Health and safety continues to be at the forefront of the mining sector, while the regulatory process of permitting has more changes ahead, in theory to streamline and speed up the process.
The annual, three-day conference of the New Zealand branch of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, in Dunedin this week, has had a strong health and safety emphasis, as agencies, consultants and companies give updates on risk assessment.
Numerous speakers this week have mentioned the pending fifth anniversary of the Pike River tragedy, when in November 2010, 29 miners died in a series of explosions in the mine.
WorkSafe chief mines inspector Tony Forster said WorkSafe and the High Hazard Unit have a target for a 25% reduction in workplace hazards and death.
''Our target is not to have a catastrophe ... our target is nil [deaths],'' he told more than 150 delegates at yesterday morning's opening session.
On the aftermath of Pike River, the Hazard Unit was set up, a Royal Commission was held and WorkSafe was established in 2013, all alongside a raft of regulations.
Mr Forster, who has decades of UK mine safety behind him, said while the regulatory regime ''was not perfect, but not bad either'', a key point was that the industry and regulators had to break the cycle of new regulations being introduced and implemented with emphasis, but controls weakening after a period until another catastrophe occurred.
MinEx chief executive Les McCracken highlighted that under the new regulations, quarries and alluvial gold miners were not covered, and given they were ''essentially doing the same job'', had to be brought back under the umbrella of those regulations.
''Trying to improve health and safety in quarries and mining is a complementary exercise,'' he said.
MinEx (NZ Mining Industry Safety Council) is industry funded, to be the proactive link between the industry and regulators, to assist in forming legislation and regulation, an in implementing health and safety.
He reiterated Mr Forster's observation, that there was some complacency in the sector, in that if there were no serious accidents ''over a couple of years'', then the company and its staff were considered ''safe''.
A nationwide map pulled together by MinEx showed hundreds of quarries across the country, the vast majority of which were yet to be engaged in health and safety talks.
Mr McCracken said with communication and engagement between all parties a key point, it was time to ''flush out the non-engagement'' companies in the regional areas, who were ''in some cases hiding from the enforcer''.
On the permitting front, New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals (NZPM) general manager James Stevenson-Wallace said a new national catalogue of mines was being developed, which would also be of assistance in health and safety decisions.
He expected ''tens of thousands'' of historic maps, including from archives, museums and ''even garages'', would be collated and digitally scanned on to a database.
This would provide a strong information base in assisting planning and development for mines, he said.
''Health and safety is not inadvertently a party. Lives are at risk,'' he said.
While he said he had ''some enthusiasm'' for developing a ''one-stop model'' for permit applicants to use, he also said ongoing project management for large permit holders was an option.
New ''operational guidelines'' had been developed during the past six months by NZPM, including priority for applicants, health and safety and and scoping studies, in order that the processing of permits improved.
