{"id":218945,"date":"2025-10-17T00:13:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T00:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/218945\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T00:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T00:13:11","slug":"coronado-curragh-fined-for-death-of-miner-clark-peadon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/218945\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronado Curragh fined for death of miner Clark Peadon"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Queensland mining union says an $80,000 fine handed to an international mining company this week is not enough of a deterrent for companies to avoid putting workers in unsafe situations.<\/p>\n

International mining giant Coronado Global Resources, through its subsidiary Coronado Curragh, was fined $80,000, plus court costs of $28,572.78, in Rockhampton Magistrates Court on Wednesday over the death of a worker in November 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No conviction was recorded.<\/p>\n

The fine was for breaching health and safety obligations under the Coal Mining and Safety Act 1999 after experienced worker Clark Peadon, 54, died on site at the Curragh North open-cut mine<\/a>, north of Blackwater.<\/p>\n

The company was charged three years after the incident,<\/a> with the maximum penalty under the Act $689,250.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Mitch Hughes described the fine as appalling for the loss of someone’s life.\u00a0 (ABC Tropical North: Abbey Halter)<\/p>\n

Mining and Energy Union Queensland district president Mitch Hughes said while he understood the courts were limited by the penalties they could issue, the fine was not enough.<\/p>\n

“To sit here and see that they’ve only been given an $80,000 fine for someone’s life is pretty inadequate in our view,” he said.<\/p>\n

According to Queensland government data, in the past five years seven Queensland coal mine workers have died.<\/p>\n

“If the government and the minister and the regulator want to do something about deterring companies from putting workers in unsafe situations, then that’s probably a good place to start, is looking at increasing the penalties that are available,” Mr Hughes said.<\/p>\n

New safety technology introduced\"A<\/p>\n

Curragh mine in central Queensland.\u00a0 (ABC News: Jemima Burt)<\/p>\n

At the time of the accident, Mr Peadon was conducting cable relocation work when he was crushed by a dragline shoe.<\/p>\n

Court documents show the company has spent $5 million over the past three years on developing an industry-first engineering system to prevent precisely the type of incident from occurring again.<\/p>\n

The Proximity Awareness System (PAS) uses three different sensing technologies \u2014 optical, light detection and ranging and radar \u2014 to create three bands of detection and vision around the dragline to automatically stop it from operating if it senses a person’s presence in that area.<\/p>\n

The documents show this system has been installed on three of the four draglines at the mine site, with the fourth to be installed next year.<\/p>\n

Peer mining companies and RSHQ have also visited the mine to view the PAS in operation.<\/p>\n

As part of its defence, the company said it had also reviewed and added new safety procedures following the accident.<\/p>\n

More improvements needed\"Coal\"<\/p>\n

More than 2,000 workers are employed at the Curragh mine in the Bowen Basin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Coronado Curragh took ownership of the Curragh North mine seven years ago and employs 400 workers and 2,000 contractors.<\/p>\n

Eighteen months prior to Mr Peadon’s death, another worker also died at the Curragh mine site.<\/p>\n

Donald Rabbit, 33, died in January 2020 when he was trapped by a heavy falling tyre and rim.<\/p>\n

Coronado Curragh and mining contractor Thiess were initially charged with breaching the Coal Mining Safety and Health Act 1999, but all charges were later dropped<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Hughes said while there had been some safety improvements for miners since Mr Peadon’s death, more needed to be done.<\/p>\n

“We have sadly still seen fatalities occur,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The work to improve health and safety for all coal mine work has never stopped.<\/p>\n

“We’ve obviously got to look at these investigations and determine some outcomes to prevent them happening again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Queensland mining union says an $80,000 fine handed to an international mining company this week is not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,102797,99,52165,133647,19165,102741,12334,133649,133646,1108,133644,133648,6827,133645,133641,133650,133651,133642,133643],"class_list":["post-218945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blackwater","tag-business","tag-central-queensland","tag-clark-peadon","tag-coal","tag-coal-mine","tag-coal-mining","tag-coronado-global-resources","tag-coronado-resources","tag-court","tag-court-sentence","tag-curragh-north-open-cut-mine","tag-mining","tag-mining-company","tag-mining-incident","tag-mitch-hughes","tag-queensland-mining-and-energy-union","tag-whs","tag-worker-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}