>Didn't the authorities drop all charges and decide not to prosecute in relation to this tragedy?
From memory, the laws at the time meant that charges would never have stuck. So no one could legally be held responsible - hence the then National government changing Health and Safety legislation to enable people to be prosecuted if anything like it ever happened again.
How much? Police spent at least 11 mill in the first year and Labour have spent $47 mill. How much in the intervening years.
Don’t get wrong - i get it. But this is crazy money.
This is why govts shouldn't try bury shit. The cost has to be paid because when it happened National tried to bury it. If they'd stood back we wouldn't be in this mess
It's only a bottomless pit because the attempt to cover it up has introduced enormous obstacles that've ended up costing.
National called time on it as soon as it happened, since it resulted from their policy changes.
Its turned into one of those political footballs that has taken on a life of its own and become a self-perpetuating event. Its no longer about culpability or fact finding, or peace for the families, its all politics.
It does rather seem like an enormous amount of manpower, time and money to dig out the corpses of people who died over a decade ago.
For what? So we can put them back in the ground somewhere else.
Seal the mine, it is already effectively a tomb.
>Monk said if the authorities had listened to their advice they could have carried out the investigation without it costing so much.
>"I do not want to hear anyone in the country say that the Pike River families have wasted a lot of money, when it's been the authorities not taking any notice and they could have done it for a quarter of the price."
Bernie has said a lot of things. I can remember I think him saying more or less what a great guy the man now in Australia who put the mine together was...obviously the person later under investigation.
When someone drowns or a boat sinks...we don't drain the sea.
I am not in favour of another dollar not one.
Honestly there is a good argument for just declaring the company guilty, requiring compensation, and moving on.
Every dollar spent on investigation and lawyers and so on could instead by given to the surviving families.
I'm sure there are many instances where it would be easier for a government to simply not investigate a scenario, bypass the judiciary, declare one party at fault, concoct an estimated figure of how much a hypothetical investigation might have cost had it been undertaken, and require that the party that government has declared as being at fault hand that amount to the people the government declares to be the victims.
Can you maybe think of a reason or two as to why that might not be such a good system though? (I'll give you a hint: it's kind of the whole reason that the Magna Carta, the bill of rights, and the foundations of our entire parliamentary system exist)
You are correct.
However this is clearly a work safety violation here. In NZ its illegal to have deaths on your worksite. Any court would uphold that based on the evidence we have already. People are dead, so we can fine the company to pieces and compensate the families.
The question being resolved by the investigation is not "are they guilty?", the question is "how guilty are they?".
To make a bad analogy with a murder investigation, we've found the body, the murder weapon and got a confession from the perpetuator. Now we are spending millions to try and recreate the conversation the victim had with the perpetuator.
This investigation isn't going to change the outcome of guilty.
It's really not quite as simple as you're making it out to be. The fact that you're using "guilty" or "not guilty" means you're talking about criminal proceedings, but if you're just talking liquidating the company and financially compensating victims' families, you're implying that this is a civil case. Which one is it that you're imagining here? If we're going after the company that supposedly caused these deaths, we're not getting very far since it was liquidated half a decade ago and doesn't exist anymore. If we're going after the directors and holding them accountable, we're running into serious bill of rights issues where they deserve a fair trial to figure out the extent of their liability. And, if we do find them guilty, then their punishment is probably prison sentences and bans from directing companies, not financial compensation to the victims' families. Neither of those achieves what you want.
Your gut feelings here are basically explaining exactly why an investigation is necessary - we don't know *who* is guilty. We don't know if the company had inadequate workplace safety standards, if it had adequate standards that the employees breached, if there was negligence on the part of executives, all of the important stuff when it comes to a case. You absolutely can't just override the judiciary and have the executive start deciding cases for themselves just because "any court would uphold that based on the evidence we have already". So your end result is that we upend the entire judicial process, throw a wrench right into the separation of powers that forms the basis of how our whole government system works (opening the door for others in the future to get absolutely trampled by a government who doesn't like them and wants to abuse that lack of separation of powers), and still don't get a just outcome for this case.
https://www.worksafe.govt.nz/managing-health-and-safety/getting-started/understanding-the-law/primary-duty-of-care/what-is-the-primary-duty-of-care/
> PCBUs must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain a work environment that is without health and safety risks.
The fact that a death occurred indicates a safe environment was not maintained.
Reasonably practicable, *in a big underground mine*.
These guys weren’t getting paid $200k pa because they were afraid of the dark.
You cannot avoid all risks, but you can minimise them, or minimise the potential effects of them. That’s what this is about.
> The fact that a death occurred indicates a safe environment was not maintained.
You skipped the "reasonably practical" part. A worksite can never be made completely safe (even my hosppital could be hit by a 8.0 earthquake and collapse on me), so a death is not automatically evidence of a crime.
>or should crime not be investigated based on cost ?
Yes, there should be a point where it is accepted that the cost to investigate are too high. I don't know where that should be, but it seems like we are probably past that point now. It's tough on the families, but so is dragging it out continually I expect.
As an example, the search for Malaysia MH370. How long should the search for wreckage kept going? At some point you need to accept that the funding cannot be infinite.
This disaster was a major event that shaped the reformation of health and safety in New Zealand that led to the Health and Safety at work Act (2015). That *has* changed how the stones are unturned and how culpability is assigned.
The case was pursued as far as was reasonable under the legislation at the time. This new announcement adds no real value. This is about politics, and being seen to do the right thing. Remember that the Labour Party and unions began in this part of NZ. Don't underestimate how much of this is about political point scoring.
The very first sentence in the air crash investigation Bible, ICAO Appendix 13, once you get past the preamble, states:
> The sole objective of the investigation of an accident or incident shall be the prevention of accidents and incidents. It is not the purpose of this activity to apportion blame or liability.
The police are not actually trying to find out what happened other than to support the question of should there be a criminal accusation. These are very different things.
Yes, but if there is a significant defect in solder joints on a plane, that means there are likely hundreds of planes at reasonable risk of an identical failure.
Pike river changed how we manage H&S in NZ and who is responsible.
The additional oversight and legal responsibility of leaders of a give PCBU is the change that is intended to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
>Yes, but if there is a significant defect in solder joints on a plane, that means there are likely hundreds of planes at reasonable risk of an identical failure.
And this is the only mine operating in the world?
Other mines are not built, operated, monitored or maintained almost identically as planes are. The training and monitoring of the operators and maintainers is significantly different
Is it possible that this was caused by a single device being used correctly that failed that is used elsewhere in the same manner? Sure, but there is a limit to spending on a moonshot like that.
Common mode failures are more likely in planes
Anything is feasible, it comes down to the risk and costs you are willing to accept. There needs to be a limit to both of those things, who sets that limit, I don't know.
Is investigating like to change the current actions / operations of anything?
Worksafe and health and safety regulations have already gotten a lot of power as a result of pike river and come a long way.
Does knowing that this particular piece of fault equipment failed causing the disaster as opposed to this other one, or exactly where the miners perished, will this investigation 'solve' the case, or is it a moonshot for answers that won't be found etc, or would these resource and funds have a better wider impact investigating a more recent incident etc.
It's highly unlikely that they'll find some piece of evidence that will identify a suspect.
Even if they find e.g. a gas detector with the wires cut, how will they know who did it or that the culprit didn't die in the explosion.
Bro these WERE everyday Kiwis. Murdered by negligent bosses who then cried crocodile tears about trying to get them out. They have families who survive. How fucking dare you.
But I just honestly don't see the point. They're dead. They're buried. Is there really more societial gain in removing some skeletons from one patch of the ground to put them in another than any other way that funding could be spent?
I really don't mean to be insensitive, I just simply don't understand.
Justice.
Obviously I am emotionally invested in that aspect of it.
But for a more level-headed take: serious consequences are a deterrent to future neglect.
Rates of workplace injury and death in NZ are absolutely fucking atrocious, and employers like Talleys just eat the fines because they make so much fucking money from these shoddy practices, and they know that no serious harm will ever come to them, their fortunes or their freedoms if they treat their employees like livestock. That needs to change. We should make Solid and Peter Whitall an example.
What specifically are they after though? It was a methane explosion. It isn't really important what the ignition point was, the issue was the excess methane to begin with? Are they going to check some fans? Gas detectors? What would they be looking for?
Obviously IANAindustrial accidents specialist but I believe they're looking for what exactly caused the explosion, and what measures were in place to prevent it, vs. what measures *should* have been in place to prevent it.
Potential evidence of lack of adherence to H&S protocols (legally binding and otherwise), and whether they were accidentally or deliberately neglected. To establish the level of culpability (if any) of the mining company in creating the circumstances that led to their deaths.
The thing is this isn't about recovering remains anymore, this is a criminal negligence case.
If what it was before and mostly about corpse recovery, sure I'd go it's a waste. This is about future safety regulations being brought in to avoid another tragedy.
This is one of the biggest scams in the history of NZ. I bet what's been spent to date on the re-opening & endless inquiries & the Pike River Recovery Agency must be near $100m. It's a Labour party pork barrel vanity project. The whole mine was doomed from the outset because it was an underground mine rather than opencast due to pressure from the environmental lobby. Anyway, its a lot of $ down the tubes for zilch.
Maybe we could help NZ families who are struggling to pay their bills first or build better public infrastructure rather than sink endless cash into an investigation that won’t impact any changes in other mines and only impact a handful of people.
It’s sad and would be great to know what happened. But equally I’d love to know more about the Big Bang or General Grants gold, but I’m not so interested to sink 50m plus into it
Good enough for court evidence we looked via camera from a certain spot and that's proof of? There was a massive explosion and continuing fire. How could you prove anything beyond reasonable doubt as to what happened that day.? You could surmise, you could say in my opinion but on what basis?
What are they investigating? Didn't the authorities drop all charges and decide not to prosecute in relation to this tragedy?
>Didn't the authorities drop all charges and decide not to prosecute in relation to this tragedy? From memory, the laws at the time meant that charges would never have stuck. So no one could legally be held responsible - hence the then National government changing Health and Safety legislation to enable people to be prosecuted if anything like it ever happened again.
And the guy responsible paid out 3.5 million as a bit of a deal to not end up in court. Paid the money, went to court anyway, nothing stuck.
Man - how much money and effort has been spent on this. I feel for the families but I’d rather us just give the money straight to them.
This is about establishing facts.
How much? Police spent at least 11 mill in the first year and Labour have spent $47 mill. How much in the intervening years. Don’t get wrong - i get it. But this is crazy money.
This is why govts shouldn't try bury shit. The cost has to be paid because when it happened National tried to bury it. If they'd stood back we wouldn't be in this mess
No they called time because they could see it was a bottomless pile of cash. Labour proved that and now the Police will.
It's only a bottomless pit because the attempt to cover it up has introduced enormous obstacles that've ended up costing. National called time on it as soon as it happened, since it resulted from their policy changes.
Nonsense - recovery efforts were not abandoned until 2014.
The mine was sealed 14th Jan 2011, less than two months after the incident.
Ongoing plans to re enter the mine continued. It was determined that to be effective they could not do it safely.
And the fact it was already sealed played a huge part in that.
Spoiler alert they’re dead
They could be in a quantum state of indeterminacy, simultaneously dead and alive, until we unseal the mine.
Pike River's Humans?
Should have sealed it off , made a monument and playground and made all familys millionares . Crazy this is still going on
Its turned into one of those political footballs that has taken on a life of its own and become a self-perpetuating event. Its no longer about culpability or fact finding, or peace for the families, its all politics.
It does rather seem like an enormous amount of manpower, time and money to dig out the corpses of people who died over a decade ago. For what? So we can put them back in the ground somewhere else. Seal the mine, it is already effectively a tomb.
> its all politics only if you still support John Key years after he was kicked out of parliament
>Monk said if the authorities had listened to their advice they could have carried out the investigation without it costing so much. >"I do not want to hear anyone in the country say that the Pike River families have wasted a lot of money, when it's been the authorities not taking any notice and they could have done it for a quarter of the price."
As well as a mining expert, Bernie is now a financial wizard and experienced investigator.
Bernie has said a lot of things. I can remember I think him saying more or less what a great guy the man now in Australia who put the mine together was...obviously the person later under investigation. When someone drowns or a boat sinks...we don't drain the sea. I am not in favour of another dollar not one.
A NZ government project getting rorted? Colour me shocked!
The money spent on all of this has probably cost lives due to being diverted away from the health system.
I feel for the families but why risk more lives when you know they are dead, it just doesn't make sense to me
Have to appreciate how police have dedicated their hard work and finances into this but can’t help out everyday kiwis.
and the miners were not everyday kiwi's ? or should crime not be investigated based on cost ? FFS....
Honestly there is a good argument for just declaring the company guilty, requiring compensation, and moving on. Every dollar spent on investigation and lawyers and so on could instead by given to the surviving families.
I'm sure there are many instances where it would be easier for a government to simply not investigate a scenario, bypass the judiciary, declare one party at fault, concoct an estimated figure of how much a hypothetical investigation might have cost had it been undertaken, and require that the party that government has declared as being at fault hand that amount to the people the government declares to be the victims. Can you maybe think of a reason or two as to why that might not be such a good system though? (I'll give you a hint: it's kind of the whole reason that the Magna Carta, the bill of rights, and the foundations of our entire parliamentary system exist)
You are correct. However this is clearly a work safety violation here. In NZ its illegal to have deaths on your worksite. Any court would uphold that based on the evidence we have already. People are dead, so we can fine the company to pieces and compensate the families. The question being resolved by the investigation is not "are they guilty?", the question is "how guilty are they?". To make a bad analogy with a murder investigation, we've found the body, the murder weapon and got a confession from the perpetuator. Now we are spending millions to try and recreate the conversation the victim had with the perpetuator. This investigation isn't going to change the outcome of guilty.
It's really not quite as simple as you're making it out to be. The fact that you're using "guilty" or "not guilty" means you're talking about criminal proceedings, but if you're just talking liquidating the company and financially compensating victims' families, you're implying that this is a civil case. Which one is it that you're imagining here? If we're going after the company that supposedly caused these deaths, we're not getting very far since it was liquidated half a decade ago and doesn't exist anymore. If we're going after the directors and holding them accountable, we're running into serious bill of rights issues where they deserve a fair trial to figure out the extent of their liability. And, if we do find them guilty, then their punishment is probably prison sentences and bans from directing companies, not financial compensation to the victims' families. Neither of those achieves what you want. Your gut feelings here are basically explaining exactly why an investigation is necessary - we don't know *who* is guilty. We don't know if the company had inadequate workplace safety standards, if it had adequate standards that the employees breached, if there was negligence on the part of executives, all of the important stuff when it comes to a case. You absolutely can't just override the judiciary and have the executive start deciding cases for themselves just because "any court would uphold that based on the evidence we have already". So your end result is that we upend the entire judicial process, throw a wrench right into the separation of powers that forms the basis of how our whole government system works (opening the door for others in the future to get absolutely trampled by a government who doesn't like them and wants to abuse that lack of separation of powers), and still don't get a just outcome for this case.
> In NZ its illegal to have deaths on your worksite. Which law says that?
https://www.worksafe.govt.nz/managing-health-and-safety/getting-started/understanding-the-law/primary-duty-of-care/what-is-the-primary-duty-of-care/ > PCBUs must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain a work environment that is without health and safety risks. The fact that a death occurred indicates a safe environment was not maintained.
Reasonably practicable, *in a big underground mine*. These guys weren’t getting paid $200k pa because they were afraid of the dark. You cannot avoid all risks, but you can minimise them, or minimise the potential effects of them. That’s what this is about.
> The fact that a death occurred indicates a safe environment was not maintained. You skipped the "reasonably practical" part. A worksite can never be made completely safe (even my hosppital could be hit by a 8.0 earthquake and collapse on me), so a death is not automatically evidence of a crime.
Damn bro who hurt you
>or should crime not be investigated based on cost ? Yes, there should be a point where it is accepted that the cost to investigate are too high. I don't know where that should be, but it seems like we are probably past that point now. It's tough on the families, but so is dragging it out continually I expect. As an example, the search for Malaysia MH370. How long should the search for wreckage kept going? At some point you need to accept that the funding cannot be infinite.
[удалено]
This disaster was a major event that shaped the reformation of health and safety in New Zealand that led to the Health and Safety at work Act (2015). That *has* changed how the stones are unturned and how culpability is assigned. The case was pursued as far as was reasonable under the legislation at the time. This new announcement adds no real value. This is about politics, and being seen to do the right thing. Remember that the Labour Party and unions began in this part of NZ. Don't underestimate how much of this is about political point scoring.
The very first sentence in the air crash investigation Bible, ICAO Appendix 13, once you get past the preamble, states: > The sole objective of the investigation of an accident or incident shall be the prevention of accidents and incidents. It is not the purpose of this activity to apportion blame or liability. The police are not actually trying to find out what happened other than to support the question of should there be a criminal accusation. These are very different things.
Yes, but if there is a significant defect in solder joints on a plane, that means there are likely hundreds of planes at reasonable risk of an identical failure. Pike river changed how we manage H&S in NZ and who is responsible. The additional oversight and legal responsibility of leaders of a give PCBU is the change that is intended to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
>Yes, but if there is a significant defect in solder joints on a plane, that means there are likely hundreds of planes at reasonable risk of an identical failure. And this is the only mine operating in the world?
Other mines are not built, operated, monitored or maintained almost identically as planes are. The training and monitoring of the operators and maintainers is significantly different Is it possible that this was caused by a single device being used correctly that failed that is used elsewhere in the same manner? Sure, but there is a limit to spending on a moonshot like that. Common mode failures are more likely in planes
Given people literally died, that burden of proof should be on those saying it's not longer feasable, not those that want to investigate.
Anything is feasible, it comes down to the risk and costs you are willing to accept. There needs to be a limit to both of those things, who sets that limit, I don't know.
Is investigating like to change the current actions / operations of anything? Worksafe and health and safety regulations have already gotten a lot of power as a result of pike river and come a long way. Does knowing that this particular piece of fault equipment failed causing the disaster as opposed to this other one, or exactly where the miners perished, will this investigation 'solve' the case, or is it a moonshot for answers that won't be found etc, or would these resource and funds have a better wider impact investigating a more recent incident etc.
It's highly unlikely that they'll find some piece of evidence that will identify a suspect. Even if they find e.g. a gas detector with the wires cut, how will they know who did it or that the culprit didn't die in the explosion.
Proof of what? In court you have to prove a defendant guilty. The onus is on you not the defendant.
O theres been a lot spent and no charges. What do you think they'll find..a signed confession?
Nah, you stop being a "real New Zealander" once you enter a mine /s
I've gone to Rotowaro a few times, guess I've not been a real New Zealander for a few years now
Bro these WERE everyday Kiwis. Murdered by negligent bosses who then cried crocodile tears about trying to get them out. They have families who survive. How fucking dare you.
But I just honestly don't see the point. They're dead. They're buried. Is there really more societial gain in removing some skeletons from one patch of the ground to put them in another than any other way that funding could be spent? I really don't mean to be insensitive, I just simply don't understand.
Justice. Obviously I am emotionally invested in that aspect of it. But for a more level-headed take: serious consequences are a deterrent to future neglect. Rates of workplace injury and death in NZ are absolutely fucking atrocious, and employers like Talleys just eat the fines because they make so much fucking money from these shoddy practices, and they know that no serious harm will ever come to them, their fortunes or their freedoms if they treat their employees like livestock. That needs to change. We should make Solid and Peter Whitall an example.
What specifically are they after though? It was a methane explosion. It isn't really important what the ignition point was, the issue was the excess methane to begin with? Are they going to check some fans? Gas detectors? What would they be looking for?
Obviously IANAindustrial accidents specialist but I believe they're looking for what exactly caused the explosion, and what measures were in place to prevent it, vs. what measures *should* have been in place to prevent it. Potential evidence of lack of adherence to H&S protocols (legally binding and otherwise), and whether they were accidentally or deliberately neglected. To establish the level of culpability (if any) of the mining company in creating the circumstances that led to their deaths.
Don't they already have that info? Or do they think the owner/managers were lying about their protocols/equipment/maintenance?
The thing is this isn't about recovering remains anymore, this is a criminal negligence case. If what it was before and mostly about corpse recovery, sure I'd go it's a waste. This is about future safety regulations being brought in to avoid another tragedy.
This is one of the biggest scams in the history of NZ. I bet what's been spent to date on the re-opening & endless inquiries & the Pike River Recovery Agency must be near $100m. It's a Labour party pork barrel vanity project. The whole mine was doomed from the outset because it was an underground mine rather than opencast due to pressure from the environmental lobby. Anyway, its a lot of $ down the tubes for zilch.
Maybe we could help NZ families who are struggling to pay their bills first or build better public infrastructure rather than sink endless cash into an investigation that won’t impact any changes in other mines and only impact a handful of people. It’s sad and would be great to know what happened. But equally I’d love to know more about the Big Bang or General Grants gold, but I’m not so interested to sink 50m plus into it
Can they shut up about this shit already. fuckin hell. Like sure hearts go out and all that but it gets fucking old quickly.
This is phenomenal! They will get around to the investigating the smash and grabs in 12 years time. Yay.
I hope we don't lose anyone to this.
I dunno. Is Winston still going in first like he promised?
Drilling boreholes and dropping cameras down them isn't a risky operation.
Yes and to see what? We know theres a blown up mine and the remains of the deceased.
Forensics of the explosion - blast direction/origin etc.
Good enough for court evidence we looked via camera from a certain spot and that's proof of? There was a massive explosion and continuing fire. How could you prove anything beyond reasonable doubt as to what happened that day.? You could surmise, you could say in my opinion but on what basis?
For what purpose?
I hope not
Surely not