Developments in mine ventilation legislation, statutory qualifications and ventilation training in Australia

Australia has seen substantial changes to its framework of mine ventilation legislation, statutory mining qualifications and ventilation training over the past 15 years. This has been driven by a number of factors including: advances in underground mining technology, shortages of professionals, fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) arrangements on many sites, the ascendancy of the “risk assessment” philosophy to control health and safety risks, increasing cost pressures, globalisation of the mining industry, the changing nature of FederalState relations, competition policy (anti-trust legislation), the trend towards competency-based qualifications and other factors. Some of these impacts have been discussed in general terms in an earlier paper by Brake & Nixon (2004). This paper reviews more specifically the trends in legislation, statutory mine ventilation qualifications and mine ventilation training and discusses the likely future impacts not just for Australia, but also to other developed or developing mining nations. Key drivers of the increasingly Federal legislative framework in Australia have been the much higher mobility of personnel across States and the demand by both individuals and organisations for a consistent legislative framework to promote business opportunities and to facilitate the “portability” of personal qualifications across State boundaries. The drive for improved national productivity has also meant that the chronic and inefficient duplication of services and government bureaucracies across States is difficult to justify. Competition policy has also meant that “artificial” barriers to trade or business activities across States (e.g. different standards for similar activities) are being struck down by Federal legislation and the courts, leaving the States with little else other than to adopt consistent standards. Globalisation is also a key driver, in that large companies are insisting on more consistent regulatory frameworks across States due to the large costs involved in having different business standards and procedures or different personnel requirements for similar or identical activities in different States. The “terrorist” threat is also making Australians more concerned about the problems of inconsistent or “piecemeal” regulations or approaches providing opportunities for terrorists and, conversely, making Australians more comfortable with national approaches to many issues. For example, it is now widely recognised that the regulations regarding the transport, storage and use of explosives (which was legislated at State level with numerous inconsistencies across the nation) is a flawed approach and a national framework has now been adopted. It is therefore likely that, in future, the Australian State governments will be left as the key “deliverer” of services, such as police, health, schools, local government and the like, with the Federal government providing a consistent legislative framework for most aspects of most activities. The same drivers for more consistent regulatory frameworks are also likely to start to develop across national boundaries. For example, if a mining nation sets up a taskforce to review and make recommendations for new mine safety legislation, it is likely that the global mining companies as key stakeholders would become involved and would set out to recommend what they believe is “best practice” legislation across their portfolio of operating mines transglobally. In the same way that the world is (slowly) moving towards lower trade barriers, it is likely that the world will also move towards a more consistent approach on legal frameworks, including occupational health and safety. A further example of the impact of globalisation is the fact that major mining houses are developing their own internal standards for key hazards, often including underground ventilation (Anon 2001). It is clearly in their interests for these standards to be able to be used in all their operations. Benchmarking of legislation is slowly leading to the conclusion that some types of legislation are superior to others. For example, a review commissioned by the NSW Government has found support from several sources that key elements of the NSW legislation should be changed to be similar to that in the Queensland legislation (Anon 2000). As part of this trend in Australia, the Conference of Chief Inspectors of Mines (a meeting of the Chief Inspectors of Mines of each State) has recently issued the National Mine Safety Framework Implementation Plan (Anon 2003a) and implementation of this plan has started in all Australian mining jurisdictions. It is interesting that the first two of the seven strategies in this plan are provision of: − A nationally consistent legislative framework, and − Competency support to ensure that workers are competent to do their jobs This clearly reflects the desire for “harmonisation” of mine safety regulations across the country and the concern from the regulators about ensuring all workers in the industry are actually “competent” to do their jobs. 3 RISK BASED LEGISLATION, APPROVED GUIDELINES OR CODES OF PRACTICE, AUDITS, PROSECUTION POLICIES AND THE CHANGING NATURE OF MINING INSPECTIONS In the past 10 years, Australia has moved very comprehensively towards the “risk based” duty of care approach to workplace health and safety legislation. More recently, several States are seriously considering adopting the “safety case” style of safety legislation, which is highly regarded by the regulators of other hazardous industries such as the North Sea oil and gas platforms, etc (Heiler 2005, Anon 2005a, Raman undated). This general risk-based duty of care is supplemented by varying amounts of “prescriptive” regulations. In addition, most legislation also requires operators to adopt the “ALARA” principle, i.e. to reduce the risk not only to an acceptable level (defined in the regulations) but also to the lowest that is reasonably achievable. The industry is still struggling to come to grips with just what is meant in practice by “as low as reasonably achievable” and how it should be assessed. In some instances, the legislation defines this. However, it may well be that once this principle is tested in a court, that what was “reasonably achievable” in hindsight after a serious safety accident may be interpreted differently to what operators considered to be “reasonably achievable” before the incident. The way in which risk assessments are to be conducted and the results incorporated into hazard management plans and standard operating procedures is now carefully defined in law. In many instances, ventilation officers are now involved in these formal risk assessments requiring them to be familiar with these concepts. In some cases, they are required to facilitate these risk assessments, which requires a new set of technical and management skills. For example, in Queensland, all coal ventilation officers are now required by law to have the national competency standard MNCG2 “Facilitate the risk management process” (Anon 2002c). One of the outcomes of the trend away from prescriptive legislation (and the resulting “void” that it leaves) is that State governments have been developing “Guidelines” or “Approved codes or practice” to supplement the regulations (e.g. Anon 1997, Anon 2003b, Anon 2003c, Anon 2003d). Mine operators do not have to comply with these guidelines or codes, but they are admissible in law, and if an operator has a related incident, then the operator must be able to demonstrate that the level of risk under the operator’s own procedure was at least as low as that resulting from the approved guideline or code (Anon 2003c). In addition, new legislation often no longer specifies allowable gas concentrations or noise levels etc, but defers to the most recent national TWA or STEL limits in these areas. A consequence of these changes is that ventilation officers must be familiar with not only the mining “regulations” but also a wide range of other standards and