“I have an estimate that a company may be losing up to 10 per cent of its turnover as a result of poor OHS and E (occupational health, safety and environment) performance, that is usually a whack of money,” Prof. Hudson said.

Professor Hudson, who specialises in safety for the health, oil, gas, construction and mining industries later told reporters the figure could mean billions of dollars for large miners.

“When you have a shutdown you lose production, and you just add it up,” Prof. Hudson said.

“It is a massive amount of money and most of it goes in relatively small-scale stuff, not necessarily payouts to people who are injured but in the whole way things are run,” Prof. Hudson said.

“If anyone disagrees with me, that is fine, but when I challenge them to come up with the real figures I find they don’t have any,” he said.

Professor Hudson said that while the companies he dealt with did not put a figure on the worth of a worker, a workplace death was usually estimated to cost a company millions.

“It may be an individual is costed at one, two or four million dollars, depending upon what country you are in,” he said.

“Really what costs is things like lost production, slowdowns, having regulators all over you, having a lot of lawyers getting very excited,” he said.

Prof. Hudson said Australia had come a long way in improving occupational health and safety.

“The old Australian culture, looking back a long way, was pretty rough,” he said.