Legal judgement could lead to open justice for Pike River families
The High Court’s decision comes nearly 12 years after the West Coast mine exploded, killing the 29 men working inside.
Families may now be able to access the documents that led to the mining company’s CEO, Peter Whittall, not facing prosecution in the disaster’s aftermath.
Outside court, Bernie Monk, who lost his son in the disaster, described the issue in just eight words.
“Legal privilege has always stood in our way.”
A year following the disaster, the mining company and its CEO, Peter Whittall, were charged over health and safety failures.
In 2012, Whittall pleaded not guilty to 12 charges, and a trial was set for the next year.
But in 2013, the charges against the former CEO were dropped, and a $3.4 million voluntary payment to compensate the families was revealed, much to their consternation.
At the time, the families called it “chequebook justice”.
Now, more than twelve years after the disaster, no one has ever been prosecuted for it. Legal privilege, and confidentiality, mean the families still don’t fully understand what led to the charges against Peter Whittall being dropped.
The families fought, and fought, all the way to the Supreme Court, which issued a remarkable judgement in 2017, calling the decision to withdraw prosecution following the payments, “unlawful”.
Sonya Rockhouse said: “You can’t have chequebook justice in this country, and we’ve just proved that.”
However, privilege stopped the behind-the-scenes negotiations about Peter Whittall’s non-prosecution from being revealed.
Multiple attempts were made to access the deal’s documents through the Official Information Act and Ombudsman, but they were consistently blocked – on the grounds of legal privilege and confidentiality.
But on Friday, a judgement obtained by 1News said transparency matters in the interests of justice.
It said that without transparency, “there is scope for false speculation and misunderstanding” which “can undermine confidence in the administration of justice”.
It means the families may now see the privileged material and be able to learn why charges were dropped.
Leo Donnelly, a former Ombudsman, said the judgement would “change the way the game will be played”.
“Because the reality is, if it’s that hard to find out why something the Supreme Court said was unlawful happened, then you’ve got to ask – have we got freedom of information at all?”
And so we are here.
12 years later and we are going to finally see what secrets were kept from us that allowed no one to be held accountable for the needless deaths of these men.
The incandescent rage remains.
The disgust at John Key lying to the families about bringing home their dead boys.
The obscenity of National attempting to concrete over the Mine so that it could never be investigated.
The fury at how the company was able to get away with corporate manslaughter and no one was held to account.
The shock realisation that there was no real safety regulation in effect.
When National & ACT scream about red tape, remind them it’s stained red from the blood of the workers who died on the job.
Pike River is a neoliberal monument to deregulated corporate manslaughter. It’s a testament to the ongoing deplorable rate of death amongst NZ workers, it’s a solemn promise that little will ever change under the neoliberal State.
While the toothless middle class Unions wring their hands, while the Labour Party only vaguely acknowledges its own role in the lack of legislative cover, and while the Political Right call for more deregulation, those 29 men still lie cold cursed under a mountain.
We should all feel ashamed at what was revealed at Pike River, we should all feel mortification that workers died and continue to die because of the WorkSafe cult of individual responsibility over collective unionism.
We should all understand Pike River was the price we paid for not having Universal Unionism.
The deregulated environment that allowed this tragedy to occur has seen no real changes, corporates continue to endanger worker lives, we have one of the worst rates of worker death in the developed world and no one, not one person from the company has been held to account in any real sense.
We are a modern liberal democracy. Worker rights and the security in knowing your loved ones will return from work at the end of the day are demanded and expected in the modern age. That we as a nation have allowed anti-union political parties to rob us of that security is our fault.We owe those families a proper investigation and a real attempt to return their loved ones just as much as we are responsible for never allowing this to occur ever again.
How on earth was this allowed to happen and what own earth was covered up?
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My Uncle was offered a job at Pike river. At the time Pike river was trying to coax Kiwi miners back from Oz to work there. Of course they were offering a reduction in wages, so how that was going to work, your guess is as good as mine.
So my Uncle flew to the South Island to tour the site. He thought that the benefit of the job would be being closer to whanau, even if he was going to be making less than half the money.
After being shown the mine, he declined their offer. He called Pike river a “death trap”. Pike river was a brilliant example of self regulatory safety practice (sarc).
When people scream for less “red tape”, think Pike river, leaky homes, forest slash, the extermination of thousands of head of cattle, port worker deaths, road worker deaths, forestry worker deaths.
In 2007 I was working at a open cast gold mine in nearby Reefton. Despite having nil experience in underground we could have doubled our wages by simply undertaking a “world standard basic training program” and be immediately taken as a full time employee. The course was like 6 weeks or something. Overhearing a smoko room conversation we were confronted and warned by one our lovely young geologists about the death trap nature of the place and had to vow to consult with her before we ever signed any dotted line. She would have friends and associates who would have given us similar warnings from first hand experience. It may have saved our lives. This was 2007. I’m still in the mining industry.
Well, I’m glad you are still with us.
These were our men, of course we must grieve, and feel shame. I felt shame when either Key or his side-kick Slater referred to one of the Pike River bereaved as a feral. Justice wasn’t bought, it was evaded. Kia kaha Pike River families, you are not forgotten, and never will be.
I worked in mining safety field overseas and still in misbelief to what and how this happened.
Was it a corporate manslaughter or worse? Neglect of safety can not be unintentional, can it?
Add the indifference of “silent majority” concerned much more about the enquiry costs than the facts.
Disgrace, utter disgrace.
Another horror thanks to Roger’n’Ruth’s toxic legacy.
The Mining inspectorate was reduced to one field person by the time Pike River ignited. That is the story of neo liberalism, small government, relaxed legislation, blurred accountability lines, “high trust” models so capital can police itself–yeah right.
For example there are 11 Govt. and local Govt. agencies that can potentially be involved in a case of food poisoning! No one stop shop if you get campylobacter from that chicken salad at the local cafe.
Whitall and others should be nailed still–not on some revenge basis–but to dissuade other cowboys and exploiters.
Did Peter Whittall get off because the government and key wealthy figures were so involved in the dangerous conditions that were enabled at the mine that they didn’t want him to point it out.
While Peter Whittall should have been prosecuted, many other people should have been too, but were not because they were close or in government and it would have been exposed in the trial.
Also exposes how bad our environment court is, to allow such a dangerous mine, and our environment court has only got worse and more compromised since.
The occasionally TDB critical World Socialist Website has been following this story in detail – to quote:
“The Department of Labour (now called WorkSafe) knew about the dangerous conditions in Pike River mine prior to the explosion but did nothing to stop its operations. Any trial of Whittall or other members of Pike River’s management would have exposed the complicity of this government agency. It also could have shed light on the criminal role played by the trade unions.
Andrew Little, the Labour government’s minister in charge of Pike River since the 2017 election, who was instrumental in shutting down the re-entry operation, was the leader of the miners’ union, the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union at the time of the disaster in 2010.
The EPMU did nothing to protect its members at Pike River, despite knowing the mine was extremely unsafe. It made no public criticism of Pike River Coal prior to the disaster. Shortly after the first underground explosion, Little defended the company, falsely telling the media that Pike River had a “good health and safety committee that’s been very active” and that there was “nothing unusual” about the mine.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/06/rwkx-f06.html
The EPMU did not come out covered in glory to say the least, but the management were active union busters if you read Rebecca Macfie’s book “Tragedy at Pike River Mine–how and why 29 men died”. Union organisers had to ride the workers bus just to talk to people.
https://awapress.com/book/tragedy-at-pike-river-mine/
I know through personal contacts that the EPMU did allocate several million dollars to the inquiry and direct grants to workers families. Helen Kelly, a rare person in the sell out NZCTU, also went above and beyond for the families.
Sadly Kelly was also a sell out. She was Tribal Labour and all that that infers.
There were a lot of people who let these miners down and Andrew Little was a power force in pushing the mine and was glowing in his praise of its running and the work it gave Westcoasters. Gas has been the cause of fatalities in the mines on the Coast before but the mine was allowed to open with no second escape path due to environmental concerns . The mine inspector force had ben allowed to run down by both Labour and National and our miners were less safe than those working in Australia. Health and safety while criticized by many has improved the safety of many workers sick this event.
If Whittall is going to be charged then so should all of the former board of directors.
They were the ones that developed the fire trap with full knowledge from go to woe.
The y should not be allowed to just walk away.
N Z Oil and Gas, the owners of the mine, put financial constraints and time pressures on Peter Whittall, which in turn put safety at risk .
Whittal was the NZOG fall guy and NZOG paid his bills/ fines.
N Z Oil and Gas, the owners of the mine, put financial constraints and time pressures on Peter Whittall, which in turn put safety at risk .
Whittal was the NZOG fall guy and NZOG paid his bills/ fines.
Right on the button there.
Whittall had not been in that role for very long.
Poor bugger
Good to see you back to your working class roots Bomber. Yes to everything you said. Pike River was a failure of Neo-liberalism and the scapping of compulsory unionism. Labour and the champagne socialist union workers straight out of law school and not from the shop floor are just as responsible as Key and the National Party for what happened. Roger Douglas got the ball rolling and Helen Clark’s Labour Government did little to roll back Ruth Richardson’s wrecking ball. It is a stain on the labour movement of this country.
I am just glad that even now after so much time the families and the NZ public may get to know what went on here. At the time and for a year or two afterwards, it was just a horror of murkiness and injustice. All those poor Mums and Dads being lied to and devalued.
And if you want to rark up the Trade Unionist’s maybe you should suggest that Unite Union gets involved rather than use their members dues to spiritedly attend Pro Trans, Anti Women protests in Albert Park?
He got off because the OHS Act of the day was poorly drafted and full of holes.
Pike River coincided with the collapse of the CTV building where the designer was also able to wriggle out of legal liability.
That’s why the Key government redrafted the Act and took the incompetent Dept of Labour out of the mix, creating WorkSafe to manage it.
In the final analysis the relatives of the deceased might not want the whole story told because there is a long list of people who could have fingers pointed at them in addition to the obvious culprits.
Any charges laid must be done in terms of the old legislation, which is why the Crown threw in the towel.
Some years ago a young woman from Germany did a bungy jump. She was not tied on correctly and died. Her father came to Aotearoa and said ‘they are a bunch of cowboys’. Well that is absolutely true think:
Cave Creek – now who went down for that?
Pike River – who went down for that?
CTV building – who went down for that?
This is just not acceptable, in the past year a newly graduated engineering student walked past a building in Otautahi / Christchurch, he stopped and looked thoroughly at it, he knew it wasn’t safe. The building has never been used. Who signed it off.
Where are the building inspectors at the council at. Why for the CTV building and this ‘new’ building has no one been helped accountable.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300612051/developer-suing-christchurch-city-council-19m-over-office-block
In hindsight, this resource would have been better used locally as coal methane gas wells instead of coal for max $ and methane. There would have still been explosions, no inherent safety in place.
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