A public plea from a Pike River mother Sonya Rockhouse for someone, somewhere to do something about the ongoing injustice of people dying at their work
Comment: My boy Ben was killed nearly 13 years ago. His Facebook account still sends me “on this day” reminders of his life. I’ve taken to reposting them - it’s another way of reminding the world of what Pike River took from me. From the world.
After the Pike River mine exploded – after it avoidably and unnecessarily exploded – killing 29 men, Anna Osborne and I fought.
We fought for them and won a commitment to recover the mine drift that has led to new evidence and new hope of a prosecution. We fought for stronger law to protect working people and hold those employers and businesses that killed them to account. We fought so hard that people got sick of hearing about “those Pike Families” - sometimes we got sick of hearing ourselves. But we thought we had won stronger law.
Then we saw the travesty of charges over Whakaari being dropped off the back of a failed investigation and a prosecution that collapsed under basic points of law. It’s the same investigative, prosecutorial, and legislative failure that we suffered all those years ago.
For us it was a half-arsed Department of Labour (as it was) investigation which led to an unlawful deal with Pike CEO Peter Whittall that at its heart was nothing more than a play to let the government and its agencies off the hook for the deaths of my son and the fathers and sons of 28 other families.
And now, after 13 years of campaigning for justice for our men, across two governments, and for all the other people killed like this, nothing has changed.
It’s shameful.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not about the law, it’s about how the law is enforced and who enforces it. Worksafe has shown that it can’t get the job done fairly, and given the job they’ve been told to do by various governments and the lack of funding they’ve been provided to do it, that should be no surprise.
What we need is criminal law. What we need is corporate manslaughter that is investigated by the police and prosecuted by Crown prosecutors. From 2010 to 2013 we watched an investigation by that labour department that lost vital evidence, asked the wrong questions and was - in my opinion - unduly influenced by political and industry interests. It was a shambles.
Since then, we fought to get the mine reopened and to have more evidence gathered and we have seen the police investigate properly and independently. There has been a team of highly qualified officers working on this case for four years now. There is a warehouse of evidence that has been removed from the mine and managed with meticulous care as chain-of-evidence. That’s what our men deserved in the first place. It’s what they didn’t get 13 years ago and now it’s what the people killed and injured at Whakaari didn’t get from Worksafe.
Crime is one of the big issues this election. Why not this kind of crime?
That’s the question behind our plea to political leaders to put corporate manslaughter into place. We sent letters to every one of them that look like they might be in Parliament next year and what did we get?
The Greens said they would do it.
Labour talked about making it a priority next term.
NZ First said they would consider it.
National said thank you for your letter.
Act said nothing.
As did Te Pāti Māori.
We got this frankly tepid response because these parties think voters are sick of hearing from people like us fighting for justice.
The sad part is they might be right. But that’s because we have only one way to put pressure on them - by making a fuss in public.
Nobody in the electorate gets sick of the political donors or the backroom lobbyists who continually push against health and safety for New Zealanders. The companies moaning to MPs about the cost it would put on their forestry operations, their corporate farms, their fishing and mining and whatever other interests they are protecting. People don’t get fatigued by them because people - ordinary people - never get to hear what they are saying to politicians day after day after day.
That’s why, regardless of how tired people are of hearing from us and from others who fight these fights, we won’t go away.
Because we believe in our bones that when people are killed their families deserve to know they will be seen. That’s all we want - for the deaths of hundreds of people in this country to be seen. To be properly investigated, and to be answered for.
That’s accountability. That’s all we are asking for. Political leaders should not be allowed to ignore that.
Sonya Rockhouse
Health and Safety campaigner
In 2022 Sonya Rockhouse and Anna Osborne were made Members of the Order of New Zealand for their fight for truth and justice for Pike River Families and contribution to health and safety. In 2023 they were recognised with the Safeguard Lifetime Achievement Award for their advocacy work for New Zealanders’ health and safety and for their work with the Public Services Commission to create a Public Service Standard for the treatment of survivors of tragedy - Te Mahi me ngā Mōrehu - Working With Survivors.
You can support the call for corporate manslaughter here
