been defined, has been instigated, and now we are about to offer it. It is in the future tense.

Mr McMILLAN: Even at the stage where you say the process had in fact been completed but not yet implemented at the time of making this submission, it was never intended in that process actually to communicate that offer directly to any ex-employees?

Mr Oswell: Two parts of that. If I go directly to the words ‘we had instigated the process,’ the implementation of the process was going to happen the very week the submission was put out. In our process we did not have any means formally documented about specifically contacting or trying to make contact with ex-employees directly.

Mr McMillan: I will just ask you again—it was never intended to directly communicate that offer to any ex-employee? That is right, is it not?

Mr Oswell: Not directly. If the ex-employee made contact, that was the trigger for the offer, the communications pack, the offer of the X-ray and all the rest of it, but it was dependent upon the ex-employee making contact. There were a number of means of triggering the process.

Mr McMillan: I should be clear. Anglo is not the only coal operator in Queensland that has made a submission to this inquiry asserting that there exists some kind of process for engaging external ex-employees. Across the Bowen Basin, the committee heard evidence from ex-coal workers. I do not think—and I will be corrected if I am wrong—a single ex-coal worker knew anything about any kind of offer. It is a pretty hollow offer to make if you never intend anyone to hear about it, is it not?

Mr Oswell: I would dispute that. I understand from reading your transcripts that people reported that they had not heard of any offer. That was quite correct, because at that very time the implementation of the communication to the existing workforce of this whole process upon whom we relied to get the message out to ex-employees wherever they may be had not happened. But the process is here. We specifically had no means necessarily, or no formal approach here, to try to directly contact ex-employees.

Mr McMILLAN: What do you mean by that, that you had no formal approach? You have contact details for former employees in terms of tax file declaration forms and employee contact information. You are required to retain all of that information for a period after employees leave your employ, are you not?

Mr Oswell: Yes.

Mr McMILLAN: What do you mean when you say that you had no way of contacting people?

Mr Oswell: Our process does not include any kind of defined way of directly contacting ex-employees.



Mr McMILLAN: But that is a process that you have established, is it not? When you say, ‘Our process has no way of contacting them,’ you have chosen to exclude the obvious way which is sending letters to people based on their historical addresses?

Mr Oswell: Correct. That is a step we have not taken. Proceedings suspended from 1.08 pm to 1.21 pm CHAIR: We will resume the hearing. I welcome Jason Costigan, the member for Whitsunday,

to the hearing this afternoon. Counsel assisting, would you like to resume your questioning? Mr McMILLAN: Thank you, Madam Chair. I move now to the next section of your submission,

section 4.1.6, which is headed ‘Rationalisation and communication with Nominated Medical Advisers’. Your submission notes— Earlier this year—

that is, 2016— Anglo American reviewed the numbers and geographical spread of each site’s NMAs. As a result, the Anglo American coal mines’ SSEs re-issued NMA appointments to only those medical practitioners whose services were specifically required for the purpose of management of the Coal Mine Workers Health Scheme.

First of all, what prompted Anglo to rationalise its NMAs? Mr Oswell: I will give an overall response and Liz might then kick in. We saw—and the Sim

review pointed it out—that the number of NMAs that coal companies generally were using expanded to such a degree in such a broad area that it was very difficult to keep contact with those NMAs to provide them with information. I guess we had a rethink and we said that we need to rationalise that. We need to get a number of NMAs whom we can communicate with and who we can make sure are updated with the varying changing requirements and so on. That was the trigger for that exercise.

Mr McMILLAN: What does ‘practitioners whose services were specifically required for the purpose of management of the Coal Mine Workers Health Scheme’ mean? What does that sentence mean?

Mr Oswell: It is the primary role of the NMAs that we use for the management of the health scheme.

Mr McMILLAN: You say that the appointment of NMAs were only issued to those practitioners whose services were specifically required for the purposes of the management of the health scheme. All NMAs’ services are required only for that purpose, are they not?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: I am trying to understand that sentence in the context of rationalising the

number and I think Ms Sanderson is itching to help. Mr Oswell: It might be poorly worded, but we viewed at that time that the numbers of

nominated medical advisers had expanded quite substantially and we thought that we need to pull those back specifically so we only have a number of nominated medical advisers to manage the health scheme.

Ms Sanderson: As a matter of interest, I was fortunate enough to be on the industry reference group for the Malcolm Sim Monash review and it became very apparent that there were a lot of doctors who might do one medical or two medicals a year. Our internal thoughts were that if there are too many out there let us see how many we have on our lists. I had the DNRM print out the list and there were doctors on the list who had never been deappointed and whom we had not used for quite some years. What we did was we drafted a new letter for the SSEs to send out to all of the medical providers that they wanted to nominate outlining the new processes around the DNRM’s medical surveillance or Coal Mine Workers’ Health Scheme. We added a few clauses in to ensure doctors understood what was required of them and we reissued those notices, but we did not reissue them to doctors we knew we had not used for quite some years.

Mr McMILLAN: The next paragraph reads— During the re-appointment process, Anglo American took the opportunity to ensure all of its NMAs were fully acquainted with the specific requirements and responsibilities inherent to the NMA role and that they are all fully appraised of the updated ‘New Chest X-Ray Process’.

As part of that process did you require those NMAs who were to be reappointed to have any particular experience of the coalmining industry in order to be reappointed?

Ms Sanderson: We did know the ones we were reappointing were doctors in the towns that we were using as NMAs who had experience with the coal industry anyway. We also made note to our NMAs that a new chief medical officer was being appointed or had been appointed and that that



chief medical officer would be in contact with them to talk through some of the issues around the coal industry. The original letter—which I am sure went out to all of the doctors because I have some copies which we might be able to provide you—spoke to them about making sure they follow the proper DNRM process and that the records go back to the DNRM as required. It was a reiteration of what the process should have been anyway, but it was just a formal way of saying, ‘This is the process, don’t forget; this is what you’re following.’

Mr McMILLAN: To clarify, you have described it as a reappointment process. To be clear, as part of that process no new NMAs were appointed?

Ms Sanderson: No, other than our chief medical officer who is an NMA for all of our sites as well.

Mr McMILLAN: When that chief medical officer was appointed as the chief medical officer, was that before or after this process of reappointment of the nominated medical advisers and rationalisation of those?

Ms Sanderson: He was appointed before because we have actually said in the letter that we have a chief medical officer.

Mr McMILLAN: All right. He, no doubt, was involved in that process of reappointment of NMAs?

Ms Sanderson: He recognised all of them because some of the town medical centres had been sold and there were new doctors coming to those town centres, particularly in Moranbah. We just made sure he understood who those people were. He said, ‘Yes, I know them. I know this one. I have met that one.’ He has also done visits to all our NMAs to make sure they are fully appraised of the requirements of the regulation.

Mr McMILLAN: Do I take it from your evidence a moment ago that the primary determinant of those doctors who were reappointed was whom the SSEs of the particular sites sought to be reappointed? Is that right?

Ms Sanderson: That is an SSE appointment, yes. I do not make the decision. The chief medical officer did not make the decision. It is the SSE’s appointment.

Mr McMILLAN: Did Anglo across its operations establish any minimum requirements in terms of expertise or experience for the appointment of NMAs as part of this rationalisation and reappointment process?

Ms Sanderson: We did not formally document what we think are the appropriate doctors, but geographical location has to be the major issue for us. We support two medical centres just by owning the building in one case and in the other case it is the one medical centre in the town of Moranbah that we use—so geographical location and experience with our organisation.

Mr McMILLAN: Was any consideration given to that doctor’s practical experience in the coal industry—for example, whether the doctor had ever been underground in terms of whether they were suitable for reappointment as a nominated medical adviser?

Ms Sanderson: That was not a consideration on my part, but each of the sites have had their doctors on site and brought them underground prior to the reappointments except for the new doctors. I am not sure what has happened to the new doctors in Moranbah.

Mr Oswell: For the most part it was reappointment of existing nominated medical advisers. There were very few new ones added to the list—

Ms Sanderson: The only one was one new medical centre— Mr Oswell: Over the years the mines have clearly established a relationship with these medical

practitioners, as you do particularly in small towns. They have had site visits, they have been underground and so on. The experience and relationship with those nominated medical advisers was mostly already established.

Mr McMILLAN: My question is focused upon this issue. You had a unique opportunity, I would suggest, at the time when you were rationalising the number of NMAs across the operations and formally reappointing those who you deemed suitable. I suggest that that was a unique opportunity to consider what minimum expectations you had in terms of the experience, qualifications and expertise of those doctors to perform the special requirements of a nominated medical adviser. My question is: was any consideration given to those issues in terms of what actual experience and expertise these doctors have before we reappoint them, or was it simply a process of the SSEs identifying those doctors that they still use and eliminating the ones that they did not?



Ms Sanderson: In some cases you have no choice. Moura has one doctor and that was the doctor that we were using. He had had experience in Middlemount: there was one practice. That was the practice we have used for quite some years—the same doctors—and when new ones come in they are given the same induction process about the medical requirements of the Coal Mine Workers’ Health Scheme. In a practical sense we did not go out and build a process of selection. We selected what was previously appointed but within all of that these were people who were experienced at doing the medicals that we had been undertaking for some years in whatever region it was.

Mr Oswell: Further to that, we use our chief medical officer to liaise and—correct me if I am wrong, Liz—I think he has specifically had a session with each of those nominated medical advisers to make sure they are up to speed with the new requirements under the health scheme. We will continue to use him for that purpose. If there are further changes to health schemes or requirements, we would use the chief medical officer as the person to primarily update our nominated medical advisers.

Mr McMILLAN: Prior to the reappointment of those nominated medical advisers, did your chief medical officer give any advice about the particular experience, characteristics and expertise that doctors should have before being appointed as a nominated medical adviser for Anglo Coal?

Ms Sanderson: In his experience he would like all nominated medical advisers to be occupational physicians, but that is not possible because we do not have occupational physicians broadly enough in the state nor in the towns that we operate in. That is his opinion that he has stated.

Mr McMILLAN: The impression I am getting from your evidence is that there are limited doctors to choose from and you picked the ones that were there with no consideration for their experience or expertise.

Ms Sanderson: We knew they had experience because they had been doing the same role for us in the past.

Mr McMILLAN: Dr Ewen McPhee gave evidence before the committee on 15 December in Emerald. I do not know if you are familiar with Dr McPhee, but he is a past president of the Rural Doctors Association of Australia and a nominated medical adviser and is generally accepted as an eminently qualified expert in rural medicine. I asked him some questions specifically about what he thought were essential elements of experience for nominated medical advisers—and I am referring to the transcript commencing at page 10. I asked him what his opinion was about a minimum set of standards or experience that doctors should have before they can be appointed as nominated medical advisers and he listed these things: they need to be actively working within the coal industry; they need to have some degree of knowledge of occupational medicine; they need to have a particular awareness of the environment from which the workers they are certifying as fit to work come from. He explained he expected as a minimum standard that those doctors would have visited an underground coalmine, including going underground and seeing the working conditions and environment that workers work in, and having some understanding of the types of jobs and tasks that workers do in underground coalmines. That is an extensive list I realise. Do you see any difficulty with that proposition as a standard set of expectations for doctors who are appointed as nominated medical advisers?

Mr Oswell: The only one we miss out on there is the specific qualifications in occupational hygiene I think you said. There was experience in the local area, there was experience with the site and underground knowledge and so on. There was only one there that did not—under our current situation with the NMAs.

Mr McMILLAN: Does Anglo have a requirement, for example, that its nominated medical advisers attend at the mine that they are appointed to and have an underground tour?

Mr Oswell: I do not believe it is a formal requirement, but in the course of the relationship with the company or with the site and the nominated medical adviser it is a common practice that that occurs.

Mr Taylor: Mr McMillan, if I could just clarify—and for Mike as well—Moranbah does have some new physicians who have come online. We are in the process of engaging them. Later this week I have a meeting with those physicians to get them up to speed on the things that we deal with—some of our expectations—and part of that is building the relationship and giving them the opportunity to go underground. As you know, some people just do not want to go underground. We certainly offer it and allow them the opportunity to do that.

Mr McMILLAN: I am trying to get a picture for the committee of doctors who are already appointed as nominated medical advisers and then in 2016 under the oversight of your chief medical adviser were reappointed as nominated medical advisers—what actual experience those doctors



have of the underground environment and the actual jobs that the workers they are assessing do and what is the basis of that experience. I would like some specific detail for the committee about that. If you are not in a position to answer that, I will ask you to take it on notice and give us a detailed explanation of what experience those doctors have and how you are satisfied that they are adequately able to understand the environment of the workers they are assessing.

Mr Oswell: Certainly. Mr McMILLAN: I want to move now to dust monitoring, and you deal with dust monitoring at

pages 5 and 6 of your submission. Without seeking to repeat what is in the submission, I am interested particularly in a statement on page 6 under the discussion of real-time dust monitors, and I will refer to them generally as PDM 3700 real-time monitors. You can take it that the committee has read the submission. At the conclusion of that paragraph you note— Whilst attempts to have these devices approved for general use in Anglo American group underground coal mines (and hence in the Queensland underground coal industry) has been sought, it would appear the approvals process is painstakingly slow.

I understand, Mr Taylor, that in your former role as project superintendent you were leading Anglo's involvement in the efforts to have that monitor certified as intrinsically safe in Queensland. I appreciate that you have already given the committee an explanation of your efforts in that regard, but so that it is recorded in evidence and that it is then available for public consumption, could you retell us about your efforts in that regard and why you say the process has been painstakingly slow?

Mr Taylor: Are you specifically wanting to know about the certification process? Mr McMILLAN: Yes. You have written in your submission essentially why Anglo thinks that

those monitors are useful, and I do not need you to repeat that evidence. If you could explain to us what you have done to try to move that along and where the process is at as far as you are aware, that would be helpful. I should tell you before you commence your evidence that officers from the Department of Natural Resources and Mines and SIMTARS are appearing before the committee on Thursday and I will be asking them about this as well so that we can put the two halves together if we can.

Mr Taylor: I suppose the process of certification for us started at the end of 2015. We purchased two initial monitors at the end of 2015. Quickly we saw the benefit, so we purchased 10 additional units. At that point the question was: how can we get these units to be certified so that we can use them generally throughout the mine? Under current regulations we can only use them up to 0.5 per cent methane; at that point they have to be withdrawn. I initially put out some feelers. I sent out some requests to accredited testing houses in Australia, both in New South Wales and Queensland. Quickly the feedback that I got was no, they will not comply simply because they were not designed to comply. They were tested in the United States to meet 30 CFR part 18, which is intrinsically safe testing of electrical equipment. By the very nature that they were not designed to comply with the Australian standard or an international standard, they would never comply.

Again, the focus from Anglo's point of view is, `Let's do a gap analysis so we can understand what we need to do to get them to comply if it is possible at all.' We engaged Thermo Fisher Scientific—that is the OEM of the monitor—and began feedback and dialogue with them about if they were willing to make modifications to the unit, if they were willing to bring out the next generation, the PDM 3800 if that is what it would be called. We quickly got on board with them and also with furthering this investigation about testing houses. Through Dr Belle's experience he was aware that they were in use broadly in South Africa. We went down that route to understand the certification process there. There are some provisions within their electrical certification process that allow them to look at the international standard and then apply that to how it meets with the Australian standard. The end result—and, again, I am not the electrical expert—is in South Africa they were certified as EXIB.

This now brings us into late 2016 and we, as in Anglo, have then taken the process of trying to do the gap analysis between South African certification and also the US certification and then the Australian certification process. After some fairly lengthy discussions with some legal advice and help in the US we were able to obtain not just the certificate but the actual testing sheets and how they perform their intrinsically safe testing. We obtained those from MSHA. We had to get the releases effectively from Thermo Scientific, so there was a long process there. All of that information now has been handed over to SIMTARS. I believe on 6 December SIMTARS started the process of doing a gap analysis based on the MSHA test in the United States as well as the South African certification to see what it is we need to do here; is it possible and how can we move forward with the goal of potentially doing an FMEA—a failure mode and effects analysis—to then allow us to do a risk analysis to use these in up to 1¼ per cent methane. This is what was proposed to the Coal Mining Safety and Health Advisory Committee and we had their in principle support for that.



Where do we sit today? Last Wednesday I received the preliminary results back from SIMTARS, and SIMTARS are currently reviewing that report. In the meantime Anglo is leading the working group of Peabody, Glencore, Rio Tinto and BMA. We have representation from each of those groups and we will be reviewing this document and then seeing how we can actually conduct and outline this risk assessment.

Mr McMILLAN: Generally, without giving a specific date, roughly when did you first approach SIMTARS to seek approval and/or an explanation for why the 3700 was not approved as intrinsically safe?

Mr Taylor: I probably cannot even given you a month without taking that on notice, but it would have been in quarter 1 of 2016.

MR McMILLAN: We can say that is when the immediate journey of the PDM3700 in Queensland began, at least from your perspective.

Mr Taylor: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: Are you able to tell us from your own experience—and I might ask Dr Belle as

well—how long this particular unit has been in use in other coalmining industries in the United States or South Africa?

Mr Taylor: The predecessor to this unit was the PDM3600. That was initially rolled out in the United States in a trial phase under the guidance of NIOSH and MSHA as well I believe in 2006. Correct me if I am wrong, Dr Belle. Some extensive testing occurred for several years there, which then led to the development of the PDM3700. MSHA then released the final rule which stipulated that it would officially be required for use starting in August 2016. As can you imagine, from a US mining industry perspective all of the operators were in a mad rush to try to get these units purchased. For that reason—from 2014 really is when the rule came out—2014 to 2016 was the grace period that allowed operators to go to Thermo Scientific and purchase the units. Obviously since Thermo Scientific is the only manufacturer that exists, it gave them time to get the units out and manufactured for them as well, so officially since August 2016.

Dr Belle: To add to that, the first time a demo version system of the PDR system was tried in a continuous mine was the late 1990s.

Mr McMILLAN: In South Africa? Dr Belle: No, in the US. Before that development took place, and then in 2004 and 2005 the

3600 version was in fact tested in New South Wales as an input to the NIOSH research work. In South Africa after the approval Anglo has been the first company to buy these units knowing that it is advantageous and there is no restriction as such similar to what we have here. The history and research work and demonstration of it in the lab as well as in the field goes back 14 years, so it is an approved big step change in the history of dust monitoring for personal exposure.

Mr McMILLAN: In your experience, Dr Belle, how long ago can you remember these real-time dust monitors being used in South Africa in underground environments?

Dr Belle: Specifically the PDM3700? Mr McMILLAN: Yes. Dr Belle: The PDM3700 was purchased late last year in probably the third quarter, but

real-time light scatter based ones have been used since the 1990s. Mr McMILLAN: Are they certified in both of those jurisdictions as intrinsically safe? Dr Belle: Yes, it is an approved tool to be taken underground without the restriction on the

1.5 per cent or the 0.5 per cent. Mr McMILLAN: For the language of the relevant standard is there any real difference between

the requirements for being intrinsically safe in Australia as opposed to the United States? Mr Taylor: Yes, there are. There are certain instructions on the International and Australian

standards that permit certain components to be used, certain settings to be used; whereas in the US they are different.

Mr McMILLAN: Jordan, I understand that you were involved in the preparation of a position paper and a PowerPoint presentation that was provided to Simtars on behalf of Anglo and Glencore; is that right?

Mr Taylor: Yes. I believe it was provided directly to Simtars. I know it was provided to the coalmining safety and advisory committee.



Mr McMILLAN: The position paper is dated 28 September 2016, so that was some months into your inquiries about the approval of this device for use in Queensland coalmines.

Mr Taylor: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: What was the response to that position paper at the time that it was presented? Mr Taylor: Generally very supportive. Kate du Preez, Mark Stone and some of the others in

the room were very supportive. There was a bit of pushback. There happened to be an electrical inspector there and also one of the members of the CFMEU had some serious concerns about electrical certification. If I recall, the inspector's comment was something along the lines of, 'We're not changing any of the regulations to allow this device underground. We have a history of explosions underground and that's why these regulations exist.' That being said, I think by the end of the conversation there was a general consensus that we need to go away and do the gap analysis, do the FMEA, do the risk assessment and see where we sit and review it at a later date, so that is why we have taken the course of action that we have.

Mr McMILLAN: Anglo is in fact already using these devices underground in its Queensland operations.

Mr Taylor: That is correct. Mr McMILLAN: Help me understand what the problem is in terms of this certification for use

as intrinsically safe. That clearly does not prevent you from using it at all. Mr Taylor: That is right. Mr McMILLAN: As I understand it, you cannot rely on those results for any kind of official

reporting purposes. Can you break that down a little bit for me? Mr Taylor: Yes. It is really about getting an understanding of the dust profiles and the dust

concentrations at the working face. For instance, several longwalls in Queensland in the Bowen Basin will have methane levels that are above 0.5 per cent at some point along the face. It might be midface to the tailgate or somewhere around the tailgate area. Let's say we have the monitor on the shearer operator. That shearer operator will be wearing this device, and if he gets to shield 75 and the methane levels are 0.6, then he has to stop and he has to remove that device from that area; therefore, he is not getting a representative picture of the dust across the face because he cannot take that unit with him any further. That is why the 1¼ per cent was selected, because we thought that would give us enough buffer to be able to get most, if not all, of the longwall face covered.

Mr Oswell: By way of explanation, there are explosion risk zone categories in underground coalmines. The first one is a negligible explosion risk zone, which is classified—and I will summarise it—as essentially having methane potentially up to 0.5 per cent; explosion risk zone 1 is between 0.5 per cent and 2 per cent; and then the next explosion risk zone is above 2 per cent. Currently the only zones that we can use the PDM3700 in are areas where there is, or there is expected to be, less than 0.5 per cent. That is the restriction.

Mr McMILLAN: I understand from the material we have received that Grasstree is one of the gassiest mines in Queensland in terms of the natural amount of gas in that coal seam. Have you been able to use the PDM3700 on the longwall face in the Grasstree mine?

Mr Taylor: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: Is that because the methane level at the relevant time has not exceeded the

level at which it is intrinsically safe? Mr Taylor: That is correct. Mr McMILLAN: I want to take you particularly to what the Department of Natural Resources

and Mines has said about the use of this device and ask you to respond if you could. In the body of its submission to the inquiry it included a section on real-time monitoring and it acknowledges that real-time monitoring is extensively used in underground mines in the United States and South Africa. The department says— While there are benefits of real time monitoring, the limitations of real-time monitoring devices must be acknowledged and understood when employed to measure dust concentrations. The most important limitation of real-time monitoring relates to the way direct reading instruments calculate the mass of the particles being sampled. For example, a common direct reading instrument such as a laser photometer counts the number of aerosol particles in a sample of air.

Then they say— Another form of direct reading instrument is the tapered element oscillating microbalance (TEOM) which is now commonly used technology overseas for personal dust monitors.



To paraphrase, they say that neither of these devices determine mass gravimetrically in accordance with AS2985 and that therefore measurements from these devices cannot be used and are indicative only. As I understand what you have put—and I will confess to you that my understanding is pretty scanty—what you have included in your position paper is that the PDM3700 does use a gravimetric sampling method.

Mr Taylor: That is correct. Mr McMILLAN: Do those comments made by DNRM apply to the PDM3700, or are they talking

about other types of real-time monitors? Mr Taylor: When they measure TEOM, tapered element oscillating microbalance, that is

specifically the PDM3700 because it is the only unit available that I am aware of which has those capabilities.

Dr Belle: I want to split those comments. The light-scattering based tool, which is the pDR—they have a few more companies—but the PDM3700 is mass based, so we are not disputing the light scatter based tool at all. We are focusing on the PDM3700, which is mass based. It is a compliance tool used in the US and everywhere else, and again it follows the similar or the same cycle that we traditionally use for current exposure assessment as for AS2985, but the only difference is the way we measure the mass. The current process is you go to the lab and do the mass, versus here it is a step forward. You are directed, it is based on science and it does the mass. It is misleading that it is not based on mass and it is as for the AS2985.

Mr Taylor: I agree with Dr Belle: the statement is misleading. The PDM3700 is absolutely a gravimetric device, but it does not comply with AS2985—that is correct—so there is a bit of truth and there is a bit of false in that statement.

Mr McMILLAN: Apart from this issue of the device being certified as intrinsically safe above a certain methane level underground, from your perspective is there any reason that device could not be used or should not be used to routinely measure dust exposure for underground coalminers and report those measurements to the department under the regulations?

Mr Taylor: I wholeheartedly believe that they should be used routinely. It is Anglo's stance that they should be used for any higher risk activities or positions, for instance, shearer operators, miner drivers, anybody who may be in a position of being exposed to respirable dust. As we know from our historical data, this is a device that would allow them to remove themselves from that situation or make changes to their ventilation or whatever needs to happen so that they are not exposed to those levels of dust.

Dr Belle: Again this is a bigger step change in terms of exposure monitoring from the 1960s to now, 2017. I think this is the device. If you are able to control and manage the exposure and eliminate the CWP, this is the way forward for Australia. During your visit to Grasstree mine you asked for comment on the differences between the light-scattering versus the pDR. I responded with this document and submitted it, which very clearly gives you evidence of why we should be going towards this as a compliance tool. Again I now understand the step-by-step process, but we must be going towards that if we are to reduce the limits et cetera.

Mr McMILLAN: Jordan, it seems to me from your evidence that the department and Simtars have given you some reason to have hope that the process is moving forward in recent time. Is that fair to say?

Mr Taylor: Yes, in the last couple of months. Mr McMILLAN: I am troubled by the statement at the bottom of that page of the submission—

the DNRM submission—at page 20 where it says— Manufacturers and mining companies are working with SIMTARS to review and test products for intrinsic safety. A new unit that meets IECEx standards is expected to be 2-3 years away.

Mr Taylor: That is the international certification that I mentioned earlier and what they are discussing is the fact that, in going back to Thermo Fisher Scientific requesting when is the next generation going to be available, it is probably going to be two or three years. If it is our intent to hold out hope that the next version will come along and have international certification approval, we are going to be waiting for two to three years. That is why it is in our best interests to make every effort possible to allow these units, the PDM3700, to be used.

Mr McMILLAN: I see, so there is a distinction there between essentially the current unit certification and the—

Mr Taylor: The next version.



Mr McMILLAN:—next version, which will meet international certification standards? Mr Taylor: That is right. In our discussions with Thermo Scientific they have asked us, `What

can we do to improve the next version?' They have made an effort to collect information from operators globally—China, India, Australia, South Africa and the US as well—so everybody is going to have feedback into this next unit but, as you can imagine, the more parties you invite to the table the longer the process takes to get things approved and the next model to come out.

Mr McMILLAN: Thank you. Moving now to the dust management section of your submission—and we are approaching the end, I assure you; I am grateful for your patience and that of the committee—I wanted to ask you about the establishment of dust committees at your underground mines. When did that initiative happen?

Mr Oswell: I cannot tell you exactly, Ben. I think that is a question for Tim Hobson tomorrow. He could tell you exactly when the Grasstree committee was formed.

Mr McMILLAN: Have committees been formed at the other underground operations as well? Mr Oswell: Yes. With regard to the timing of that, I will take that on notice. We will find out

when they were established. Mr McMILLAN: I will frame the question in this way, if you can take it on notice please: when

were dust management committees established at each of Anglo's underground mines and how many times have each of those committees met since their establishment?

Mr Oswell: Yes. Mr McMILLAN: I take it then that the position of dust champion was initiated at the same time

as those committees as part of a suite of improvements? Mr Oswell: The exact timing I am not sure but, in terms of the appointment of these dust

champions as such, that was a term that was coined at Moranbah North. In fact, we are underselling ourselves. As you saw at Grasstree, there are in fact a number of dust champions, if you like, specifically from engineering, from production, from the safety side of things all leading the charge on coordinating and implementing all of the dust improvement initiatives, so there is a range. In fact, there is quite a structure at each of the mines about the various people who were directly involved in initiating and following through on those improvements.

Mr McMILLAN: Do I take it that both of those initiatives are part of the suite of efforts that have been made by Anglo since the reidentification or the rediagnosis of new CWP cases in the last two years?

Mr Oswell: Correct. I am unsure whether there were dust committees before that time, but I will find out.

Mr McMILLAN: Thank you. As I understand or as I read your submission, those dust committees are only in the underground operations. Do you have a dust committee at your Capcoal service mine?

Mr Oswell: Not to my knowledge, no. Mr McMILLAN: Why not? Mr Oswell: Essentially at our current open-cut mines we have not had a dust exceedance that

I am aware of—and we have looked at the data—for at least five years. The consideration for the open-cut mines is that the dust from a respirable perspective is under control and there have not been exceedances, so there was no need to set up a specific committee or other activities to make further improvements in that regard.

Mr McMILLAN: The problem of dust exceedances in your underground operations was a significant concern for Anglo going back well before 2015 to the extent that you have had consistently—I withdraw that; you have had a history of dust exceedances on the longwall face over many years particularly at Grasstree, haven't you?

Mr Oswell: There have been exceedances, yes. Mr McMILLAN: On review of the dust surveys that have been produced under summons, I

would suggest to you that there has been really a consistently high level of dust exceedances at Moranbah North and Grasstree going back as far as 2001.

Mr Oswell: There have been exceedances at the mines over the years, yes. Mr McMILLAN: You would concede that the dust surveys that have been produced under

summons speak for themselves? You do not seek to dispute those results?



Mr Oswell: If they are official data, no, I do not dispute the results. I am not quite sure exactly which data you are talking about or the responses to the summons you are referring to.

Mr McMILLAN: It is certainly not my intention—I do not think it is probably productive or of assistance to anybody—to go through those one by one, but I am wondering essentially why it is that it was only in 2015 that there seemed to be this sudden upsurge in activity by Anglo to address this dust problem even though you said at the start of your evidence that from your perspective dust has always been a problem and it has always been something that is on your radar.

Mr Oswell: Yes. I guess the response to that is, yes, there have been exceedances in the past. The legislation up until very recently provided that you needed to have systems, processes and procedures in place to minimise dust. If you got exceedances and you were not able to reduce the dust exposure at that particular time, then you could fall back to personal protective equipment, and indeed that is what we did. This is not only an Anglo thing but, I would suggest, the whole focus from an industry perspective and everyone—every player in the industry—was not on dust until these cases started to appear. The other issue or the other aspect to it which I touched on before is there was no evidence of any issue. There were no cases of pneumoconiosis that we knew at the time had been diagnosed. There were no issues coming through with health schemes, so on that basis we were of the view that our current controls and the fact that we relied, to a certain degree where there were those exceedances, on personal protective equipment were doing the job.

Mr McMILLAN: All right.

Mr Oswell: Clearly, the new cases then raised the focus across Anglo and raised the focus across the industry. There is absolutely no doubt about that.

Mr McMILLAN: I will take up some of these issues specifically with Mr Hobson tomorrow, but I wanted to ask you, Mike, about the compliance history of your three underground mining operations over the last two years because I am trying to understand, really, the genesis for the work that has been done in the last two years. On my and the committee's review of the documents produced under summons Grasstree was under no less than four simultaneous directives by the department between mid-2015 and November 2016 in relation to dust issues, and I can go through them individually if that is of assistance. Does that accord with your knowledge?

Mr Oswell: There have been directives. I could not confirm how many directives. There have been directives regarding dust at Grasstree, yes.

Mr McMILLAN: In September 2015 a directive was issued requiring mandatory use of respiratory protective equipment for all personnel working on or entering the longwall until exposures had been reduced to acceptable levels. Wasn't respiratory equipment already required as mandatory for those working on the longwall face at Grasstree?

Mr Oswell: We touched on that before. I am not sure whether it is a question on notice. I cannot off the top of my head recall the exact details of those procedures and when they changed.

Mr McMILLAN: That is in September 2015 and also that directive required the establishment and implementation of an interim personal monitoring program to monitor workers' personal exposure on the longwall at regular intervals. The production of dust monitoring results under summons suggests that prior to the issuing of that directive personal monitoring of dust on the longwall at Grasstree was fairly intermittent.

Mr Oswell: The dust monitoring program would have been developed and the frequency of the numbers in the sampling would have been developed on the basis of the baseline in the advice of the occupational hygiene service provider.

Mr McMILLAN: That directive was issued on 7 September 2015 and when it was issued compliance was required by 25 September. I take it that compliance was not achieved because on 19 October 2015 another directive was issued again directing Grasstree mine to conduct personal dust monitoring to verify the effectiveness of controls and demonstrate the respirable dust exposures are at an acceptable level and referred back to the previous directive. Compliance with that directive was required by December, so between September and December is it the case that a regime of personal dust monitoring had not been implemented at Grasstree?

Mr Oswell: There was a regime of dust monitoring, but certainly the frequency of that dust monitoring would have increased and I think there was various discussion around the longwall SEG and the subelements of that longwall SEG. There were a number of discussions around that and how the sampling was happening and how frequently with the inspectorate.



Mr Taylor: Mike, if I may, and I am not 100 per cent sure without reading the two directives, but it sounds like there was a difference in the two. The first directive was for personal monitoring; the second was to evaluate the effectiveness of controls, so that sounds more like static monitoring to me but, again, without having it in front of me I am not 100 per cent sure.

Mr McMILLAN: No, the directive was to conduct personal dust monitoring to verify the effectiveness of the controls, so they both related to personal dust monitoring but you are quite correct that the purpose of the directive was to satisfy the department essentially that dust controls were adequate.

Mr Oswell: That led to a significant increased frequency. Mr McMILLAN: In February 2016—so four months after that directive was issued—the SSE

was required under a section 157 notice to appear before the chief inspectorate or the inspector of coalmines to explain why Grasstree was still noncompliant with that directive. I will take up the particulars of that with the SSE tomorrow, but already that suggests a period of some five months where compliance in accordance with the directive had not yet been achieved. I am not suggesting that nothing had been done, but I want to understand from your perspective as the head of health, safety and environment across Anglo's coal operations. That must have been particularly concerning to you that one of your SSEs was being hauled before the inspectorate to explain why after five months they still had not complied.

Mr Oswell: Correct. It was concerning particularly on the basis that there had been an enormous amount of effort go in to engineering design to minimise the dust exposures and so on. It is not something where you can suddenly do a couple of things and you fix the dust problem. As you would have seen during the Grasstree visit, it is quite a complex issue, so there was a range of engineering and design improvements that were tried and tested, different water sprays were being tried and tested, crews were starting to be rotated. There was a whole period of trial of various improvements to see what was effective and what was not. During that time some exceedances continued and that was what led to the meeting with the chief inspector given that whilst improvements had been made we still had not got there in terms of having nil exceedances.

It was only really mid 2016 that we finally got to the point, or thereabouts—I can look at the specific time—where we weren't having any exceedences in longwalls and development areas. Indeed, in the underground operations I think we have had one exceedence in the last six months across all of our underground operations. But again I would stress this is a complex thing. It has taken a lot of effort, a lot of time to get to the point where we have made these improvements and they are effective and they are sustainable.

CHAIR: Can I ask, have you ever stopped production because of the exceedences and also the directives?

Mr Oswell: No. There were changes in production rates because there was an argument at the time—and again I am not an expert on this, but there were arguments at the time that the production rate influenced the degree of dust generation. There was subsequent discussion around that, that whilst that may have been the case you ended up with a whole heap of other problems. The bottom line of all that was that reducing the production rate did not fix the problem.

CHAIR: Did the Mines Inspectorate at any point, given these directives were made, ever indicate that they intended to prosecute Anglo?

Mr Oswell: The level 4 compliance meeting, which is what you are talking about, is part of their compliance program. My understanding is if you continually do not meet the requirements of the inspectorate directive after a level 4 meeting then the next step is potentially prosecution.

CHAIR: Has Anglo or any other coalmine in Queensland ever been prosecuted, to the best of your knowledge?

Mr Oswell: I cannot speak for the other mines, of course, but from an Anglo perspective, no, we have not been prosecuted for dust.

Mr McMILLAN: The directive that was issued on 19 October 2015, and this really goes to the chair's questions, initially required completion by 23 December 2015. That was extended to 28 February. It was then again extended to 22 March with the requirement the SSE appear before the inspector. After that meeting it was again extended to 16 May and then again extended to 16 July and then again extended to 31 October 2016. Over a year that one directive was in place and I take it, based on the evidence that the department has given, the fact that the directive was not lifted suggests that it had not been complied with in over a year.



Mr Oswell: The directives were looking for no exceedences. Mr McMILLAN: They wanted three months of no exceedences, didn't they? Mr Oswell: Correct, a continuous period, and in that time, and I would have to look at the

dates, there would have been longwall moves and various other things. A directive might have finished its time period but a new directive was issued because we needed to get a straight three-month period, for example, where we could demonstrate that we had ongoing control and we weren't having those exceedences.

Mr Taylor: That is exactly right. There could be operational things that would require the extension of the directive but at the same time the inspectorate was trying to determine what exactly they were looking for, is it three months without an exceedence? That is how we eventually came to the point where we were looking at the 95 per cent confidence limit, the UCL, being below the OEL. All of that was happening in that time frame. We were shooting at a moving target at times.

Dr Belle: I think this was a process of understanding the compliance determination, whether it is a SEG itself, do you include all the workers in the specific longwall SEG or do you specifically identify three or four individuals or the work people are doing. I think that is the process that went into the three months. Is there a basis for the three months? Again, this is an engagement that we had and that is why it was being moved forward.

Mr McMILLAN: Taking up that point, Jordan, about a moving target, the third directive that was issued in February 2016 was a directive to reduce worker exposure to respirable dust by the implementation of a trigger action response plan for dust management in the longwall, development and outbye. Completion was required within a month, I think. The directive I just referred to was issued in January. In April another directive was issued requiring review of the mining operational plan for dust management and the associated TARPs. How should we understand the fact that you are already under a directive to conduct personal dust monitoring to verify that dust exposures are at an acceptable level, then you get another directive that you have to implement a TARP and then a couple of months later another directive to review the TARP? On the face of it it would suggest, and I invite you to correct the record, that these are various attempts by the regulatory authority to compel activity by Anglo to reduce dust exposures that their workers were suffering.

Mr Taylor: Again I can't speak for Grasstree—tomorrow Tim should be able to answer those questions—but generally I do know that we have had issues when we create a TARP or put out a TARP for dust management that the inspectorate might have some issues with it so it comes back to us for review, we go through the process of updating it, risk assessments, getting it signed off, putting it back on the system, sending it back to the inspectorate, they give more feedback, more changes. I know at the other sites we have had those issues, Grasstree I can't 100 per cent speak for, but I certainly think that Mr Hobson would be able to answer that tomorrow.

Mr McMILLAN: I am going to go to the other sites in a moment but just to be complete in the discussion of Grasstree, a fourth directive was issued in June 2016 requiring review of the mine safety, health and management system in relation to respirable dust management and exposures. That appears to have been complied with within the time. Then a fifth directive was issued only a month later in July for the SSE to ensure that there were at least three persons whose primary task was essentially in high exposure groups to wear personal dust monitors each week. Before I leave Grasstree, I just want to pose that proposition to you again and say that on the face of it it seems that these are just continuing regulatory efforts to compel activity in order to reduce excessive exposures to dust of workers. Is it your evidence essentially that the multitude of directives was hampering your efforts or simply that the efforts weren't good enough? I will obviously take this up with the inspectorate as well, but how should we really understand the fact that no less than five directives are issued in a 18-month period and at least two of those remained outstanding as at the end of October?

Mr Oswell: With all respect, there are multiple questions, multiple issues and multiple discussions with different inspectors looking at different aspects of dust management. The best way to respond to this is to ask the questions of Tim Hobson, the general manager, tomorrow. There are a whole raft of different timings and issues and directives and so on and so on or there have been. I guess what I am trying to say is I can hazard a reasonable guess at some of these things, but I am not able to provide accurate responses to what you are asking in the detail you are asking because I was not intimately involved.

CHAIR: Generally you are saying there are different inspectors who come to different mines and they might have different ways or different views of doing things; is that correct?

Mr Taylor: Absolutely.



CHAIR: That means that as an operator you never really know where the goalposts are, is that correct?

Mr Taylor: Absolutely. Dr Belle: Compliance determination is one of them, that is what we alluded to earlier, the whole

SEG exposure, and how do you determine it is non compliant. Initially it was four and then it is the remaining. I think what you are looking for is the transparency of how we determine failure or non-failure.

CHAIR: It is not only the transparency, it is because you are dealing with different people, different issues, different ways of doing things and as operators there is no one set of rules that you can refer to; is that correct?

Mr Taylor: That's right. CHAIR: The inspectorate is in a mess, in other words. Mr Taylor: I will speak from a US perspective where we are governed by a very black and

white set of legislation whereas here it is risk based. With a risk based system it is up to the SSE to determine that there is an acceptable level of risk, but the role that the inspectorate then play in providing guidance or feedback, one inspector can provide guidance in one direction and two weeks later another can guide you in the other direction.

CHAIR: What do you do in that circumstance? Who do you go to to get assistance or the professional advice that you need if, for example, you are getting one lot of advice, as you said, Jordan, two weeks previously to say, 'Do X', and then another inspector rocks up two weeks later and says, 'No, do Y.' How do you, as an operator, deal with that because it obviously gives you no confidence that the inspectors know what they are doing.

Mr Taylor: Typically on a case-by-case basis and the amount of fight that you would like to put up. Typically you try to please all of them if you can. I think one of the issues that we find is that a lot of our procedures, our TARPs, everything, are now so large to encompass all of the different requests that they have become messy and difficult to work with.

CHAIR: That might be why there has never been a prosecution, because if there was a prosecution of any coalmining operator you could go back to the fact that you have been advised to do different things at different points of time which would potentially nullify a prosecution. Have you any comment to make on that?

Mr Oswell: Possibly so. Mr McMILLAN: In fairness to you, the chair asked you a few moments ago whether operations

have ever been suspended as a result of a directive. I think I can assist you that on 11 February 2016 at Grosvenor a directive was given to suspend all working activities in returns during development production to prevent exposure to respirable dust and silica pending a risk assessment and the use of personal monitoring. That was complied with, I think, within two days, according to the directives, to complete the record. In fairness to you, the records clearly indicate that action was taken immediately to deal with that. What strikes me is that that is the only record that I can find of a directive given to Anglo to, in fact, suspend operations and it resulted in immediate activity to correct the difficulty that had been identified by the inspectorate.

Mr Oswell: I take it it was something that was very readily addressable, very easily addressed, by the sound of that. I am not directly familiar with that off the top of my head.

Mr McMILLAN: Dealing now with Moranbah North, I wanted to ask you similarly about the activity in terms of improvements over the last couple of years in dust management and mitigation there. A number of directives have been issued by the inspectorate to Moranbah North as well. I have counted four in total. I will go through them. On 13 February 2015 a directive was issued to reduce the risk of exposure to respirable coal dust. The directive was in identical terms to the one that was issued to Grasstree by the mandatory use of RPE and an interim program of personal dust monitoring for workers whose exposure on the longwall had been exceeded. Compliance with that directive was required by June of 2015 and needed to be extended but was ultimately complied with by August, on the face of the documents, although another directive was again issued on 10 August only a couple of days after supposed completion with the previous directive.

This picture of another directive being immediately issued after the previous one is released emerges again at Moranbah North to the extent that, by the end of 2016, some four directives have been issued, two of which remain outstanding at the end of October 2016. Is your evidence essentially the same in relation to Moranbah North as it was in relation to Grasstree, that the multitude of directives, in fact, hamper your efforts to improve your health and safety standards at the site?



Mr Taylor: At least for Moranbah North, in this instance. I do know that there was a long wall moved in between there, so one of the directives was closed because the panel had finished so they reopened a new one for the new panel. Then there was the debate, as I mentioned earlier, about, well, we've gone to two months, let us say, with new exceedance and then we have an exceedance, so they extend it again because at the time having another exceedance was reason enough to continue the directive because they were not satisfied. It was not until later, in the last half of last year, that we came to that UCL as the determining factor, UCL for three months being less than the OEL. It was not until that point that we had clear guidance on what it would take to get off the directive. Until then it was, 'Yep, you're doing a good job, but we are going to keep you on it'; 'Yep, you're doing a good job, but we just want to make sure that everything is in order'. It was just drawn out indefinitely.

Mr McMILLAN: Can you please take this question on notice: what directives are currently in place in relation to Anglo's underground coalmining operations and what activities are currently being undertaken to ensure compliance with those directives by the required due dates?

Mr Oswell: I think we can circumvent: there are no directives now current on any of our mines. Mr McMILLAN: There are no current directives? Mr Oswell: In relation to dust. Mr McMILLAN: Thank you very much. Those are my questions, Madam Chair. I am most

grateful for the indulgence of the additional time. CHAIR: Thank you, very much. Are there any closing comments that you would like to make? Mr Oswell: No. CHAIR: Are there any other questions from members of the committee? Mr SPRINGBORG: Given the extensive questioning from counsel assisting, who asked all that

I was going to ask, there is no point duplicating. Mr COSTIGAN: I have a couple of questions, thank you, Madam Chair. I thank everyone for

coming along today. I am sure a lot of my constituents are interested in your answers, along with Queenslanders in general. I thank you for your submission to the committee. In relation to these dust committees, Dr Belle, do you go to those committees yourself? As a member of the medical profession, with your colleagues out there in the field, do you go out there once in a blue moon? Have you addressed the dust committees at any given time?

Dr Belle: I go out to the dust committees on the site. While at the site, I do attend and participate. Electronic means is another way that I engage. I personally go underground on the long-wall face to look at the monitoring aspects of it and the dust control aspects of it. In fact, the CFD modelling—the computational fluid dynamics modelling—of the long-wall face at Grasstree, Moranbah and Grosvenor I take up with the CSIRO to get all the data that is related, to come up with practical solutions. That is one of the means. I always advise on the weekly or biweekly meetings with the sites.

Mr COSTIGAN: On the timeliness of these meetings, and I open the question up to all witnesses, how often do the dust committees meet: quarterly, monthly, weekly, as required, depending on whether it is the wet season or the dry season? We talk about the gassiness of Grasstree. I have not been to Grasstree. I apologise for not being able to go when the invitation was extended, although I have been past the mine site many times on the Mount Stuart Road. How often do those committees meet?

Mr Taylor: Typically, they are monthly. In events where we had increased focus, we would ramp that up to weekly or biweekly. Not only do we have site dust committee meetings, and that is typically for the guys underground, we also have weekly meetings that are chaired by the head of underground operations, Glen Britton. Each site reports to him on the progress of all of our engineering controls and actions regarding dust, as well. There are two separate meetings that happen.

Mr COSTIGAN: Dr Belle? Dr Belle: In addition to what Jordan has mentioned, we have a monthly feedback session to

the head of SD in London about the activities that we do, what are the priorities. For example, the PDM3700 that we talked about, how we can expedite it, from whatever means, to be used underground and the support required. That is another channel that we use.

Mr COSTIGAN: I have one question to Ms Sanderson. You commented about Moura and the mining towns. I am very familiar with most of the mining towns, certainly in the Bowen Basin and further afield, but particularly the Bowen Basin. Moura has only one doctor. I was recently in Moura.



Do you think if governments did more to attract doctors to those rural communities, that would put the mining industry and other industries in general in a better position? We are here today on a very important issue, but you made the point that a lot of people do not realise that these towns do not have or only have one doctor. Nebo is not the cattle town that it used to be. My grandfather used to bring busted ringers in to the doctor there. Nebo does not have a doctor anymore, as it used to. That was decades ago. Do you have any further comment regarding the doctor shortage and attracting doctors to rural areas, including the Bowen Basin?

Ms Sanderson: Moura certainly is one area where we know the doctor. He has been there long enough for us to have developed knowledge of his work and so on. However, it is not just the dust issue, if we are talking generally about the doctors. If we have something like an injury that might be a suspected fluid injection, it is the quality of their knowledge that is really quite concerning sometimes. That is not a slur on the doctors. They are doing their best with very busy country family practices. Their knowledge of occupational issues is quite limited because the big part of their practice is their family practice. Yes, perhaps more diversity in the doctors that we have and a building of their knowledge on the industries, whether it is the cattle industry, the transport industry or the mining industry.

Mr COSTIGAN: That takes me to my final question, which is to Dr Belle: how many of your peers or colleagues would have been underground across the Bowen Basin, whether in Blackwater, Emerald, Moranbah, Middlemount, whether those towns used to have doctors or still do?

Dr Belle: I am not a medical professional or a doctor. I have an engineering background, but my doctorate was on black lung.

Mr COSTIGAN: No further questions, Madam Chair.

Mr KELLY: On our two tours around Central Queensland, a significant number of workers raised concerns in relation to the growing number of labour hire employees or employees employed on casual or temporary type contracts. Many concerns were raised by workers about the ability of temporary employees or people on temporary employment contracts to raise issues with management. I have two questions: firstly, I notice many of you have a professional background in workplace health and safety. Are you aware of any research about the impacts of the casualisation of the mining workforce specifically or other workforces generally and the relative rate of workplace health and safety incidents or issues? Secondly, as a management team or as representatives, do you believe that workers in your mine are able to raise safety issues and have those issues addressed?

Mr Oswell: On the first question in terms of studies, no, I am not specifically aware of studies on that at the moment. I forget the second part of your first question.

Mr KELLY: I am not saying specifically at Anglo, but across the board many workers from many mines, both underground and open-cut, said that they felt that temporary employees who raised safety issues faced fairly significant negative consequences.

Mr Oswell: My response to that is simply that we do not make any difference in the treatment of people in the workforce, whether they are from contractors or permanent employees. The safety health management system applies to all coalmine workers, which includes the contractors. The processes, the meetings, the communications, the hazard reporting, the defect reporting—all of those systems apply absolutely equally to contractors as they do to permanent employees. From our perspective, the management of those people is exactly the same, from a safety perspective.

Mr KELLY: How then is this—we will call it a perception for now. Multiple witnesses from multiple types of mines from multiple sites raised this notion that temporary employees who raise concerns quite frequently had their contracts terminated early. How does that perception become so widespread amongst the workforce, if there is no substance to it?

Mr Taylor: I do not know the answer to that. I have had the privilege of working at all three of Anglo's underground sites. I have spent time in an operational role at all three sites. For myself, either as development superintendent or as long-wall superintendent, I never had any issues with people coming to me with safety issues or concerns and their treatment was no different than any other employee. Personally, I never witnessed anything other than that. It is astounding to me, as well.

Mr KELLY: Let us take Grasstree specifically, because that was the mine that we went down. I think there is a lodge of the CFMEU that is active at Grasstree?

Mr Oswell: Yes.



Mr KELLY: Do you have regular consultation with union representatives or delegates from that lodge in relation to not just safety issues but also a whole range of workplace related matters?

Mr Oswell: I am sure there would be many discussions with the lodge, the president and the officials of the CFMEU at Grasstree about industrial issues and all the rest of it.

Mr KELLY: Do you have a formalised mechanisms of consultation between management and unions in relation to safety or any other issues, where you have industrial agreements that require regular meetings, consultations and discussions?

Mr Oswell: Again that is a question for Tim Hobson tomorrow. No, I do not think there would be—

Mr KELLY: Surely as a safety manager, you would have an understanding of the industrial obligations of your organisation?

Mr Oswell: Correct. There are various meetings that happen on a regular basis with the CFMEU and other union officials. In most cases, I suspect they would not specifically go necessarily to safety issues. The safety issues tend to go to the site safety reps and the crews or the part of the workforce that is affected by whatever the safety issue is. I do not believe there are specific regular safety meetings, if that is what you are asking, between the mine management and the CFMEU officials at the site, because they would have regular meetings and discussions around industrial issues, not necessarily specific safety issues. The safety issues go down a different path. You tend to separate the safety side of things from the industrial side of things.

Mr KELLY: In relation to the PDM3700, I assume this is a step towards real-time monitoring. Can you step me through how that works? If I have one of these things on my person and an unsafe exposure level is detected, what occurs then?

Mr Taylor: Unfortunately, on the PDM3700, nothing. The previous model, the PDM600, had a warning mechanism. It was attached to your cap lamp and, from what I understand, it would light up. That was done away with with the PDM3700, due to battery drain and life of the battery. However, there is always visible on your hip, on the unit itself, a display screen that tells you your accumulative exposure from the start of the shift until that current time. There is also a percentage of the allowable limits. At the start of the shift, you can set your allowable limit to whatever you want. It might be 2.6 milligrams per cubic metre for a given mine site. For example, if you were two hours into a 10-hour shift and you were already at 50 per cent of your exposure limit, you know that you are heading towards an over exposure. It gives the operator the ability to look down and say that he is not in a good circumstance, so he can then make changes through the shift. There is no warning or audible or visible alarm, per se.

Mr KELLY: Let me understand this. This is a monitor that monitors my personal exposure rather than in general—I have just walked into an area and there is a high level of exposure? During the course of my day I have done duties X, Y and Z in areas A, B, C, D, E, F and G and over the course of my day I have reached a point where I need to take some remedial action, is that correct?

Mr Taylor: That is correct. Mr KELLY: How do we do the more generalist monitoring of an entire area and determine

whether an entire area is causing not just concern for one worker but for anybody entering that space? Mr Taylor: We have other tools that we use for that. You can use the PDM3700 for that

purpose if the methane levels allow, but you can use typical static monitoring which is just the standard gravimetric monitoring. You can also use the light scattering photometry units that give you an indication of more or less dust here or there. There are other tools that you can use for that. For compliance sampling it is always about the personal exposure not the area or the operation.

Mr KELLY: If approval is granted and you can use this more extensively does the organisation or regulation need to develop guidelines or rules around what I should do as a worker if my exposure is at certain levels so that it is not simply up to me to initiate and action?

Mr Taylor: I think that that should be left to the SSE to determine. Each site should be able to do with that as they see fit as part of their risk assessment process. Certainly we have envisioned potentially tying it to our TARP so that when we have a certain exposure level, a percentage of the allowable limit, we can use that as part of the inputs to our TARP—some new triggers.

Mr KELLY: I am just going to throw some percentage out here. For the first couple of weeks I have exposure of 75 per cent of my allowable limit and the next two weeks I might have 25 per cent or 50 per cent or whatever. Do we have an understanding at this point if I have been exposed to these levels what my chances are of developing early stages CWP? Is there something we should be looking at to trigger additional monitoring for those workers if they are exposed?



Mr Taylor: This will probably end up going to Dr Belle. The OEL is set based on those sorts of calculations—understanding your cumulative exposure over a period of time, which is why it looks at how many hours per shift, how many hours per week and how many hours per month you are working. That is where that OEL is calculated from.

Mr Belle: I have responded to some of that in this document, but to summarise if you are looking for the trigger for the early stages of CWP in this case, it is if you are exposed to X years and this is the dose and it is specific to Australia—we do not have a dose response as we have in the UK or US. It is X milligrams of dust for X years that there is the potential for you to get the disease.

If you look at the history of those who have contracted CWP, we do have what is a dose and what is a response. Using the statistics we can develop one. One of my suggestions is to develop our own dose response for Australia—that is, we can come up with the ideal limit for us.

Mr KELLY: That has been internationally, has it? Mr Belle: Internationally it is a long 30 or 40 years of work and historical data. PDM3700 is a

great tool which we did not have previously to identify the reason and what the particular source of dust was. It is just an average.

Mr KELLY: I accept that different coal mines are different in terms of the make-up of the materials, but is there any reason why we cannot use those international tools here in Australia?

Mr Belle: It is whether you will have a five per cent prevalence rate or seven per cent or three per cent. The dose that was used internationally used a specific monitoring tool, for example. We use different monitoring tools so we cannot necessarily use the same dose and compare that to the US, for example. It is basically a different tool. I am not sure if I understood.

CHAIR: In relation to the comments that we made earlier about the directions, if you have any evidence of different mines inspectors advising you to do things in different ways would you please provide that to this committee because we would be very interested in that. We certainly understand the confusion that obviously exists. If you could do that that would be good. Counsel assisting, do you have anything?

Mr McMILLAN: Just a procedural matter. Through Anglo representatives a number of documents have been provided to the committee confidentially, including a briefing paper, a power point presentation and some documents that Dr Belle provided. I understand that there is the potential for Anglo to provide some or all of those documents in a form that can be published by the committee. I think that would be most useful for the committee's work. Through you, if I could invite Anglo to provide those documents in whatever form they are willing for them to be published that would be helpful.

CHAIR: That would be good. You would have to make that very clear. Also documents that you would like to be private to the committee could you make that clear as well. Thank you very much for being here today. We need the answers to the questions on notice by Monday, 13 February, if that is okay. If there are any difficulties please let us know. You will also be provided with a copy of the transcript of the hearing today. I thank our Hansard reporters. It has been a long day. I declare this hearing closed.

Committee adjourned at 2.50 pm

Documents

COAL WORKERS’ PNEUMOCONIOSIS SELECT COMMITTEE€¦ · Mr B McMillan (Barrister at Law) Staff present: Dr J Dewar (Research Director) Mr S Finnimore (Principal Legal Advisor) Ms