Injured coal miner Simon Turner is suing BHP & four others, unrepresented by legal counsel, in the NSW Supreme Court in an historic wage theft case. Michael West reports.
It’s official. The big court battle is on! This is not merely David versus Goliath. It’s David v Goliath and his goliath mates; it’s one former coal miner from the Hunter Valley with no money, and no lawyers, against BHP, Mt Arthur Coal, Japanese leviathan Chandler Macleod, Hunter Valley Energy Coal and the Government’s secretive billion-dollar coal fund Coal LSL.
Essentially, this is one bloke against The System – the unions, the corporations and the state and federal governments who Turner says conspired to underpay thousands of coal miners over many years. They were deemed ‘casual’ workers in a series of deals done by the CFMEU, BHP and labor hire companies.
Simon Turner, a coal miner who broke his back at Mt Arthur coal mine years ago, has been given the green light by a NSW judge to have his case heard tomorrow, December 12, in the NSW Supreme Court. When Turner was in hospital recovering from his back injury, he discovered he had been classified as a clerical worker, not even a miner.
Working below the poverty line
Living below the poverty line, he was being paid $400 a week when the Award stipulated $137k a year.
Turner is suing the goliaths for unlawful record tampering, false evidence in Court, and continued concealment of employers’ identity; a conspiracy, a massive scam rigged up by BHP and co to underpay workers including himself. A 2.5B wage theft.
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It’s not the first time he has gone to court. Turner has got a class action lawsuit up before, among other actions, only to be betrayed by his own lawyers who failed to deliver critical evidence to the Court. Everybody has walked away. Just too big.
And already, in this case, which is set down for a case management hearing tomorrow, BHP and its army of lawyers are seeking to suppress documents which have already been filed before the Court.
They have suppressed the story for years.
Too big to fail
According to Turner, BHP and one of its many labor hire companies Chandler Macleod have ignored “Federal Court rulings, ATO legislation, Commonwealth laws, and their own statutory obligations, while deliberately falsifying my employment identity and lying under oath to the Australian Parliament”.
If BHP and co don’t succeed in getting a closed court or having the matter thrown out on some technicality, they are likely to claim their actions are mistakes, ‘administrative oversights. Turner has told MWM they have “knowingly committed against an injured coal miner who is homeless, suffering from chronic pain, severe depression, and PTSD — all conditions caused directly by your conduct and sustained cover-ups”.
Since 2015, he claims, they have collectively:
- Defied judicial findings including the 2015 FWC Stanton matter and the 2017 Altobelli ruling, both confirming Chandler Macleod Group Ltd (ABN 33 090 555 052) was my lawful employer under the Black Coal Mining Industry Award 2010;
- Tampered with Commonwealth records by retrospectively altering my Coal LSL employer ABN to Ready Workforce (ABN 54 088 288 037) — an entity that never held the mine contract, never paid me, and never remitted any statutory contributions;
- Breached Federal law, including but not limited to:
- Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) – s 137.1 (1)(c): providing false or misleading information to a Commonwealth entity;
- Coal Industry Act 2001 (NSW) – ss 43–46: failure to maintain accurate levy and employee data;
- Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) – ss 45, 550, 718: contraventions of industrial instruments, accessorial liability, and misrepresentation;
- Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) – ss 180–184: breaches of directors’ and officers’ duties; and
- Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (Cth) – ss 15 and 26: obligations to act ethically, lawfully, and in good faith in managing public money and information.
“This deceit is compounded by false evidence given to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee on 9 October 2025 by [two people] who denied under oath that Coal LSL possesses the power to verify or amend employer data — despite written correspondence proving they exercised exactly those powers when unlawfully changing my ABN in March 2025.”
These acts he says constitute misleading Parliament under privilege and obstruction of justice.
“The documentary record — including ATO PAYG summaries, Mine Super data, the Crix Affidavit (2016), the Altobelli judgment (2017), and Coal LSL’s own emails — all prove that BHP and its conspirators knew precisely who his employer was, “what contract applied, and that this manipulation of records was deliberate.”
MWM has reviewed the documents and they appear to be sound – solid evidence that BHP and co “have defrauded a Commonwealth fund, misled regulators, and inflicted years of financial and psychological harm on a worker already injured in the course of his employment”.
Turner has demanded to know, in writing, the legal basis under which Coal LSL altered ABN records after certified levy audits, why this change was made despite judicial findings, ATO data, and statutory evidence to the contrary; and why false statements were presented to the Australian Senate under oath.
Let’s hope he finds out, because justice is due not only for Simon Turner but for thousands of other casual coal miners ripped off by the labor hire system.
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