Tuesday, 19 March 2024

Motions

Ballarat Gold Mine

James NEWBURY (Brighton) (14:54): I move, by leave:

That this house expresses its condolences:

(1) to the family and loved ones of Kurt Hourigan, who died at the Ballarat Gold Mine incident on Wednesday 13 March 2024;

(2) to those that were injured and the dozens of miners who were trapped underground.

Mary-Anne Thomas: On a point of order, Speaker, if I may, this is not really the form for the presentation of a condolence in this way, and while the government is very sympathetic to the condolence motion that the Manager of Opposition Business has raised in the house I would seek your guidance as to whether this is the appropriate format.

The SPEAKER: Leave is not conditional. It is either approved or not approved.

Mary-Anne Thomas: It is approved.

James NEWBURY: I move, by leave:

That this house condemns the state Labor government for their ongoing centralisation of planning power, ripping away community rights near environmental renewable projects, future Suburban Rail Loop stations near designated growth and economic zones –

The SPEAKER: Order! Is this a further motion by leave?

James NEWBURY: Yes.

The SPEAKER: Manager of Opposition Business, leave was granted for your first motion. Therefore you need to speak to that motion.

James NEWBURY: I will make some brief comments and thank the government for the opportunity to make these comments. I know that one of the members on the government side did speak to the matter earlier, and I am sure that the member will take the opportunity to speak to this matter.

In relation to the motion that the opposition has moved, we have moved this motion because of this very, very tragic incident that occurred only a few days ago. It was a tragic incident that the whole of Victoria I am sure looked on and felt concerned about – concerned about the workers that were trapped in the mine, concerned about their families and loved ones and concerned about the entire community and the effect that that incident had in that entire community. I think the incident brought to the fore not only the tragedy in that community but also the dangers for people in the workplace and the difficulty people have in their workplace.

This incident has touched so many people. I know in my community of Brighton, Brighton East, Elwood, Hampton and Hampton East how many people were affected by the incident, were watching on and were deeply upset and moved by of course the terrible and tragic loss of Kurt Hourigan in the incident that Wednesday but also by those that were injured in the incident. To those that were injured in the incident, to the miners that were trapped in that incident of course, there was a great outpouring from the community, and again I thought it was an opportunity for the coalition to record that sense of concern over such a terrible tragedy and put on record our heartfelt condolence to those affected, to the families affected and of course to the Hourigan family. With that I will conclude my remarks.

Michaela SETTLE (Eureka) (14:58): I rise to speak to this condolence motion, something that I feel very passionately about. Of course the mine is within my electorate, and it was a fairly heartbreaking night for many people across Ballarat as we waited for news of the people that were trapped in the mine at that time. I really would like to also acknowledge the Australian Workers’ Union. They were onsite immediately, and they spent a long night supporting the workers that were there at the time and the families of the two miners who were trapped – and then, very sadly, one died.

It is an ongoing investigation, and something we hold very dear to our hearts on this side of the house is ensuring workers’ safety at work. On this side of the house we have worked tirelessly, and again I would say it was a terrible tragedy in Ballarat that saw two families fight so hard for industrial manslaughter laws. This government has stood by workers, stood by their health and safety at all times. This is an ongoing investigation and I will not anticipate the outcomes of that, but of course I extend my very deepest condolences to Kurt’s family but also the young man. I do hear that he is out of critical care at the moment, though obviously he has a long road to recovery. We give our deepest support and condolences to his family. But of course there is the entire workforce; there are another 29 miners who were with him at the time. They were in a safety pod, but nonetheless there is a great impact on them and their families.

I was delighted that the very next day Minister D’Ambrosio came and met with union delegates and discussed with us that tragedy. I know that Ronnie Hayden from the Australian Workers’ Union was pleased to meet with the minister to talk through this terrible tragedy. The minister gave her firmest, firmest commitment that this government would stand by the workers and the families that have been involved, and I support that commitment completely. It was an awful tragedy, and it did have an impact across many, many people in Ballarat, but I was pleased that the union was there so quickly to support people. I was very proud that the minister was there the following morning to meet with unions to discuss how they could help those families as well.

As I say, this government has proved again and again our commitment to working people and really our utter and deep commitment to safety in the workplace, and we are proud to stand with our union comrades to make sure that workplaces across Victoria are safe. We will continue to do that, but in the spirit of the condolence motion I mostly want to convey certainly my, and I know all members of this side of the house’s, deepest, deepest condolences to the family of Kurt, who very, very tragically lost his life, and of course to all of the families that have been impacted by this tragedy.

We await the outcome of the investigation. It has been handed to WorkSafe, and they are investigating that. I have no doubt that we will act swiftly in whatever way we need to do once that investigation has been completed. But in the meantime, as the local member for that area, my door is always open for anyone in the community that feels the need to discuss what has happened. It was an awful, awful night for many of us as we waited for more news, and I will continue to be there to support my community.

I am proud of this government’s support of working people and safety in the workplace, and we will continue to fight for working people. My deepest condolences to all involved. We on this side of the house will continue to have you in our hearts as we work every day to protect working people.

Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (15:04): I rise to add my expression of sympathy to the families who have been affected by the mine tragedy that occurred last week on 13 March in Ballarat. Nobody should wake up to the news that there has been a tragedy in a workplace, and that is what many of us last week heard early in the morning when we were told about the mine collapse on the news. Unfortunately, a man lost his life, Kurt Hourigan. My sympathies and thoughts remain with that family and their friends, who will be taking a very long time, if ever, to get over this tragic event that took place in a mine in Ballarat.

To the gentleman who has incurred injuries, our thoughts go out to you and your family and friends. From our understanding you have got very significant injuries, and whether they are physical and/or emotional, I am sure it is a life-changing event for many people. Our hearts go out to you, and our thoughts are with you whilst you recover. The support of the Parliament is with you. That is why we express today, in the condolence motion, our sympathies to the people that have been affected so drastically by this event. Nobody should ever be harmed at work, and nobody should ever lose their life.

I want to also express my thanks and ongoing support for the emergency services, who continually step up and assist our communities in times like this, as they did on the day of 13 March last week. The challenge for them is not forgotten either in our minds; the work they do does leave an impact on them for the future and what they have witnessed and seen. To the nurses looking after the gentleman who is in hospital still from the injuries that he received: we thank you for the work you do. The 29 ‍miners who were trapped – I have been in a workplace when something tragic happened and it is always a whole-of-work area that is affected, so I know that the 29 miners who were involved in that event and all the other workers and people involved in that mine are all very affected by this event and will have ongoing issues for many, many years, because these are always such tragic events.

I want to say that we will continue to support in any way we can and that we stand with the government on their offer of support, and we expect to see this not being short-term support but very long term ongoing support. So once again my sympathy to Kurt’s family, his friends and his fellow workers. To the injured worker who remains in hospital, may your recovery be successful and may you be back up on and on your feet, because these are challenging times and times of uncertainty. But I know that the emotional challenge for everyone concerned will continue for a very, very long time. Once again, thanks to all the emergency services workers, nurses and emergency services providers who turned up to help and support. Counsellors – the list goes on. These are always really difficult times. I will conclude by again extending my sympathy. Our support and our thoughts are with all those who are affected.

Juliana ADDISON (Wendouree) (15:07): I too am very saddened to rise to express and share my condolences to the family of Kurt Hourigan, who was fatally killed – he did not die at work, he was killed – at work. He was killed at work because his workplace was not safe. That is why this government stood up and made our workplace manslaughter laws, because workers die far too often at work – but they do not die at work, they are killed at work. It is not passive. They die at work because they are killed on the job. That is why this government has stood up and said this is not okay. We have said that it is not okay for workers to not go home. We have said that it is not okay for workers’ families to have their lives devastated and ruined, and that is why we voted for workplace manslaughter. The opposition did not vote for workplace manslaughter. You did not support the legislation that means that more workers will not be killed on the job.

James Newbury: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, this is a condolence motion, and I would say respectfully: could we, on relevance, come back to the condolence motion, please?

Mary-Anne Thomas: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, there is no point of order. This motion has been brought on by the Manager of Opposition Business to make a political point. I think the member, who actually represents the community that has been impacted, should be free to condole in her own way.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: On the point of order, the motion is of condolence. Let us –

Mary-Anne Thomas interjected.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The minister at the table knows better. The member to continue on the motion.

Juliana ADDISON: I welcome the opportunity to continue. I was an organiser with the Australian Workers’ Union for four years, and I am very proud to have been an elected official of the Australian Workers’ Union and to have represented Australian Workers’ Union members for four years. This is the union that I worked for, which had one of their members killed in the workplace in my community. This is raw, and I will call out the absolute disappointment I have in the opposition trying to politicise a workplace death in my community. Do you know what happened on Thursday morning? The minister came up. I did not see the opposition coming up to the community. The Minister for Energy and Resources was there at 8 o’clock to meet with the union, to meet with Ronnie Hayden from the AWU, to meet with Ross Kenna from the AWU – the organiser that represents those workers, those workers who are hurting, those workers who are wondering why they are still alive, those workers who are struggling to work out why this has happened – because every worker deserves to come home safe.

As the member for Eureka said, this week is the anniversary of the Delacombe trench collapse – six years since two people died in my electorate because of unsafe work. They did not die, they were killed, because a company did not provide a safe workplace for two people, for Charlie Howkins and for Jack Brownlee. Jack Brownlee’s dad worked the Ballarat Gold Mine. Jack’s dad, who buried his 21-year-old son because there was a trench collapse because there was not workplace safety, worked at that mine. And, guess what, he stopped working at that mine because he could not go underground anymore. The psychological damage that Dave has shared with me – and I know he is okay with me telling this story – was such that he said, ‘I can’t go back underground after my son was killed in a collapse.’

That is why we voted for workplace manslaughter laws. That is why we stand up for workers every day – not to grandstand, not to try and get political points, but because we are the Australian Labor Party and we are the voice of labour and we are the cause of labour. We get up and we fight every day with our union brothers and sisters. And I want to acknowledge the work that the Victorian Trades Hall does. We will be, on 28 April, stopping to pause on International Workers Memorial Day to remember every single worker who has been killed at work.

I invite the opposition to perhaps come along on 28 April and stand there and tell the people of Trades Hall, tell the unionists of Victoria, that you did not support workplace manslaughter laws. I invite you to do that. Come to Ballarat. Come and meet the Brownlees. Come and meet Charlie Howkins’s wife. Meet his kids, who do not have a dad because he was killed at work in Delacombe. This is what we stand for, and we condole with the family of Kurt Hourigan. We condole with his friends, with his workmates. But do you know what? We do not only send our deepest sympathies, we fight for the living. We fight for the living every single day, because workers must come home.

I will leave my remarks there. I will thank the Australian Workers’ Union. I will thank every unionist, every worker, every health and safety rep and everyone who says, ‘It’s not okay.’ And I really do hope that as we move forward I can expect better from the opposition – better for workers rights, better for wage theft, better for workplace manslaughter and not grandstanding.

Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (15:14): I wish to rise to pay my condolences on this motion. Reading the motion here, it reads to me simply as this house expressing its condolences to Kurt and those who are impacted by that tragic incident that occurred recently. I will be confining my comments not to anything political at all but to just talking about a gentleman from my electorate who tragically lost his life.

I knew of Kurt through sporting circles in my electorate, but I did not know him personally. But I have been contacted by a number of members of his family and close friends over the period since that terrible incident did occur, and what is doubly tragic about this issue is that Kurt was the father of a young family from that very, very little, tight-knit community of Bruthen. Less than 1000 people live at Bruthen. I am sure members in this place would have been through that little township on their trip east. It is a very small, tight-knit community, and all the feedback I have had on Kurt from those who knew him certainly better than I did is that he was just a good fellow – a good father and a good fellow. The township of Bruthen plays in a football league called the Omeo district league, and it is fair to say that most sides at various times of the year struggle for players. Kurt was one of those players, as I am told, who would be asked to help out and would just quickly do so – one of those guys who maybe was not in love with the game as much as others but would be prepared to help out his local football side in their time of need.

I have had people contact me in probably the last week saying how proud of the Bruthen community they were. Apparently, when news came out of this terrible incident – there was word of a person passing away and that they were from Bruthen – I am told, there were a number of media that descended on the town and were entering some of the businesses in the main street of Bruthen, even going as far as knocking on some of the Bruthen residents’ doors to ask local residents if they knew who had passed away. The people who have contacted me have made comment about how proud they were that they did not cooperate with those requests, in the full knowledge that perhaps some of the extended family may not have been advised of Kurt’s passing, and held tight on that. More than one person has expressed to me their gratitude to the wider Bruthen community for holding tight, if you like, due to respect for the family. It is very typical of the very small, close-knit, tight community of that township.

As other members who have spoken before me have said, there are investigations underway, and every person who goes to work has the right to return home. What will be difficult are the extenuating circumstances here of Kurt being a young father who, from all reports, was admired greatly by his children, not only as their father but also as a role model and someone who was having a huge influence in their upbringing.

I will conclude my comments there. I put on the record that my thoughts are with those who were impacted and in particular the family, the extended family and the friendship group of Kurt, who was simply taken far too early.

Lily D’AMBROSIO (Mill Park – Minister for Climate Action, Minister for Energy and Resources, Minister for the State Electricity Commission) (15:18): I rise to offer my deep condolences to the family of Kurt Hourigan, who lost his life in a workplace incident last week. I do so and join others in noting that the terrible tragedy that occurred last Wednesday evening, on 13 March, should never have happened. The cause of the incident that led to the tragic death of Kurt Hourigan and the very critical injuries sustained by a 20-year-old mineworker who remains in hospital are under investigation, and we need to ensure that the specialised expert investigations are allowed to continue. I do want to note that WorkSafe will be leading that of course, and the Earth Resources Regulator will be assisting where appropriate.

One thing that I do want to say is that I am somewhat disappointed. Perhaps a conversation would have been more in order – right across the chamber – to have organised a far more respectful and considered condolence motion out of respect for the families, friends and loved ones. It is not about us – it is not about me; it is not about anyone on this side or that side. We all want to express our condolences and our sympathies and reflect on what happened last week. It would have been far better to have done that through some conversations that would have been accommodated, absolutely, and that would have given greater opportunity for a fully respectful condolence motion to be undertaken in this place.

As it happens, we are where we are. I do want to reflect on the fact that there are some people who go to work and never come home, and that is what happened last week. There are others who are injured or critically injured and will remain scarred either physically or psychologically forevermore. And then there are those who work in the mines or who have friends or family that continue to go down into the mines in Victoria, remembering and always having on their mind the very real risk that is taken every day when people go and do these jobs.

On the Thursday morning, I was joined by the members for Eureka and Wendouree, and we went and paid our respects to the representatives of the workforce at the Ballarat Gold Mine. What was really driven home to me was the real pain that communities were already experiencing in that area, because we were just a week away from another commemoration: the incident at Delacombe, the trench collapse that happened there. If anyone knows tragedy and loss, they know that the weeks leading up to the commemoration of a loss or a tragedy are very, very disturbing and very triggering for communities and families, and so is the coming down after that point. That is where we were at that time last week. What was really important of course was simply being there. It is really important for communities to feel that they are supported, and I really do want to shout out to the members for Eureka and Wendouree because they are there every day; they are community. They are part of that community, and they live and breathe the peaks and troughs of emotion – raw emotion – and tragedy that they themselves have experienced, and we have heard them reflect on that during this condolence motion.

I want to also reflect on the fact that the Delacombe trench collapse led to the very, very strong reforms in terms of the industrial manslaughter legislation that this government initiated and passed, sadly not with the support of those opposite. Again, that is a statement of great disappointment. I think it is important that we reflect on that. Whilst we make big gains – and we have over many years – in terms of occupational health and safety and workers compensation, I would like to think that the next big reform that we make in this space will actually have bipartisan support, because I have not seen it yet. Going back to the early days in the 1980s when we had the first WorkCover legislation and the first occupational health and safety laws, sadly since then there has been no bipartisanship. Frankly, I would rather be here celebrating people’s safe return home every night than condoling the loss of a life because of an industrial incident. That is what I would rather be doing.

I know we do not live in a perfect world, of course not, but we have to be forever diligent in striving for improvements to ensure that those who are responsible for incidents – and I make no presuppositions, because these are matters that have to be investigated thoroughly. That is what we strive to do each and every day. Sadly, we know that the family of Kurt Hourigan will have one less person in the family. He was someone who, from all accounts, was a very much-loved person not just within the family but amongst friendship groups.

I do want to also acknowledge the 29 miners who did make it to safety – to the refuge chamber where they remained for quite a number of hours until it was safe for them to be extracted from the mine. Can I say, the thought of going down 500 metres below the surface and 3 kilometres into a mine – it really takes a certain type of person to be able to do that day in, day out. I do want to pay tribute to those people who do that each and every day despite the fact that they have lost loved ones and friends. I do want to acknowledge Ronnie Hayden, the secretary of the AWU; Ross Kenna, the organiser; Brett Edgington, the Ballarat trades hall secretary; and the three people that we met with on that Thursday morning. They were absolutely still in shock, but I can tell you they wasted no time thinking about themselves. It was all about how they were going to support their members, their workers, through this incident. And they pulled all the stops out.

I was there that morning, but each and every day that community is suffering and feeling the hurt and the pain. That does not disappear; it will be there for a long, long time to come. I do want to also thank the police, I do want to thank the other emergency services, including volunteers with the CFA, and I do want to thank the Oscar 1 mine rescue specialists of the CFA. They did a wonderful job in keeping others safe, being able to safely extract the 21-year-old miner who is recovering in hospital and also keeping safe the 29 that were able to take shelter in the refuge chamber. They all exited safely.

Can I say this is the beginning of a lot of investigation, a lot of work that needs to happen to get to the bottom of why this happened, because it is incumbent on all of us with every incident that we learn and make the possibility of a future incident happening even more remote. If we can get rid of them altogether, that is what we ought to always aim for. We want, on this side of the house, every single person who goes to work, no matter what their work is, to be able to return home safely. That is not asking a lot. That is why we have industrial manslaughter laws in Victoria. Let us reflect on that. Let us reflect not just on this one incident, which is an absolute tragedy and should never have happened; let us also reflect on our role in this chamber when it comes to supporting legislation that is about enabling people to go to work and return home safely, that is about holding people who do have responsibilities to account for the way that workplaces are managed so that people can go to work and get home safely, because ultimately, we do not live to work, we work to live. We all take our dedication to our work seriously; we all do that. But for goodness sake, the days of people not getting home from work should be over. This should not be allowed to happen.

So I say to everyone in this chamber and those who may be listening: step up and really think about how you vote on issues. Step up and think about how in real, tangible terms you make a difference in the laws that we pass, in holding people to account and in allowing people to get home in one piece.

Motion agreed to.