The state publishes serious accident and high potential incident frequency rates for
each individual mine and quarry, which almost no other regulator does. Across 1,637
site-years the median site works about 15,500 hours, so one serious accident becomes a rate
of 65, against 0.23 for the same event at the largest site. Why the rate columns cannot be
compared, and what we deliberately did not print.
The most recent official mining death toll is 10, for the 2024 calendar year: the
highest since 2015 and 39 per cent above the five-year average. There is no published
count for 2026. The full ten-year series, pulled from the national workbook, and what
each regulator does and does not publish.
A drill rig boom into a light vehicle at an underground intersection, a dozer
and a haul truck reversing toward each other in the dark, and a brake-unit fire
underground. The week ending 17 July, 38 reportable incidents, and for the fifth
week running the thread is mobile plant moving where no one meant it to.
A conveyor rubbing to burning embers, a tyre fitter with a fractured spine,
and a loader work platform that crowded down on its own and threw two workers to
hospital. The week ending 10 July, and the thread running through a month of
editions: control of moving plant and loads.
An excavator that fell off its own undercarriage, a 1.5-metre rock that
missed a cabin, and a haul truck that met a dozer on a dump. The week ending
3 July in the country's highest-cadence incident ledger, and the near-miss
loop working in public.
Safe Work Australia's cost-of-injury accounting stopped at 2012-13. The live
numbers a board paper should carry instead, every one dated and sourced, and
the 22 per cent of claims that drive 75 per cent of the payments.
The largest injury mechanism in every major occupation group, the four risk
factors the manual tasks code actually names, and why the claims total is over
half musculoskeletal. A weight limit is not one of them.
