Health and Safety Society July 2026: Message from the Chair

Dear Health and Safety Society members,

At our latest committee meeting, we returned to a theme that should matter to every person working across the resources sector: how do we lift consistency and standards across our industry so that good safety performance is not dependent on individual effort, local goodwill, or the experience of a few key people?

The robust discussion, with many strongly held and considered opinions, reinforced that our next step as an industry is not simply to write better risk assessments, report a lower TRIFR, or produce another campaign. Those activities have value, but they are not enough. We need a more consistent approach to identifying the conditions that increase risk before harm occurs - including production instability, cost and schedule pressure, changes in supervision, contractor turnover, and the erosion of leadership attention.

This is also the intent behind the design of the International Mine Health and Safety Conference in Perth in October. The conference is being shaped to put the “confer” back into conference: fewer one-way messages, more exchange of ideas, more practical challenge, and more focus on what we can do differently. Our shared ambition should be clear: a fatality rate that remains steady at 3.4 deaths per 100,000 workers is not success. It is a call to lift standards, share what works, and create the conditions for a genuine step change.

Warm regards,

Peter Standish
Chair, AusIMM Health and Safety Society