Maurice, ACT and reneging on the Pike River Mine tragedy – why National are suddenly splintering

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Well it had to happen at some stage. The great big blue tent of National has suddenly ripped apart due to the new health and safety reforms brought about by the shocking Government incompetence and corporate irresponsibility in the wake of the Pike River Mine tragedy.

Key has been able to manage the drooling far right elements within National by consistently repainting the veneer of moderation around the National Party. His relationship with the Maori Party has provided him political camouflage and the mainstream media consistently refer to him as ‘moderate’. Of course those at the coalface of his draconian welfare reforms and those underemployed working every hour of the day see none of this ‘moderation’ but they have next to no voice and so their pain is ignored and when it is noticed, gets followed by the screaming denouncement of middle NZ…

29052013 OPED cartoon, Thursday, May30, Meals in schools poverty
29052013 OPED cartoon, Thursday, May30, Meals in schools poverty

…Key is ‘moderate’ if you own property or benefit from middle class tax breaks like interest free student loans or working for families. For everyone else, National are a nightmare that never ends.

The reason why Maurice is suddenly making proposals to ACT is because inside National there is deep anger and frustration by the more nakedly ambitious neoliberals that Key isn’t spending as much of his political capital as they want, and this frustration has exploded after they have seen the new health and safety standards.

Let’s remind ourselves of why we needed these new health and safety standards…

600-2mine6-600x400

…29 fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins and friends who went to work one day and never came home.

Their lives are the 29 reasons we needed new health and safety standards.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

The bewildering and criminal incompetence of the Government and the industry that allowed safety standards to slip to 18th Century levels were responsible for this horrific act, and the new stricter safety standards that were about to be passed was a response to those deaths.

‘Never again’ we all cried at the time of the Pike River Mine tragedy, well, that ‘never again’ has been reduced to National Party bickering over the impact of keeping workers safe against the interests of their mate bosses who may now be held responsible for the unsafe work places so many NZers die in every year.

National’s need to save their boss mates any obligation for dangerous work places is what is driving this watering down of safety standards, in a functioning democracy this would be decried as venal self interest and punished for such, but in the land of the wrong uptight crowd where we boast about $11.50 pies and making more money from property valuations than actual wages, where the mainstream media spoon feed muddle Nu Zilind ratings fuelled bigotry and prejudice and where our anti-intellecutal cultural cringe welcomes a multimillionaire money trader with open arms, I doubt a ripple will occur.

In John we foolishly trust.

 

35 COMMENTS

  1. Look a bit deeper and further back. Doc wouldn’t allow some safety features to happen I believe…..

    • What a load of Bull, the pair of you, exactly what are these supposed ‘safety features’ that DOC would not allow at Pike River???,

      There were none,in fact had the mining continued for another 6–8 weeks there was an allowance for the drilling of another large main intake vent which would have been located well inside the Paparoa National Park,

      A second ‘drift’, access tunnel was in fact planned and consented for but never drilled so your anti-DOC claims are simply un-factual bullshit, in my opinion, motivated by a small hairline crack some place best not discussed,

      An open cast mine at Pike River, only in the fantasy world of the armchair proponents of blowing the top off of mountains so as to ransack whatever lies beneath,

      Pike River Coal at no time proposed open cast mining at Pike River as the coal was located far to deep to make this economic,

      There are a number of ‘things’ which in my opinion lead to the making of the Pike River tragedy,

      (1), the drilling of the main drift, the 2 kilometer long access tunnel, this took far longer and was far more expensive than expected,

      (2),Having spent far too long and going over budget on drilling the main drift, Pike River quietly and deliberately decided to not drill the second drift, an illegal action, there being a requirement for a second means of access to the mine, and, as far as ventilating the mine goes part of the cause of the inability of Pike River to keep the mine free of Methane Gas build-ups,

      (3),The collapse of the main ventilation shaft from which the mine never fully recovered and thus with (2) above made the mine as far as the management of Methane Gas build-ups a dangerous juggling act,

      Despite drilling a separate secondary air shaft and later locating a second fan at the bottom of the already compromised main air shaft Pike River had ongoing issues with air movement and Methane Gas build-ups,

      In such a fashion Pile River continually gambled with the lives of those working underground, had Pike River been a tower block being built NO council would have allowed its continuance with its deviation so far from the original plans and this is another indictment of those who should have been policing Pike River in terms of what its resource consent stated would be built,

      The Gambling by the Pike River Mining Company with the lives of all those working the underground shifts was that despite the dangerous Methane Gas readings recorded on the instruments located some kilometers away in the office above ground the Company chose to keep mining i believe in the hope that such mining would allow them to reach the point deep inside the National Park where their resource consent would have allowed them to drill another main air shaft which, again in my opinion, would have alleviated the mines airflow/Methane Gas issues,

      That of course is all said from the point of view of the First explosion in the Pike River mine having been one of Methane Gas igniting,

      While the evidence is strongly suggestive of that being the cause of that first explosion there was evidence, disquieting to say the least, by a South African miner with 26 years experience in all facets of mining who had been at the scene of 6 mine explosions in that country of ”a strong smell of AMFRO explosives” in the main drift when he was sent by management to investigate the lack of contact with those working underground,

      Putting that aside tho, it is the Fact that those working underground had NO choice and in fact most of the time, NO knowledge of the dangerous conditions they were working in, a ticking time bomb in fact, while Methane Gas alarms sounded in the office 2 kilometers away above ground which in ‘the gamble’ with the workers lives, management ignored,

      For those working below there was no such alarm, had Methane Gas sirens been allowed, or better still Legislated for, underground, where upon the Sirens activating all work would stop and the mine evacuated until it was de-gassed the tragedy of Pike River would probably never have occurred….

      • Very good summary Bad12. I looked up some coal mining basins in Australia and the Bowen basin in Queensland has around 30 coal mines. Most are open cut but some are underground.
        The Kestrel mine at Gordonstone near Emerald is an example of underground because of the depth of the coal seam. They too had a single large bore access drift or tunnel and vertical ventilation shafts to begin with but later added additional access shafts to expand the underground working area.

  2. Martyn, I agree with all you say here, but I must ask why you use that racist cartoon. It’s offensive (to many of us), and I don’t see any connection with your article.

    • I agree that it’s a disgusting cartoon, but I gather that is why it is here. It is a clear example of “the screaming denouncement of middle NZ” toward “those at the coalface of his draconian welfare reforms and those underemployed working every hour of the day” whose “pain is ignored”.

      To make that clearer, you might in future frame such shite in its context on the page of a right-wing paper, rather than serve it neat, or just say “For example: “

  3. Sad thing is that it will take another tragedy before it is ‘looked at’ again. You would think one tragedy would be enough!

  4. Yes…I was working as security at TV3 when both the Christchurch earthquake then the Pike River tragedy occurred.

    The first left us incredulous…however the second….Pike River….made me angry…that definitely was the tipping point for me.

    Having worked in the bush in the Waitakere’s on the dams doing heavy construction among other things – and yes- we even worked in railroad tunnels for the pipe maintenance and 1 was a kilometer long..for 6 years…we observed basic safety practices. That was when the ARA wasn’t carved up and everything contracted out and privatized…

    Laila Harre incidentally was one of our union reps. And she was good.

    When that Pike River incident occurred…even right at the beginning…you could tell something was amiss surrounding the circumstances….

    It was difficult immediately to pinpoint what…but it just didn’t sit right and I said to my security colleague that this is a result of the deunionised labour force in this country and would have been a result of the slack safety measures driven by corporate and shareholder interests.

    Shareholders who , the majority it seems , were based in India.

    And as that debacle with Peter Whitall was going through we heard of testimony of texts stating the methane levels are dangerous…not once but time and again.

    They were driven by shareholders and corporate managers because the mine wasn’t clearing a profit….

    The main Air vent had collapsed previously and was not in a state of good repair…

    The govt and DOC had agreed on mining there so long as there was only ONE entry/exit…

    And the most damning thing of all…..due to the neo liberal destruction of the unions – there have been only 1 or 2 mines inspectors to cover the whole country….

    There was no way safety could be regulated.

    Whereas back before 1984 …there were sufficient mines safety inspectors to police those standards properly.

    So as security at TV3 …one of our duties was to man the call desk after hours on night shift…when there was only a handful – 3-5 ?…left in the building.

    I fielded calls from Russia, Scotland . Australia , France…and many more…news reporters and mines experts…..all through the night , for several weeks. And every one of those calls had to be logged and recorded.

    And as the weeks went by during the Pike River inquiry …you could watch and follow lie after lie after lie. Promise after promise after promise being broken. Particularly with Key saying we will enter the mine several times and then reneging.

    Now a curious thing is with carbon monoxide poisoning…a forensic scientist can tell if this has occurred by an examination of body tissues…which might have proven that some survived the initial blasts.

    If so…that would have been a serious indictment on govt policy and the Ceo’s of that company.

    My question is…and based on the behavior of so many with vested interests in keeping things quiet , that the longer those bodies stay there , the more it suits those culpable and being complicit in that disaster.

    I would not trust this neo liberal govt – or any other neo liberals for that matter – to be open , truthful and concerned about the very people who voted them in in the first place.

    And Pike River is a graphic example of this.

  5. If you haven’t already read it, get this:

    http://www.awapress.com/stories/storyreader$841

    Rebecca Macfie’s book unveils the true horror of what actually happened, and why. It’s basically a litany of failures from beginning to end, caused by negligence, greed and a wilful disregard for the lives of the men who worked in that mine.

    If you’re not shaking with fury after finishing it, you’re a fucking android.

    Shocking Announcement: Big corporates and the National Party don’t care if people die in much the same way the robber barons of Feudal England cared whether a few serfs dropped dead in the fields. Nothing to see here… move along.

    • I couldn’t agree more +100,where are our unions?
      Safety laws and most other laws inherently play to benefit corporates and there lawyers who string out proceedings and use attrition to minimize and null the justice for those at the coal face
      we peasants should shut up. and get on with being cannon fodder for our beloved masters (sarc) the corporate elite and their puppet
      house of Representatives

  6. If I recall correctly the new health and safety laws of the 90’s, (strangely enough when Williamson was in his market knows best infancy), purposely left out the railways in legislation. It smelt strongly at the time that this was a hidden trade off when the railways were flogged off by National to Fay Richwhite and others.

    Tranzrail was left to “self regulate” and do nothing they did, with a disproportionate number of deaths and terrible maiming injuries because of things like wagon grab rails that snapped when rusted bolts securing them gave way as rail workers held on to them.

    It was a national disgrace and in truth in any civilised country a crime then but not here and National never learn.

    The fact that no one was ever held to account for Pike River means its open season again in our “business friendly” environment. Expect more terrible injuries and deaths to save Nationals donors a buck! Expect few if any will ever be held to account as well.

    And in this crazy country National will probably go up in the polls as a result!

    • Yeah, there won’t be any blowback for National until the housing bubble reaches critical mass and implodes. Only then, when people who are presently making money hand over fist are crying into their Weetbix because they’ve been financially disembowelled, will there be a reckoning for National.

      • Usually when economies tank the conservative sections of society move even further to the right and look for innocent scapegoats to blame. Germany was the perfect example.

        • Perhaps, but who are they going to blame? Gay, Jewish beneficiaries? Given that National have campaigned so hard for so long on their allegedly being ‘sound financial managers’ (and we’re all painfully aware of just how hollow that’s sounding these days), I doubt there’s anyone else, realistically speaking, to be blamed. Nothing infuriates affluent conservatives more than losing money. (Although paying their taxes properly and ‘sharing’ probably run a close second.)

          Having said that, I wouldn’t put anything past Crosby-Textor.

  7. Yes Xray,

    “a hidden trade off when the railways were flogged off by National to Fay Richwhite and others.”

    The Maurice Williamson saga and with the selling of NZ rail to Fay RichWhite also had John Key in there too.

    Key was later found as an investor then, so now we see this Government hates rail with a very unhealthy vigour.

    This has now begun to provoke all to ask why what is NatZ doing this wilful destruction to rail?

    Just like in the 1990’s they screwed us over the state owned asset then as they are certainly doing again today.

    Possibly many NatZ have vested interests in trucking as they stand to gain financially when they keep closing down rail here right?

    Phil Twyford is ripping Nick Smiths 500 hectares of land vacant as we do this in Parliament today

  8. “Doc wouldn’t allow some safety features to happen I believe…” Yeah, and I’m pretty sure DoC was responsible for the Christchurch earthquakes as well. AND the crash of ’08. FFS: in New Zealand, there’s rugby, followed closely by DOC-bashing…

    The suggestion that conservation could somehow override fundamental safety provisions in an industrial site is vacuous. The entity to blame, for Christ’s sake, is Pike River Coal.

    THINK, don’t “believe”.

    • Whether you like it or not. The fact that DOC opposed mining in that ridge/mountain range meant that they agreed with govt it could go ahead if there was not two entrances.

      You cant argue with it. Its there written in the report.

      And it was widely followed up in the media.

      • Excuse me?

        It’s not up to DoC to decide what is and is not safe in a mining operation. It’s DoC’s job to protect the country’s natural heritage.

        It was the government’s job and Pike River Coal’s job to decide what is and is not safe in a mining operation.

        They failed, at the cost of 29 lives.

        • Yes ultimately it IS govt’s job to make the final decision.

          However ,…environmental impact reports are gleaned from such govt bodies as DOC. They have a pertinent role in providing those reports.

          But the facts remain on advise from DOC and others of the sensitivity of that area that the decision was reached with certain proviso’s. And one of them was no open cast mining , and the other was only one entry point.

          This is not a beat up on DOC , but in hindsight by all party’s concerned set the precedent for a dangerous situation – that eventually materialized.

          • Wild Katipo, that is simply a wrong assertion, the Pike River Mine was fully consented to have a second drift, mine entrance, constructed and it was the Pike River Coal Company alone that made the decision to not construct that second drift…

  9. Everyone involved owns some of the blame for Pike River:

    The owners were grossly and wilfully ignorant of many safe working practices.

    The workers deliberately flouted safety rules even to the extent that some alarms were ‘bridged’ to allow the men to keep the bonuses rolling in.

    The Dept. of Labour had no mine inspectors on the payroll having amalgamated the mines section years earlier and cut their pay to that of a factory inspector. They’d all gone to more lucrative jobs in Aussie.

    The greenies had done their absolute best to make this operation unfeasible and had forced the operation to be an underground one when the original application was for a (much safer) open pit.

    This whole circus had happened through multiple governments so both sides of the political fence share the blame.

    Blood on many hands…

    • Your quite right about there being a desire to have an open cast mine – mention of that was made by several Australian experts.

      And one can imagine those mines inspectors who were basically told ‘ your services are no longer required ‘ would naturally have up and left for Australia.

      And yes the workers themselves were given bonuses to keep that mine working non stop – even though the methane levels were far too high and several had mentioned it repeatedly.

      But at the end of the day – NONE of this would have been allowed to happen if their was union appointed mines safety inspectors.

      They simply would have blown the whistle and said ‘ HALT ‘ !!!

      And you could bet your bottom dollar that management would have acted smartly in order to get that mine operating as fast as possible again. Or never have allowed it to get that bad in the first place.

      And whether it was National or Labour or a combination of both – much of this can be laid at the feet of the neo liberal drive to rid the workforce of the unions.

      The rot starts at the top.

      • This accident? Wouldn’t have happened in Australia why?
        Because the mining industry in Australia have a strong and effective unions , when the social engineering in NZ finally took hold to remove the effective unions(by successive governments) the result is not surprising 29 lives at pike river an absolute tragedy I fear there will be more lives lost in mining and other industries (forestry ,construction etc)in NZ where a strong union with safety standards are absent

      • Where was the ‘desire for an open cast mine’
        The Pike River RC states clearly the mine was only considered to be underground because of the depth of the overburden.

        The actual coal seam lies mainly under the neighbouring Paparoa Ranges National Park and the drift tunnel was 2.3km from the portal to the workings. Not even in China or US would they strip mine a National Park and the mine geologists wont recommend doing so at this depth anyway. The peak above the mine was around 1000m-1200m.

        Other mines nearby in the same ranges but different seams are underground even if not constrained by the National Park.
        Spring Creek ( behind Dunollie), Roa ( behind Blackball)and the aborted Mt Davy mine( also behind Dunollie).

        The poor manangement and the very high costs of development were behind the discarding or ignoring the methane gas risk.
        There were 6 mine managers in the 24 moths before the explosion and the site production manager was to become the seventh one he had the local qualifications.

        All this is much more damming than some imaginery blocking by Forest & Bird or DOC of an open cut mine that couldnt exist due to geology and depth of overburden

    • Once upon a time there was a Mines Department – not a miserable ‘section’.

      And there were inspectorS of coal mines – more than one – along with inspectors for non-coal mines and quarries.

      They visited the mines and wrote reports with a copy to go on the relevant file. It was very easy to track the operating history for both State-owned and private mining ventures.

      The senior people knew mining, had been miners.

      All thrown away in the name of ‘progress’.

      DoC – lost many of the Forest Service people who had worked closely with Mines for the issuing of leases and licences, doing onsite inspections and talking with the applicants and regional council people. It also lost the Forest Service engineering services, which may have prevented the Cave Creek horror, and may also have spotted the stupidity of the fatal single entry.

      Which can be directly tracked back to a Labour Government intent on change and cost-cutting.

      Efficiency and cheap does not equal effectiveness, nor safety nor proper prudent practice. People are still as stupid and prone to short-cuts. There’s been no remarkable evolution in humans – so why remove the safeguards and high standards?

  10. Then there’s the ongoing manslaughter in the forestry industry where men are asked to work ridiculous hours, sometimes with very little training for either logging practice or even chainsaw use.

    They die.

    Or are maimed.

    Slogging through ‘papers’ from a polytech or other ‘education provider’ cannot ever teach safety and wisdom on the hill.

    But – who cares? Cheap enough to hire in some other rural hick desperate for a job, eh?

    Not.

  11. “National’s need to save their boss mates any obligation for dangerous work places is what is driving this watering down of safety standards, in a functioning democracy this would be decried as venal self interest and punished for such”

    Yes National really have shown the distaste for human life here clearly haven’t they.

    Relax the safety standards will get them off the hook, what creeps they are indeed.

    Perhaps there are more sinister reasons behind WHY they bare relaxing the safety standards now ahead of TPPA?

    We must now see that in the TPPA any overseas company given the right to operate in NZ under the TPPA could later sue NZ for damage to their business if the regulations are seen to be damaging their bottom line.

    Wasn’t this what caused the Government to give the Saudis’ a free farm and sheep at taxpayers expense this week for $12 million?

    I’ll bet that Key is setting all these “relaxed” rules in place ahead of signing the TPPA, what do you reckon?

    NZ will be an unsafe place to live and work under TPPA.
    Martyn isn’t it about time we ran a register of who this phoney Government have given to all others due to their free willingness to hep others?

    Including South Canterbury finance, and Bluff smelter Solid energy etc.’?

  12. Open pit mining is as bad as tunnel mining. We would not need either if we invested more in renewable resources. If wave energy and solar energy and safe hydro & wind etc. were better funded, we could avoid these kind of deadly accidents.

    This lame govt. can sure locate the funds in the heavily stocked pantry when it comes to paying for their priorities but the pantry is bare when it comes to paying these families what they deserve for their massive losses and funding renewable sources of energy.

  13. That’s definitely one way of looking at it. The other is that National have moved left. English and Key in particular (to my mind) have followed and retained much of the legacy of Clarke and Cullen. The fact that a National government proposed holding directors responsible for work place safety is remarkable. The fact that the right wing of the National government is fighting this proposal is not.
    The out come of this wrangle and the strength of the new health and safety bill will be what tells us how far Nationals move to the left has gone.
    The longer I observe this current government the more I’m convinced that their apparent cynical moves left may be based on more then political opportunism.
    What I want to know is what underlies this – is it MMP which has forced the government to accommodate a wider electoral mandate? Is it a genuine belief in Keynesian economics (English’s restraint in reducing government spending and borrowing instead suggests it)?
    JK decried Working For Families as “communism by stealth” when it was introduced by Labour but as PM hasn’t touched it and last week raised tax credits for low income earners and increased benefit payments for the unemployed. The NZ right must be seething. Since gaining the responsibility of governing NZ has John Key become a moderate socialist?
    The Labour party when in power deliberately excluded beneficiaries from WFF and did not raise benefits – now they have been completely outflanked by English’s latest budget.
    National is making the Labour Party look irrelevant and they are doing it very convincingly.

  14. juddith collins is showing key she can pull the rug out from under him? he no longer can rely on majority votes for his pro world bank, pro elite anti people plots.
    if he gets to the point of seeing hes about to go down, look for news items of people in major nz companies and political, legal etc positions of power, retiring, leaving the country, trying to bury the dead bodies, keep an eye on brownly and joice – they are ready to freak out at any moment.
    btw I studied hypnotism and use a method, one of the techniques we learnt was during the pretalk with a client, you use the terms, relaxed, not a problem, even if its not in context of them being relaxed, just those types of terms puts them in a suggestible state, just saying

  15. Good Jennifer it makes real sense.

    Take the terms Key drops all the time like “At the end of the day” now everyone is saying it.

    We certainly under key’s post hypnotic suggestions alright.

    Time to block him out of our lives and get sane again eh.

  16. Bet you have some opposition on this blog when all your left-wing scum and vermin are tossed out of Fairfax.

    • national voters would line up to vote to get neutered and thank your leader for the privilege

    • Mortense – The truth really hurts especially when you are watching your vermin laden ship slowly sink. I would be a bit angry too.
      When you call us scum, look in the mirror.

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