Helen Kelly blogged four years ago why the deal that allowed Peter Whittall to walk free following the Pike River disaster was unjust and flawed. Yesterday the Supreme Court agreed.
Yesterday the families lost only a small bit of the battle for justice at Pike in an application to get some of the documentation on the Peter Whittall decision. It is clear from the decision that the process of filing itself caused MBIE to agree to release a number of the key documents.
Pike River boss Peter Whittall, the guy facing charges after 29 of his employees died working in his unsafe, ‘profit-over-people’ mine, has set up a mining safety consulting company. What’s next? A Minister of Tourism who always holidays overseas? A Finance Minister who wants to sell highly profitable assets in a down market? … oh … This country is nuts.
The stories coming out of the Pike inquiry paint a picture of a company with a basic disregard for workers’s safety.
But we shouldn’t expect anything else after thirty years of putting the interests of business ahead of everyone else.
