WORK IN QUARRIES

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 3, 28 September 1944, Page 6

WORK IN QUARRIES

Second Reading Debate On Bill OPPOSITION CRITICISM Conditions governing the working of quarries were discussed during the second reading debate on the Quarries Bill m the House last night. An explanation of the measure was given by the Minister ot Mines, Mr. Webb, who said that it was essentially a consolidating Bill, with the exception of three or four clauses which dealt with the health of workers in quarThe quarries legislation, said the Minister, was first introduced in 1910 as the Stone Quarries Act, and since 1924 there had been no improvements to it. though the method of working quarries bad altered quite a lot. The dust in quarries was nearly ns detrimental to health as that in mines. It was just as easy to get miner’s pythisis in a dusty quarry as in a mine. On the whole, most of the quarries were very well controlled, but there had” been cases of accidents that should not have happened. The Bill protided for the making of regulations to govern the working of these places. The more protection that could be given the men working in dusty places the .better for the whole community. The Bill would be sent to the Goldfields and Mines Committee. “The Minister has given the House all the wrappings of this Bill, but he has not fold us that the main object of it is to exclude coal from the possibility of being quarried,” said Mr. Goosman (Opposition. Waikato). The previous legislation. he added, had been the Stone Quarries Act, but the present measure was simply a Quarries Bill, which defined what could be quarried. Why was coal excluded from the Bill? be asked. Tha Minister: Coal is covered by the mining legislation, and has been from time immemorial. Quarrynien or Miners.

“Why exclude any material that can be won easier by quarrying than by the mining method?” asked Mr. Goosman. There was no comparison,' he said, between producing coal by quarrying and by mining. With quarrying there was no trucking, no gas to contend with, and no timbering, nor was arty expert knowledge required. How was it possible to make rules and conditions tha) governed two totally different methods of producing coal. There must be some ulterior motive in excluding coal. There had been a controversy on the West Coast, some claiming that those producing coal by the open-east method were miners, while the Minister of Mines and the Minister of Works, Mr. Semple, had said that such men were quarrymen. “This Bill makes it clear that a quarryman cannot quarry coal,” said Mr. Goosman. “It means that only miners can produce coal under the open-cast method. Though other materials such as hard stone are taken out of quarries by quarrymen, coal which is obtained under exactly the same conditions must be done under the gules that govern miners. The Bill will put further away the day when New Zealand has sufficient coal for its needs. I wonder if it is dictated by a certain militant section. _ The Bill is not dangerous for what it contains, but for what it docs not contain.”

The Minister; The Bill was drafted before the open-cast system came in. An Opposition member: Then it must have been drafted 40 years ago. Mr. Goosman . >id he could not see that, it was necessary for a man to have a ticket to engage in blasting operations in a quarry. Men did not need a ticket to do blasting work on a farm. “This Bill,” he added,' “is going to deprive the people of the benefits that could be obtained from the open quarrying of coal. Open-Cast Mining. ’The Minister of Works said he could assure Mr. Goosman that there would be no monopoly by any section of the community of open-cast coal mining. It was entirely wrong to suggest that the Bill had been dictated by any militant trade union. No trade union group had ever domineered him or tried to do it, and it was equally wrong for Mr. Goosman to create the impression that the Government was dominated by any section of the people, including militant unions. “We have independent minds of our own and use them,” he added. Why was it, asked Mr. Semple, that every time the coal miners were mentioned the Opposition spoke of them as though they were not citizens of the country, but outlaws. The open-cast system of coal mining had been in existence for lignite coal production for a long time, and it. was only new in relation to bituminous coal getting. lie predicted that the use of “iron men” in mechanizing the open-cast places would considerably reduce production costs. At the Huntly open-east only the boring and shot-firing would be done by manual labour. , Mr. Algie (Opposition. Remuera) said some difficulties were likely to arise in the working of some quarries if the provisions for control were unaltered. He believ.ed the good intentions of the measure could be retained even though some of the clauses were amended to suit modern conditions. He quoted the case of one Auckland quarry where the great majority of the workers were not quarrymen to illustrate one of the problems he visualized.

Mr. Bodkin (Opposition, Central Otago) said the member for Waikato had put his finger on.the spot, namely, that open-cast mining was quarrying for all practical purposes. There had been ii difference of opinion between Cabinet and the miners, and the miners had won. A Minister in another place had won the first, round. Open-cast mining would come under the Mines Act. Mr. Denham (Government, Invercargill) : What’s wrong with that? If the agitators'in the mines were controlled there was nothing to cavil at, said Mr. Bodkin, but a substantial alteration in the existing mining laws would bo required. There was no more decent, section in the community than the ordinary miners. The trouble had been caused by the men who had gone to the tiiines at Hie outbreak of the war to dodge their obligations. The debate was interrupted by the ndjournmeut.