Todd and Brant, great mine rockfall survivors

[andrew]

Todd and Brant are the blokes from Beaconsfield who forever will hardly need to add their surnames to identify given such profile last night om 9 and preceeding two weeks in the press and electronic media here.

Putting aside getting paid so much for their hard fought escape/rescue from their tomb it hardly seemed to affect their witness. I hardly noticed it was 9.52 pm after an 8.30 pm start. It wound up at 10.30 and it kept me there for the full long play movie length. The advertising was a fair match and not very intrusive. The detail was thrilling as I reacted with “fuck” and then “fuck” again and “these guys are very brave”: The remains of a small thin wire cage between them and roughly a 1000 tonne of rock and dirt, having dug themselves out of half tonne (or more) of rocks and dirt that actually did bury them one totally, the other up to his armpits: The boa constrictor crushing “rock bites”, the four hour 15 minute grovel to get free immediately after the “siesmicity” as Toddles put it. The ping of the wire under enormous pressure when cut was haunting stuff.

As I predicted to my former martial arts/broken back surviving friend as he ate the breakfast I bought him (having earned the right to say whatever the f*** he likes), scoffing through mouthfuls at the great “escape” as really “only a rescue”, to which I suggested there would be more to the Todd and Brant story in that 14 day ordeal than we were allowed to know till now. The big media don’t pay millions for something that doesn’t rate, won’t appeal, won’t grip. And yes I was indeed satisfied.

I particularly liked Brant and got to like Todd too, even with his guns and all who would have to be my political opposite on many values. But what is universal about this story is they demonstrated that I as a viewer was more similar than different in my humanity. And they were more similar to eachother than different too. The softer side of two very strong people came through. The honesty of years of experience doing hard dangerous work.

In practical working class situations truth wins every time because bullshit is just so immediately obvious against the law of physics, of gravity, of energy which actually at the least gets you sacked, but at worst kills you on the spot. These are cruel masters and every tradesman, renovator, mechanic, rock climber, anyone working with their hands and muscle knows it in their very core as I do too dumpster diving yesterday a huge industrial skip with a year’s tenancy of a deceased hoarder there in Enmore littered with broken glass. And what a prize I got too – a huge mint Aboriginal flag that I know for a fact once flew in the successful Jabiluka protest camp in 1998 owned by one Dave Kennedy RIP.

And speaking of difference softer kinder Brant and rough tough Todd were stronger in the sum than the parts which is a beautiful reality and why there are such echoes for unionism in their Big Industrial Relations argument with the government. What a clarion call to unity out of difference their story really is. How unity brings ….wait for it …. productivity. They said they wouldn’t have got through so well without eachother there. Well folks, that’s the nub of the ALP/Unions case against mean and nasty race to the bottom Howard govt IR package. Absolutely no doubt in my mind. What I found particularly moving was how Brant post rescue related, after so long down there with effectively new brother Todd, woke up a few nights back apparently and nudged his wife to see if injured ‘Todd was allright?’. As if to say the psychological impact will take quite a long time to recede given the chill hand of death around them for a good week trespassing temporarily on the other most profound relationship in his life up to that date, namely his wife.

Which reminds me of Laurens Vander Post a hunter and writer from South Africa and Todd in particular will appreciate this story. A true story of how calmly and focused he shot a leaping lion which died in mid flight after stalking him with deadly intent. Get it? A second from claw and fang at his throat, a second from disembowlment. Calm only because there just was no time for emotion. It was business or death, take your choice. And he shot clean and true and lived to tell the tale. But 6 months later in the safety of his ship cabin sailing to England he found himself shaking violently in reaction to what he had narrowly escaped, the nerves finally releasing that intensity, that sublimation of fear which was always there but buried.

And the key to understanding that fascinating delayed reaction is that it could only express after the total conviction of safety, that is, at sea in a ship’s cabin where you just know lions can’t be. In Brant’s case that total conviction of safety was the marital bed in his blessed home in the middle of a sleepy night, and a real compliment to his wife for being part of that trusted fabric. Likely Todd too will have those moments in his cocoon of family 'total safety' dredging his memory of the cage and that bloke Todd in his personal space, and vice versa. That’s a lesson for big manly Todd and Brant because likely that’s what’s coming next - delayed reactions of fear and shock. I can feel the shudder of claustrophohbia just writing about it. And good luck to them I say and thanks for sharing it with us too with all that shock and fear absorbed in the fibre of their being.

Oh the sledge on rival Channel 7? The promo saying “we are not ambulance chasers, we are serious news gatherers who get the story first” or similar words: This ran near the end of the 2 hours and the clever slight transparent to the media sector was a blunt reference to Kochy aka David Koch from memory, the star presenter for 7’s successful Sunrise programme who literally did jump into the ambulance at the end of the rescue. It has to be said he was invited in but still it would have freaked head of 9 Eddie Maguire as to his chances of buying the story and at what price?

It was good 9 got it as an addendum to the flagship iconic Sixty Minutes because more people saw it likely as a result and that helps awareness about the IR attacks on safety of which Todd was a product of 5 years training who knew 4 hours compression was a danger zone and who knew the protocols for rescue or the more ominous “recovery”. It was important for 9 with the death of pro worker journo Richard Carlton who died suddenly covering the rescue, and his great story Ship Ahoy in 2005 (availble from Google).

Todd himself said the mine didn’t cause the accident, but the truth likely is beyond his actual management and legal expertise. Experts at the rockface true but there are likely Shakespearean details to be revealed higher up the corporate food chain as Carleton was already sniffing. Plenty of time to get to truth of that assuming integrity of the investigation. That is national unionist figure Bill Shorten’s sacred duty to establish one way or the other as he helped do after the fatal Longford gas pipeline disaster in Victoria.

Larry Knight killed in the same rock fall might have thought something else and Larry's family and friends and all working Australians deserve to know the truth about that. The mark of these guys were in the tears Todd shed at the funeral and Brant showed in the interview. Keeping in mind too jobs aside, gold is a pretty crap product in the scheme of things really. And as Todd pointed out himself he felt the rescue was actually a recovery operation by day 3 or 4, borne out of a cynicism from somewhere. Both miners are now economically released as a result of media deals but will still be loyal to their working colleagues and town of Beaconsfield dependent on that mine for work. The miners in general may well be in denial for the sake of employment to make an all clear to the notoriously greedy Sydney based Macquarie Bank financed gold mine.

Legal expertise and political interigty not mining will be paramount now. RIP Larry Knight

[fusil]

Good post, Andrew.

Fusil.

[dobbie]

Beaconsfield Miners Ready to Hack Their Legs Off To Escape Grimshaw Interview

Beaconsfield Miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb have said they were ready to cut off their own legs to escape the five hour interview with Tracy Grimshaw.

This news in the same week that another gold-digger, Heather Mills, hacked off a leg to escape a marriage to Paul McCartney.



During the five hour recording the miners revealed how different they were – with Russell keen on shooting foreign tourists for sport and Webb spending his weekends dressed in womens clothing. “We couldn't be further apart” they said, although they both felt the same about their families. “It was great chance to get away from the wife and kids for a couple of weeks” they said.

Channel Nine won the interview after CEO Eddie MacGuire confessed that his great great grandfather's second cousin's aunt made sandwiches for a church fête once in a town with a disused mine. He also agreed to pay them in excess of $2.5m. This beat the Channel 7 bid, which involved personality David Koch throwing himself in front of the miners' ambulance to try and get the story.

The story has captured world attention. “We're seeing many male tourists visiting” said a tourism spokesperson. This whole incident has put the map of Tasmania firmly in the spotlight.

[tommygun]

Even before proceedings get underway, the so-called “independent” inquiry commissioned by the Tasmanian state Labor government into the fatal accident at the Beaconsfield Gold Mine smells of cover up. A massive rock fall at the mine on April 25 resulted in the death of miner Larry Knight and trapped his co-workers Todd Russell and Brant Webb underground for two weeks.

Tasmanian state Premier Paul Lennon this week announced that the inquiry—headed by former National Crimes Authority chief and one time Tasmanian Crown prosecutor, barrister Greg Melick—will not be open to the public. He also refused to say if the inquiry’s findings would ever be made public or if copies would be handed to the family of Larry Knight.

Lennon’s claim that the extraordinary level of secrecy was necessary “to protect the legal process” so as not to “prejudice” the possible laying of charges by the Director of Public Prosecutions is hardly plausible. Other inquiries into fatal mining incidents—such as the judicial inquiry into the 1998 Gretley coal mine tragedy in NSW that resulted in four deaths, and the Mine Wardens’ inquiry into the disaster in Moura, Queensland in 1994 that claimed 11 lives—were open and their finding made public.

It is also well known that few mining companies ever face prosecution over workplace fatalities. In her report “Mine health and safety: could you be liable?” a senior associate with law firm Minter Ellison, Samantha Betzien writes: “Despite the significant number of mining deaths in NSW history, only four companies have faced criminal prosecution in relation to mine deaths. Of those four, three are now appealing their convictions; indicating a broad industry push to overturn the existing OHS [Occupational Health and Safety] law.” The situation in the state of Tasmania is similar.

Similarly, Lennon’s assurance that the inquiry will be a “robust and thorough process ... designed to get to the bottom of what happened” also lacks credibility. The state government has ensured that its terms—decided in consultation with the Tasmanian Minerals Council and the Australian Workers Union—are sufficiently narrow as to avoid any real probing of the underlying political and economic causes of the tragedy.

The terms restrict the inquiry to reviewing the design of the mine and its operating standards and to examining its corporate, managerial and administrative arrangements. Specifically excluded is any examination of the system of “self-regulation” of mine safety in Tasmania and what role this played in the fatal Beaconsfield incident.

“Self-regulation” was introduced in Tasmania in 1998 by the Labor government under the late Jim Bacon as part of a drive by all state governments under the National Competition Policy to attract globally mobile investment by removing restrictions on company operations. It allows companies themselves, under a so-called “duty of care”, to determine if conditions in their own enterprise are safe.

The Tasmanian government’s reluctance to re-impose any restraints is determined in part by the significant royalties it receives from the mining and minerals sector. In 1999-2000, the government received $12 million in royalties from the minerals sector and then a further $10.7 million in 2000-01. Under today’s conditions of a booming commodity market and escalating global demand for minerals, royalties from the sector will be increasing exponentially.

Self-regulation is a key corporate demand because it frees companies from heavy scrutiny, enabling them to cut corners and reduce spending on safety. The system allowed Beaconsfield Gold, for example, to use its own geo-technical consultant to conduct a review and make recommendations following a massive rock fall at the mine in October last year, which was triggered by seismic disturbance caused by mining activity.

After acting on a number of the review’s recommendations to improve support in seismic-prone areas, mine production was quickly resumed in high-yield areas that had been temporarily closed. At the time, the company praised the recommended changes not because they would guarantee safe working conditions, but because they would not “materially affect the mine’s production rate or direct costs”.

Evidence given last week to the coronial inquiry into the death of Larry Knight by mine manager Matthew Gill suggests that the company rushed back into production despite being uncertain about the adequacy of the measures that were adopted.

Asked if the review of the mine’s ground support was adequate, Gill replied: “I don’t know and that is one of the core questions of our (the company’s) investigation, to determine the degree to which we complied with our own standards.”

The coronial inquiry into Larry Knight’s death has now been suspended to an undetermined date. The closed government-commissioned inquiry will ensure that such damning admissions as Gill’s will not readily see the light of day.


Union endorses closed inquiry

Having been a party to setting the terms of reference for the inquiry, Australian Workers Union (AWU) national secretary Bill Shorten was quick to publicly endorse them, proclaiming they were “exactly what the AWU had sought”.

In the wake of the Beaconsfield tragedy, and in the light of comments by the union’s national vice president Paul Howe, Shorten’s collaboration with the government and the mining companies to exclude any examination of the deadly impact of self-regulation is nothing short of criminal.

Howe recently declared: “The reality is the industry (mining) isn’t interested in providing safe workplaces. All they are interested in is making as much money as they can as quickly as they can from the stuff in the ground. Since we moved to self-regulation in the safety system in 1998, things have gone backwards in terms of safety standards in the industry.”

Howe’s comments were designed to give miners and their families the impression that the union planned to campaign for the abolition of self-regulation and other unsafe measures. Practice, however, speaks louder than words.

Shorten’s outright support for the restricted terms of the inquiry sends a clear message to the state Labor government and the mining companies that the union has no intention of mounting any genuine campaign on safety in the mining industry. Its demand for a judicial inquiry was designed to placate public outrage over the Beaconsfield tragedy and to gain time for behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, allowing the mine to return to full production as fast as possible.

These moves are already underway. Tasmanian Minerals Council chief executive Terry Long said this week he was concerned about the time allowed for the inquiry. “There is no reason why it couldn’t reach a conclusion on the substantive matter as to the rock fall in a few weeks,” he declared. In other words production should start again even before the inquiry is complete—an option not specifically ruled out by the AWU.

The AWU and Shorten are as anxious as the government and the mine owners to avoid any serious examination of the sweeping changes in the mining industry that have produced disasters like the one at Beaconsfield. Such probing would inevitably raise questions about the pivotal role played by the unions themselves over the last 20 years in undermining safety.

Throughout this period, under both federal and state Labor and Liberal governments, the Australian Councils of Trade Unions and its affiliates—the AWU is one of the largest—have insisted that workers make major concessions in order to render Australian-based companies “internationally competitive”.

Concessions have included the introduction of around-the-clock shift rosters to ensure continuous production, 12 to 14 hour shifts, (dubbed by miners as widow-makers), and seven day working. These measures—coupled with legislation that undermines safety, such as self-regulation—have enormously increased the risk of death and injury.

A paper by the University of Technology of Sydney last year identified mining to be one of the industries with the highest working hours, with almost 44 percent of employees working more than a 49 hour week. The paper pointed out: “This intensive schedule can lead to a decrease in alertness and an increased risk of accidents and injuries. The duration rate per lost-time injury grew from 17 days in 1993-94 to 36 days in 2002-03.”

It is significant that Larry Knight, Todd Russell and Brant Webb were working underground at 9.30 pm on a public holiday, something that only 15 years ago would have been unthinkable in the mining industry.

Miners fought major battles to win a five-day working week and eight-hour shifts, knowing that long hours underground increased the risk of injury and death. They also fought to ensure that mining companies did not have the sole prerogative over working conditions and safety in the workplace.

It is precisely these hard-won gains that Shorten and his fellow union and Labor bureaucrats have been so quick to surrender. Any inquiry sponsored by such forces will not provide justice for Larry Knight. Nor will it ensure that tragedies such as the one that occurred on April 25 will not happen again