September 26, 2025
This speech was delivered by MEU General President Tony Maher at the 2025 Northern Mining & NSW Energy District Annual Memorial Day. It has been reproduced in full.
I’d like to begin today by acknowledging the special guests who are here today, including our political representatives, all the MEU members and delegates from Lodges across the District, our retired miners and of course – most importantly – the family and friends of those workers whose names are etched on the wall, whose lives were tragically taken too soon by our industry.
The wall before us represents the cumulative history of hundreds of years of coal mining in the Hunter. It tells the story of our region an industry from early colonial settlement and the exploitation of convict labour, through the Federation of Australia and into the modern era. It tells this story via the workers who were killed at work in our dangerous yet vital industry.
The wall was first unveiled in March 1996 by then-Prime Minister Paul Keating. It was a conscious decision by the designers of the memorial that the wall should be outdoors, to always be accessible to the loved ones of those lost, and to create a solemn space for reflection for the broader community.
Nearly thirty years later, the Jim Comerford Memorial Wall has become an intrinsic part of the Hunter mining community, and the annual Memorial Day one of the most important dates in our calendar. I had the great honour of unveiling the restored memorial wall in 2021, and I’m proud of the small contribution I’ve made in ensuring the history and tragedy of our industry is immortalised in beautiful black granite. I am certain that this memorial will serve as a testament to the sacrifices of our community and industry for many generations to come.
Before I go any further, I must acknowledge Craig Hugo, the latest addition to this wall who was tragically killed at the decommissioned Austar mine since we were all last gathered together. Craig’s death has had devastating effect on his loved ones and workmates. I hope this memorial can bring them some solace and comfort.
Craig’s death is also a sobering reminder that mines remain dangerous to workers even when they have ceased being productive. Employers must be held to robust safety standards even when mines cease to generate profit, and approach care and maintenance or closure.
Just as with Craig, each name on this wall represents a great tragedy – a spouse, parent, child or sibling who never returned home at the end of their shift. Their loss reverberates through the community and across generations, impacting on countless others in their absence.
The wall also tells the story of the Northern District coalfields from the earliest days of colonial settlement and unfree convict labour. The age range of the deceased, from eight to eighty, reveal an industry unrestrained by concerns about health and safety. The scale and frequency of multi-person fatalities is also striking, particularly when you take in to account the much smaller and tightly knit coal community of the time. They betray the perilous nature of the work, wherein miners were taking their lives into their own hands in a way that would be incomprehensible to us today.
However, the wall also shows the progression in the fight to eliminate workplace fatalities from the very beginning up until today. The very first miners unions in Australia formed right here in the Hunter, ad-hoc arrangements springing up around individual pits, eventually morphing into the Lodge structure at the heart of our Union today.
We know from records at the time that protection of life and limb was a primary motivator for getting organised, in addition to what might be considered traditional industrial matters. Length of shift and fatigue, as well as adequate lighting underground, were some of the first issues campaigned on by these proto-unions, understanding from the very beginning that if workers didn’t stand up for their own safety and conditions, no one would.
As these local unions coalesced into a district-wide structure, a new demand emerged from the miners. They sought to elect one of their own, a worker with first-hand experience at the coalface, to represent their interests in regard to health and safety. These representatives would be deputised with the power to stop unsafe work and be consulted on any changes to the regular performance of work.
These deputies would eventually be formalised into what we know today as Check Inspectors, or Industry Safety and Health Representatives, a system of elected, union-employed safety experts whose role is enshrined in legislation and who remain unashamedly representative of workers. This unique system of worker involvement in their own safety is one of the great prides of our union, one which will continue to celebrate as we approach the 150th anniversary of this tradition.
Our union safety champions are only one component of how we manage risk in the workplace, however. We have seen time and again that securing the best outcomes requires tripartite action between workers, industry, and government. Real, lasting progress can only be made when these stakeholders work in concert and pull in the same direction.
We’re lucky, in NSW, that this collaborative relationship is formalised through Coal Services, a joint body between the MEU and NSW Mining whose representatives are with us today. While we may not always see eye-to-eye on every matter, Coal Services allows these issues to be hashed out in a respectful and balanced forum, wherein the health and safety of mineworkers is the absolute priority.
Mineworkers in the Hunter have benefited immeasurably from this constructive partnership. It has delivered mandatory and effective health screening, staying on top of mine dust lung disease, which has always been the scourge of our industry. It’s also ensured that our world-class Mines Rescue brigades, whose work is unenviable but critical for the safety of workers, are well-trained, well-funded and independent.
However, we must also recognise that the greatest improvements to the safety of our mines have been in response to some of the lowest moments of our industry’s history. The MEU has fought hard to ensure that every name on this wall results in changes on the ground, through agitation, education and legislation.
For example, the disaster at Bellbird, 102 years ago this month, led to the most significant rewrite of mine safety legislation in the history of New South Wales. Addressing the inadequacies that led to the disaster was hard-fought for but eventually won.
It would ultimately take two years, two coronial inquests, a royal commission and a Labor state government for the law to be changed, introducing many of the basic mine safety standards we take for granted today. These included the mandated use of safety lamps, banning the use of internal combustion engines underground, and setting minimum acceptable ventilation standards.
Likewise, the tragedy in Gretley in 1996, which I remember all too well, proved to be a step forward for accountability and responsibility in our industry. It took over seven years of fighting in court and in the media, but for the first time in over two hundred years of the NSW coal industry, management figures were prosecuted for the deaths of workers in their mine. All the thousands of names on this wall before us, the lives destroyed through unsafe working conditions, and it took until the early 2000s for anyone to be held account.
These names are a reminder that the job of improving our standards around safety is never finished. Rather, safety must be actively upheld, reviewed, and iterated as an ongoing process, responding to changing conditions in our industry.
We are proud of the progress we’ve made, moving beyond the frequent mass-casualty events which populate the much of the Wall, however that is no excuse to be complacent – as every name added to this wall reminds us.
We must remember that the potential for disaster that claimed all these lives immortalised here remains in our industry; and use the memory of those lost before us as motivation to improve conditions for those who come after.
Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the vital work my General Vice President, Stephen Smyth, is doing across jurisdictions to develop national best practices for safety. While today’s focus is naturally on those terrible failures of our safety regimes, the coal industry in many ways leads the pack on worker safety, particularly in mining. Steve is working to develop a framework of the best practices in each jurisdiction to bring standards in line, ensuring that you aren’t at more risk just because you work on the wrong side of a state border.
Additionally, these practices can then be applied to other kinds of mining, including metalliferous and rare earth, where the robust and collaborative approach to safety we experience in coal has yet to be established. Those of you who are experienced in non-coal mining would know that we are miles ahead when it comes to safety. Steve has also been working collaboratively with miners unions in other countries, including in developing economies from Africa to South East Asia, to lift their safety standards for the benefit of all workers.
As I leave here today, I ask all of you to hold the memory of the workers on this wall with you as you return to your workplaces. Please never allow complacency to fester, speak up when something is not right, and continue the work you all do to improve safety and ensure every miner gets home at the end of their shift.