The Guardian 7 June, 2006
BHP charged again over death
Three criminal charges have been laid against BHP Billiton in relation to last year’s death of a father of two who suffocated on mud and dust, 500 metres below its Olympic Dam uranium mine.
The South Australian Industrial Relations Court laid the counts, less than a year after an independent inquiry warned the minerals giant its AWA-based strategy impacted on safety standards.
Perth lawyer, Mark Ritter, found BHP’s use of individual contracts was a "factor which has impacted and continues to impact on the successful implementation of safety systems". (See page 12.)
He was reporting, to the WA Government, on the circumstances of three deaths at BHP Pilbarra facilities in the space of a couple of months.
BHP is also likely to face charges over those deaths.
WA authorities said last year they would lay four charges over the death of Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union member, James Wadley, in a horrific gas explosion.
Subsequently, the fiancé of former union delegate, Corey Bentley, killed at the Nelson Port iron ore refinery, filed papers suing BHP Billiton for negligence.
Last week’s South Australian IRC announcement over the death of 38-year-old, Karl Eibi, provoked a storm of protest from family, unions and politicians.
If found guilty, Australia’s largest company would face maximum fines of $100,000 on each count.
Eibi’s father, Max, told a South Australian newspaper his son told him, three weeks before his death, he would have been safer in Iraq than working for BHP Billiton.
The Australian Workers’ Union SA State Secretary, Wayne Hanson, labelled sentencing options a "joke" and called for an urgent review of the state’s Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Act.
He said fines were not good enough when negligence was found to have cost lives.
Independent MLC Nick Xenophon described the penalty regime as "woefully inadequate". He called for a parliamentary inquiry into how workplace deaths were investigated.