Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to congratulate all of the rescue teams that took part in this year’s Surface Mines Rescue Competition. The event was held in Kalgoorlie-Boulder from 5 May to 7 May. BHP Billiton’s Iron Ore Newman team won the competition; Barrick Gold’s Plutonic took second place, with Placer Dome Kalgoorlie taking third position. We have a long and proud tradition of mine rescue in Western Australia, starting with Modesto Varischetti, who was trapped in a flooded Bonnievale mine in 1907—a well-known story amongst goldfield miners even today.

The BHP Billiton Newman team comprised of rescue volunteers. It was one of 16 teams from mine sites across Western Australia. To take the overall prize, the Newman team won the overall breathing apparatus skills, the rope rescue and the theory awards. This week’s successful rescue of two miners in the Beaconsfield mine shows not only the expertise and dedication of rescue teams, but also the importance of training for these occasions. Competitions such as this provide rescue teams with a simulated real-life situation, an experience that cannot be learned in a training room.

The other team award winners were Barrick Gold Plutonic for team safety, BHP Billiton Leinster Operations for vehicle extraction, Goldfields Australia St Ives for first aid and best new team, South Kalgoorlie Mines Harmony Gold for hazardous chemicals, Newmont Jundee for team skills and firefighting, and Placer Dome Kalgoorlie for confined space rescue and overall first aid. Individual awards went to Vic Marwick, from BHP Billiton Iron Ore Newman, who won for individual theory; Kevin Broadbent, from BHP Billiton Leinster Operations, who won the much coveted Harry Steinhauser award; Tim Campbell, from Black Swan Nickel, who won for emergency coordination; Carmen Ter Rahe, from Goldfields Mine Management, and Sue Steele, from Mercury Medical, who won for the best scenario; and Cindy Lewis, from Newmont Jundee, who won as best captain. Cindy Lewis is the first female ever recognised as best captain in this long-standing surface rescue tradition.

I also congratulate the owners and the corporate bodies behind those mines; they are usually unacknowledged in these competitions. They clearly recognise—in giving time off to these crews, in supporting the cost of travel, and supporting the cost of equipment and training—it is necessary to have this vital resource ready to go to any part of Australia with the ability to serve these rescues very well. I am very proud to say that integral to the Tasmanian operation were a number of underground miners from the Kalgoorlie goldfields region. I congratulate, once again, all involved in this operation: the people—their camaraderie that leads to team building and their ability to operate and train as a team—and the companies, which will continue to prevent the failure of training operations by making sure members of teams are recruited and supported with all of the resources that the companies can offer.

We do not know when we are going to need another major rescue operation. We have men working underground right around Australia, and every day their lives quite literally hang in the balance. In my opinion, as a representative of so many miners across Western Australia, the single positive thing that has come out of the Beaconsfield incident is the recognition of the product coming from the efforts of so many people working underground around Australia. The efforts of those competing in the Surface Mines Rescue Competition and the hard work they put in will equip Australia to act in an emergency situation should it arise in the future.