| 41 MinEx 03 318 1198 admin@southernscreenworks.co.nz 50 Bealey Rd, RD1, Aylesbury www.southernscreenworks.co.nz On site mobile crushing and screening with modern tracked machines • Deliveries available from our Aylesbury Quarry of AP20, AP40, AP65, boulders, sand, dust & premix. REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT T T Aimee Wilson Awareness needed for workplace safety MinEx chief executive, Wayne Scott, who is also CEO for the Aggregate and Quarry Association (AQA), received a chief inspector’s award at the QuarryNZ Awards in July, and a life membership of AQA, recognising his impressive work ensuring the industry is a lot safer. “That engagement needs to happen and that’s where we have excellence. We have over 400 people going through our workshops every year.” The exceptional work of MinEx, New Zealand’s Health and Safety Council for the extractive sector has been recognised through two recent business industry awards. Chief executive, Wayne Scott, who is also CEO for the Aggregate and Quarry Association (AQA), received a chief inspector’s award at the QuarryNZ Awards in July, and a life membership of AQA, recognising his impressive work ensuring the industry is a lot safer. Wayne returned to New Zealand in 2017 after 30 years in Australia, where he managed four quarries and six concrete plants in Queensland, and also worked for the Queensland mines inspectorate. There, he learned a lot of the Health & Safety skills he brought back to this country, and says the difference between the two is huge, with New Zealand still having an “abysmal” record. “But we’re not as bad as the US or France.” New Zealand’s fatalities are twice that of Australia, but after several years of new industry regulations, the rates are finally starting to come down. “Kiwis have that mentality of ‘shit happens,’” he says. MinEx holds Health & Safety workshops throughout the country every year at 15 different regional locations, following what Wayne believes are some serious fundamental flaws across New Zealand industries. “Pike River should’ve been a wake-up call for all of New Zealand. And we as a sector take that seriously.” New Zealand has 3000 quarries – 1100 of which are commercial, and about 65 mines, the majority of which are small alluvial. Wayne says Health & Safety is problematic in New Zealand and the key is getting awareness to people directly. “That engagement needs to happen and that’s where we have excellence. We have over 400 people going through our workshops every year.” MinEx, which is industry funded, also develops Health & Safety resources that are available to work sites. But good habits take time. “You can’t expect people that have done something the same way for 50 years to do it differently,” Wayne says. The Pike River disaster in 2010 wasn’t a surprise to him, and 16 recommendations came out of the Government’s Royal Commission into the incident. “The fundamental flaws they found at Pike River were present in many workplaces in New Zealand,” he says. MinEx provides centralised industry representation with the Government and other agencies on Health & Safety legislation, regulations, guidelines and training. The company represented the mining, quarrying and tunnelling sector as the Government developed the new Health and Safety at Work Act and associated regulations/ guidelines. Wayne is retiring in January, but he loves getting out and talking to those at the coal face, so he’s going to stay on and continue delivering the workshops for a while. He’s proud of what the company has achieved over the past 12 years, and since the industry regulations were overhauled in 2022. The life membership of AQA was his biggest surprise – especially since he was part of the team organising two others for retired board members at the industry awards. “I love my job. You just do what you do.”
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