How important is it for a National Mine Safety Framework to be established in Australia?

The National Mine Safety Framework (NMSF) aims to achieve a nationally consistent occupational health and safety regime for the Australian mining industry. The implementation of the NMSF will improve the safety of workers, eradicate the need for mine operators to meet different requirements in different jurisdictions, improve the efficiency of occupational health and safety regulation and monitoring, the capacity to identify health and safety trends in the industry, and the mobility of the workforce throughout Australia.

What are the critical issues that need to be addressed regarding mine safety across the country?

The NMSF consists of seven strategies, focused on key areas where consistency across jurisdictions would be most beneficial to the industry. Effectively, these are the critical issues.

The seven strategies are: a nationally consistent legislative framework; competency support; compliance support; a nationally coordinated enforcement protocol; consistent and reliable data collection and analysis; effective consultation mechanisms; and a collaborative approach to research.

How can a NMSF best be achieved by the end of 2011?

The NMSF is developing a set of nationally consistent mine safety regulations to sit under the proposed model Work Health and Safety Act. The regulations will address issues and hazards, specific to mine safety, that are not addressed elsewhere in the Work Health and Safety Act or its regulations.

The NMSF is currently working closely with Safe Work Australia to ensure the development of model mine safety regulations meet Safe Work Australia's timetable for regulatory development, in order to achieve finalisation by the end of 2011.

What response has the NMSF received from the states and territories so far?

While all states and territories and the Commonwealth have formally committed to achieving nationally consistent mine safety legislation, some states (e.g. Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales) currently regulate mine safety outside of the general OHS legislation and regulations.

The NMSF regulations are being developed in a flexible manner to enable states to reflect the nationally agreed provisions in mining specific legislation.

What has the response been like from the South Australian mining industry towards the development of a NMSF?

SafeWork SA released a discussion paper containing proposals for nationally consistent mine safety regulations in February 2010. Feedback received from industry in the current consultation process, closing on 6 April 2010, will be used to inform South Australia's participation in the development of nationally consistent mine safety regulations.

To date, the industry has been generally supportive of a nationally consistent approach to regulating mine safety and has been involved, at the national level, in the development of the NMSF Legislative Framework Principles.

What progress has been made so far towards the establishment of a NMSF? What is its current status?

The NMSF Steering Group is currently developing drafting instructions for nationally consistent mine safety regulations, based on the NMSF Legislative Framework Principles. It is anticipated that the drafting instructions will be provided to Safe Work Australia by the end of May 2010.

How has South Australia so far geared up for and contributed to the NMSF?

South Australia has taken a leading role in this process, through the development of a discussion paper on proposed nationally consistent mine safety regulations.

The South Australian approach has focused on incorporating best practice regulation of mine safety from all Australian mining states into the development of modern, performance based regulations.

We expect that the revised regulations to emerge from this process will provide workplaces with greater flexibility to tackle their own OHS issues in a manner which best suits their situation, while continuing to provide strong protection for the health and safety of mine workers.

In that respect, this review has a number of key guiding principles, including:

• a preference for performance-based regulations with clearly identifiable outcomes, unless prescriptive requirements are unavoidable to ensure safety in high-risk situations;
• keeping formal regulation to the minimum required to achieve a particular outcome, but supplemented by detailed Codes of Practice where appropriate; 
• encouraging mining and quarrying business operators and employees to manage OHS systematically through the key principles of risk assessment, risk management, consultation and duty of care, and; 
• reducing red tape and the regulatory burden on business, whilst ensuring no compromise or reduction in the standard of regulation of mine safety in South Australia.