Quarry professionals from across New South Wales have dedicated their time to improving safety on their sites at the 2025 NSW Quarrying and Mining Safety and Health Conference.
When was the last time you asked your team where they think they might get hurt? How often do you watch how work is done on site?
These are some of the key questions that were posed to more than 185 quarry professionals at the 2025 Quarrying and Mining Safety and Health Conference.
The event, located in the Hunter Valley, offered an opportunity for safety experts to discuss the critical safety challenges facing quarries and how sites can improve. IQA president Michael Close said the conference helped start important safety conversations.
“If someone takes one initiative or one idea back with them to their site and shares it with their team, whether they implement it immediately or six months down the line, it can help avoid an incident or injury,” he said.
“Not only is the conference helping get the right message across, but the engagement and networking are vital.”
The conference was launched with a networking event hosted by comedian Anthony “Lehmo” Lehmann.
TASC Solutions managing director Chris Georgiou said the networking opportunities provided by the dinner was important for the sector.
“You get to meet new people and share stories, ideas, and ways to solve problems,” he said.
“While many people in the room are competitors, they’re also working together as one big quarry sector team to find efficiencies and ways to improve safety.”
Georgiou was among the many expert speakers who offered practical insights for the sector throughout the event.
One of the main issues he sought to address was ensuring that mine and quarry operators were aware of their legal responsibilities.
“Legislation is difficult to navigate,” he said. “Mine and quarry operators also have time constraints and the pressures of running a business, which means they have little time to dissect and interpret legislation to implement it on site.”
The NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development principal inspector Daniel Howard provided a clear and realistic look at the last 18 months of safety incident data.
Howard said strong leadership within the sector is needed to drive safety further, as part of a cultural shift that will take years. However, the good news is that there are many in the sector that are already on the way to making these changes.
Physical safety was not the only subject of discussion, either. Rachel Drew from the law firm Thomson Geer spoke about how quarries can address hidden psychosocial strains.
“In addition to addressing things like workforce shifts, demographic changes, an ageing workforce, and skills shortages, we have also seen the first safety prosecution against an employer for a death by suicide,” she said.
“A common psychosocial stress in quarrying is isolation. There’s often remote work involved in quarrying, and when mixed with the pressure of deadlines and a high level of workload, this can lead to significant stress.
“This is in addition to other strains that exist across many sectors, such as conflict between staff members, bullying, a lack of role clarity, inadequate support and supervision. There’s a whole range of issues that can contribute.”
In many cases, these psychosocial risks are not recognised in the same way that physical risks are. In a sector that prides itself on being tough, there can still be a lot of stigma around speaking up about stress and loneliness.
Drew said the most important thing for quarries to start doing is to include psychosocial risks as part of a risk assessment framework, like how physical risks are assessed.
“Visible commitment from leaders to psychological safety can also make a huge difference,” she said. “And it can show the team that psychological safety is valued equally with physical safety.”
The conference also featured discussions about the future of the quarrying sector, with a strong focus on education and supporting the career journeys from entry to certification.
It also provided a platform for quarry managers from Heidelberg Materials Australia, Boral, Evolution Mining, and Metromix to provide their insights.
IQA chief executive officer Jane Schmitt said she was pleased by the level of engagement at the conference and the priority that attendees had placed on workplace health and safety.
“Quarry teams see the people they are working with as family members,” she said. “They really care about them and want to make sure that nothing goes wrong or puts them in danger.
“It’s no surprise that they are making safety a priority, because they want to make sure their people, their sites, and their communities are safe.
“Events like this one let the quarry sector know they have the support of others in the sector and from the IQA.”•
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