TRANSCRIPT
A 37 year-old man has been killed in a rock collapse at the Ballarat Gold Mine at Mount Clear in Victoria.
Another 21 year-old man has been taken to the Royal Alfred Hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Australians woke Thursday morning to news one miner had been freed and another was still trapped.
But the Australian Workers Union says it had already been informed Wednesday night the trapped man had died.
The union says it received a call from concerned miners around 5pm on Wednesday and organisers travelled to the site where the two men had been pinned, 500 metres underground and about 3 kilometres from the mine's entrance.
Another 28 miners who had taken refuge in the mine's safety pod were successfully brought to the surface a short time later.
Ronnie Hayden is the AWU Victorian Secretary.
With one man dead and another still fighting for his life, Mr Hayden says he has serious questions about how the incident has been handled.
"My understanding is that they reached him pretty much straight away. We were informed yesterday, of the fatality. Having Victorians and Australians sitting back, hoping for a good result when we knew what the result was. I can't understand why that would've been withheld."
Mr Hayden says workers at the mine have previously raised concerns about the type of mining conducted at the site, known as air legging.
Air-legging is a manual kind of mining which involves two miners holding a drill.
"This form of air legging shouldn't be used to do this type of work. This type of air-legging should be used - if it's ever used at all - to investigate the ground. The information that we're getting back was, this was a quick, cheap and easy way to chase gold."
The company that owns the mine, Victory Metals, confirmed in a statement they brought the man's body to the surface around 6am on Thursday morning.
The statement expressed sympathies to family and colleagues but did not indicate when they knew he had died.
Ballarat Police Acting Inspector Lisa MacDougall says health workers declared the man dead at 5:20am on Thursday.
"Ambulance Victoria are required to assess a patient to be able to declare their health status. And they (the man) had to be assessed by a Ambulance Victoria Representative and Ambulance Victoria - the scene was needed to be made safe before they were able to access that patient."
Operations at the Ballarat Gold Mine have been closed while an investigation is conducted by Victoria Police, the coroner and WorkSafe Victoria.
Acting Inspector MacDougall says Victoria Police will not be assessing the safety of work practices, and that part of the investigation will be conducted by Work Safe Victoria.
The Australian Workers Union will be pushing the Victorian government to take criminal action.
Ronnie Hayden again.
"I think that the union movement did very well to lobby the government to get industrial manslaughter introduced. We now need to get them to grow some teeth, and start actually using it for what it's there for."
Victoria introduced workplace manslaughter laws which came into effect in July 2020.
Those found guilty will face fines of up to $16.5 million dollars, while individuals face up to 20 years in jail.
