Mining and resources employers carry a compliance load that few other industries match: two modern awards with a hard boundary between them, enterprise agreements layered on top, mine safety legislation that changes shape at every state border, and a workforce model built on labour hire and FIFO rosters. Brookvale HR Solutions, through Daniel Holbrook, gives operators direct access to a senior HR practitioner who works across all of it, with no junior handoffs and no lock-in contracts.
Many industries answer to a single modern award and a single safety regulator. Mining answers to two awards separated by a coverage boundary that turns on what is being mined, enterprise agreements that frequently displace the awards altogether, and mine safety statutes that differ fundamentally between Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales. Add regulated labour hire arrangements under the Same Job Same Pay reforms and psychosocial duties that bite hardest on FIFO operations, and the compliance picture becomes genuinely layered rather than merely long.
Many operators in the 10 to 200 employee range run this entire load without an internal HR function. The site manager absorbs it, or the payroll officer does, until an incident, an underpayment claim or a labour hire order forces the question. Engaging a specialist before that point is considerably cheaper than engaging one after it.
Award coverage in mining splits along the coal boundary. The Black Coal Mining Industry Award 2020 covers employers of coal mining employees and their coal mining employees. The Mining Industry Award 2020 covers the rest of the sector, including metalliferous and other mineral extraction, processing, transport and handling, and the servicing and maintenance of mining plant and equipment, and it expressly excludes operations covered by the Black Coal award. Classifying a role under the wrong award is not a technicality: rates, allowances, rostering provisions and dispute settlement all differ.
In practice, enterprise agreements frequently displace award reliance in this sector, particularly in black coal, where the award itself carves out employees covered by enterprise instruments. That does not simplify compliance. It means the binding document is often a negotiated agreement whose terms must be read against the award safety net, the National Employment Standards and, increasingly, the pay rates of other employers' agreements through Same Job Same Pay orders.
Mine safety is the area where assumptions are most dangerous, because the three major mining states run three different models. An operator with sites in more than one of these states is running more than one safety compliance framework at once, each with its own regulator, statutory roles and reporting obligations. Employment law, by contrast, is national: the Fair Work Act 2009 applies to mining employers in every state, whichever safety regime their sites answer to.
Mine safety sits outside the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld). Coal mines fall under the Coal Mining Safety and Health Act 1999, and metalliferous mines and quarries under the Mining and Quarrying Safety and Health Act 1999, both administered by Resources Safety and Health Queensland.
The Work Health and Safety Act 2020 (WA), in force since 31 March 2022, applies to mining directly, with the Work Health and Safety (Mines) Regulations 2022 (WA) adding mining-specific requirements on top of the unified framework.
The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) applies to all workplaces including mines, supplemented by the Work Health and Safety (Mines and Petroleum Sites) Act 2013 for mining-specific requirements.
Mining relies on labour hire more heavily than almost any other Australian industry, and the Same Job Same Pay reforms were aimed squarely at that model. Under the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes) Act 2023, which amended the Fair Work Act 2009 with provisions commencing 15 December 2023, the Fair Work Commission can make regulated labour hire arrangement orders requiring labour hire employees to be paid no less than they would receive under the host employer's enterprise agreement. Orders have been able to take effect since 1 November 2024.
The first order landed in coal mining: labour hire provider WorkPac, supplying the Callide mine host Batchfire, was required to pay no less than the rate derived from the Callide Mine Union Enterprise Agreement 2021, with orders at Bengalla and Maules Creek following. For hosts, this changes the economics of labour hire. For providers, it creates a pay obligation pegged to an agreement they did not negotiate. Both sides need their arrangements reviewed against it.
Under work health and safety law, a person conducting a business or undertaking must eliminate psychosocial risks so far as is reasonably practicable, and where that is not possible, minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable. Safe Work Australia's Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice names remote or isolated work among the hazards it covers, and fatigue management is a distinct work health and safety duty that compressed rosters make acute. Both sit at the centre of the FIFO and DIDO model: extended swings away from family, camp accommodation and the mental health load that comes with them.
This is no longer a wellbeing initiative to fund when margins allow. It is a safety duty, and it intersects with rostering design, fatigue management, complaint handling and incident response. Operators who treat psychosocial risk with the same discipline they apply to physical hazards, with identified risks, documented controls and review cycles, are in a defensible position. Many operators are not yet there.
Daniel Holbrook is a former Military Police Officer who holds a Cert IV in Government Investigations, a Cert IV in WHS and an MBA, and is an AHRI member. That background maps directly onto what mining and resources employers actually need help with: safety-adjacent HR, site incident response, conduct investigations that hold up under scrutiny, and the documentation discipline that separates a defensible decision from an expensive one.
Years of frontline investigative work under formal procedural standards, directly applicable to site incident response and conduct investigations in mining and resources operations.
The formal qualification recognised across federal and state agencies for conducting administrative investigations, trained to the procedural standard the Fair Work Commission expects.
Every engagement is delivered by Daniel personally. There is no team to be handed down to, which means the person who scopes the work is the person who does it, whether your sites are in the Bowen Basin, the Pilbara or the Hunter Valley.
Read more about Daniel's qualifications and experience on the About page.
The compliance questions mining and resources operators ask most, answered directly.
Site incidents, conduct allegations and complaints investigated by a former Military Police Officer with Cert IV Government Investigations. Findings that hold up under scrutiny.
View Workplace InvestigationsAward and agreement classification, rates and allowances reviewed before an underpayment becomes a claim. Fixed fee, prioritised findings.
View the Wage Compliance AuditPsychosocial hazards identified, controls documented and review cycles established, built for workforces where isolation and fatigue are structural.
View the Psychosocial Safety GuardA 30-minute call costs nothing and tells you whether you have a compliance gap, an incident risk or just a question. Daniel answers directly.
