A disastrous policy

The findings of Queensland mining warden and coroner Frank Windridge's inquiry into the explosion at Moura No. 2 coal mine on August 7, 1994, highlight BHP's culpability for the 11 miners' deaths. More than that, they indicate that the "accident" was something else — a result of deliberate management decision to send miners underground even when the high risk of a gas explosion was known. Windridge called the episode "a passage of management neglect and non-decision which must never be repeated in the coal mining industry". Minerals Council of Australia executive director David Buckingham called it a "systems failure". The decision by the shift supervisors not to inform miners of the conditions in the mine, or to withdraw them or keep them out of the mine, was rather a murderous attitude to the health and safety of the miners. BHP's belated acceptance of full accountability for workers' safety and responsibility for the accident rings rather hollow alongside its rejection of any criminal liability. The question of why Australia's biggest company was prepared to risk the lives of its workers has not been satisfactorily answered. Possibly more disturbing was the report's finding that the Queensland Minerals and Energy Department "was prepared to accept a level of death and injury in the industry so long as budget targets were met". The staffing levels of the inspectorate office responsible were found to be "lamentably inadequate". This situation is a direct result of the decreasing funding afforded to the public sector in general, and industry regulatory bodies in particular, over recent years. This pernicious trend toward non-interventionist "smaller" government and public sector "savings" has claimed lives in Moura, in the Adelaide salami scandal and doubtless on other occasions. The salami case proved again the irresponsibility of businesses when it comes to "self-regulation". Now cutbacks to funding for meat inspection by the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service have helped to create a situation in which Australian meat exports to the US may be restricted. Despite such lessons, Australian governments continue a policy of public sector funding cutbacks virtually regardless of the social consequences. This trend has been led by Labor governments federally, and is implemented by both Labor and Coalition state governments. The Carr Labor government's General Government Debt Elimination Bill, introduced to the NSW parliament last October, makes this policy law. Included in the bill was the goal of eliminating "net debt for the general government sector by 30 June 2020". Achieving this goal must rely not only on drastic cutbacks to public spending, but also on short-term financial gains from sales of public assets. Despite Labor's denials, handing control to capitalists through privatisation is part of the same plan that shifts government responsibilities to the private sector — responsibilities that contradict business's aim of maximising profits. It's time to turn around this killer policy. Protection of our society and all its members requires social control of business.