Little Andrew: Urgent Debates — Pike River Mine Disaster—Release of Report Government Response and Ministerial Resignation 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Urgent Debates — Pike River Mine Disaster—Release of Report Government Response and Ministerial Resignation 
[Sitting date: 06 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6282. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 Let me begin by acknowledging the 29 men who lost their lives on 19 November 2010. I want to particularly acknowledge Blair Sims who was the Amalgamated Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union delegate—one of three delegates—whom I met at one of the regular delegate meetings that the union held. He was very proud of his union role and his family specifically requested that he have union paraphernalia at his memorial service. I want to acknowledge the families of the 29 men who have been through so much in the last 2 years as they have grieved and as they have attempted to come to terms with what could possibly have happened on that tragic day. And I want to acknowledge also the co-workers the comrades of those 29 miners and the contractors who have also suffered in their own way. The sense that many of them expressed to me as I met them was “There but for the grace of God.” That could have been them and they knew that. 
The report of the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy is cogent it is powerful and it is a validation—at last in my view—of the serious problems that lie at the heart of health and safety in the workplace in this country. I want to acknowledge the work of the commissioners Justice Panckhurst Stewart Bell and David Henry. It is an outstanding report. It is clear and there can be no disagreement with it. They have cited the evidence and they have drawn their conclusions. 
The Acting Minister of Labour said that we should not forget the lessons but the sad reality is that we have forgotten the lessons. We have forgotten the lessons of Strongman. We have forgotten the lessons of Brunner and of Kaitangata. We keep forgetting those lessons because every generation every cycle of politicians and bureaucrats thinks it knows best. But this is no time for smugness or self-contentedness it is no time to say that some are to blame and some others are not and it is certainly no time for the sort of conceit that I have seen expressed in newspaper editorials today particularly in the  
New Zealand Herald 
 which sort of blame the company the Government and the workers. 
I look at the role of the media the ones who cheered on Peter Whittall that time 2 years ago and elevated him to hero status; and the newspapers and other media whose journalists unquestioningly accepted everything they were told by the company and its public relations representatives. I know there were public relations representatives there because as soon as I arrived in Greymouth on the Saturday after the first explosion I met them—not one not two but by Monday five public relations representatives representing Pike River Coal. I criticise the media whose journalists would not question the deception that the entire nation was put under that these men would come out alive when it was quite clear within hours that they were not going to and yet Peter Whittall’s continued representations that there was a chance they would come out alive were peddled time and again. 
Let us not be smug. Pike River Coal is thousands of New Zealand workplaces. Pike River Coal is the ultimate conclusion of years of corporate hubris and of years of running down the institutions that protect workers. In 1998 the Department of Labour’s Occupational Safety and Health Service department had 317 workplace inspectors. In 2008 it was 130. There was a tragic story of the mines inspector who was called upon to investigate incidents in the underground mine at Pike River—serious incidents like flashes. When the manager whom he was reporting to told him that their travel budget had run out he was not allowed to go. It is a travesty. The other important institution that has been run down is the workers’ voice. The media has increasingly privileged the corporate voice over any others in this country and policy makers have too. I just ask this question: in light of a report that is the most damning on a single business in New Zealand in light of a report that is recommending the most radical change affecting business regulation in New Zealand where is the business voice? Where is Business New Zealand? Where is the New Zealand Initiative? Where is the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern)? Nowhere to be seen. They have nothing to say. But when the Government announces another deterioration of workers’ rights the press releases come out and they are all over it. But they have nothing to say. We do not have business leadership in this country. We have greed and self-interest and Pike River Coal is the apotheosis of it. The Government if it does anything else must support every recommendation and that must include a stand-alone agency to look after health and safety as Britain has and as other countries have. We must change the culture of health and safety in New Zealand. Nothing less will save millions of other workers in this country.