My contribution to a board
I would bring a board three things that industrial companies often lack around the table. The first is working knowledge of the hazards that sit between safety and people: harassment in remote accommodation, fatigue from travel and rosters, isolation, and the supervision that decides whether any control is actually used. I have managed them as a plant safety manager, as a contractor's safety head and as a chief people officer, and I know which of the measures put in front of a board mean something.
The second is industrial relations experience where the stakes are local. I have negotiated or overseen fourteen enterprise agreements, including one settled during protected industrial action, and I have advised a board on whether to use a termination application. Directors of companies with regional plants are usually shown what a dispute costs, but seldom what it costs to win it a particular way.
The third is workforce transition with the town in view. I have put a redundancy case and a retention case side by side for a board, accepted a lower return for the second and been held to the conditions attached.
I would not present myself as a financial expert or a remuneration specialist. My natural committees are health, safety and environment, which I could chair, and people and remuneration, where I would serve a full cycle first.
Judgement in practice
01Advising a board against a termination application
In April 2022, with stoppages at Ferrison costing about A$3 million a fortnight, our lawyers proposed applying to terminate the expired agreement and our chief operating officer supported it. The chair of the people and remuneration committee asked for a second paper, and I wrote it. I set out what the application would probably achieve, a faster settlement, and what it would cost in a town where the plant provides one job in six, and I put the wage cost of my own alternative on the first page. The managing director decided not to file. The settlement cost about A$4.6 million more than budget over three years, and there has been no industrial action since. As a director I would ask management for the cost of how a dispute is won, not only for how long it lasts.
02Asking a committee to read a rising complaint count as progress
When we introduced camp conditions and an external reporting line in 2023, I told the health, safety and environment committee that harassment reports from field crews would probably rise sharply and that the rise would mean people had begun to trust the channel. One director asked how the committee would tell trust from deterioration. I proposed reporting confidential survey prevalence beside formal complaints, so that both were visible. Reports rose from 4 to 37, while prevalence among women fell from 31% to 14% by 2025. On any board I would ask for both measures whenever management presents a complaint count, and I would be wary of a low number with no survey beside it.
03Moving apprentices away from a host that paid well
At Ferrison Group Training Company I chair the committee that reviews the supervision of apprentices placed with host employers. In 2023 our field officers reported that apprentices at one host, a fabrication business and one of the company's larger fee-paying clients, were regularly left without a qualified tradesperson. Management proposed a warning letter. I argued that the apprentices should be moved while the host fixed its supervision, and that the board should accept the lost fees of about A$190,000 a year. I declared beforehand that Quarrington also hosts the company's apprentices and competes for local trades labour. The board moved the eleven apprentices, and the host later returned under a supervision agreement. On any board I would ask whose safety a line of revenue depends on.
My first year on a board
I would organise a first year around three questions rather than a calendar of my own. Is the board seeing the hazards that will hurt people in this business? Is the company bargaining and changing in ways its workforce will still accept in five years? And does the board know who would replace the people running its most dangerous operations?
For the first question I would go to the floor before forming views in the committee room: at least two sites in my first six months, one of them on a night shift, with time to talk to health and safety representatives without managers present. I would then compare what I saw with the critical-risk register and the indicators the board receives, and raise any gap in a meeting rather than in a corridor.
For the second I would read the current agreements and the history of recent disputes, and ask management to explain its bargaining strategy before the next round begins rather than during it.
For the third I would ask for the evidence behind succession for site general managers and the head of safety.
I would hold back proposals of my own until the committees I joined had completed a cycle, unless someone's safety could not wait.
Conflicts and their management
The conflicts that matter in my case come from Quarrington's commercial relationships, and I would deal with them before an appointment rather than after. Our customers are mining companies and mine operators, so I would not join the board of any company we supply with wear parts or field services, or of any company that competes with us in castings, rebuilds or mine-site maintenance. Our suppliers include labour-hire firms, training providers and accommodation operators, and I would treat any of them as a conflict unless the relationship was immaterial and disclosed. I am a director of Ferrison Group Training Company, which places apprentices with host employers including Quarrington, and I leave any discussion of our placements.
Any appointment would need my managing director's written agreement and a review by our company secretary. I would give the new board a written list of my interests and update it whenever Quarrington's customers or suppliers changed. I would never carry Quarrington's bargaining mandates, pay data or safety investigation findings into another boardroom. If a conflict made me leave the room more than occasionally, I would resign the seat rather than hold it at half strength.
My independence statement
I am a serving executive of an ASX-listed company and hold Quarrington shares and performance rights under its long-term incentive plan. Before accepting a seat I would set out those interests, my directorship and any commercial link between Quarrington and the company in writing, and leave that board to decide whether I am independent under its own policy and the ASX Corporate Governance Council's recommendations. I would not call myself independent until it had.
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Ferrison Group Training Company
Board of directors; chair of the people and safety committee from 2022; member of the audit and risk committee
May 2019–present
Non-executive director of a not-for-profit group training organisation that employs about 140 apprentices and places them with host employers across the Central West; chairs the committee that reviews host-employer safety and apprentice welfare.
Reported to a committee
Quarrington Industries Limited
People and remuneration committee
January 2021–present
Prepares the committee's papers on executive remuneration, bargaining mandates, the group workforce plan and the gender pay gap the company reports each year; attends meetings outside executive sessions.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Quarrington Industries Limited
Health, safety and environment committee
2016–present
Presents critical control verification, psychosocial risk, harassment survey prevalence and fatigue data each quarter.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Quarrington Industries Limited
Full board
2022 and 2024
Presented the bargaining mandate and fortnightly updates during the 2022 industrial action, and the workforce option for the 2024 grinding-media line closure.
Reported to a committee
Marrowby Foods
Board people and safety committee
2011–2016
Reported injury performance, bargaining positions and the seasonal workforce review to a committee of farmer-directors.