We look back at the role of Andrew Little and the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union in the Pike River mining disaster.

 I don’t usually repost my own posts and, in fact, this is the first repost I’ve ever done. But I think it is  worth giving this story another airing given the rise in political prominence of Andrew Little. I considered rewriting the story but I think the original post speaks for itself. It outlines the role of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) in the Pike River mining disaster, which saw 29 men lose their lives.

Labour Party leader Andrew Little was national secretary of the EPMU at the time. This story was first published on 8 November, 2012.

Last month Andrew Little went to Pike River to attend the memorial to mark the fourth anniversary of the tragedy. He told the media that he attended the commemorations to stand alongside the families.

WHEN THE  Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Pike River mining disaster issued its report  this week, the response of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) was immediate. It issued a press statement welcoming  the  report and is encouraging the Government to implement the recommended  changes as soon as possible.

The statement quoted EPMU assistant national secretary Ged O’Connell who declared that  the report should mark a turning point for mine safety in New Zealand:

This report is a damning indictment of New Zealand’s deregulated health and safety regime. Pike River Coal Ltd should never have been allowed to operate in the way it did, and in other countries it wouldn’t have been allowed to.

The report makes clear that the tragic loss of life at Pike River could have been prevented with stronger regulations, an independent and well-resourced mine safety inspectorate and genuine worker involvement in health and safety.

We hope the failings exposed in this report spell the end of the deregulated health and safety regime of the last 20 years. This vindicates the union’s repeated calls for improvements in mine safety and for the reintroduction of check inspectors.

This statement represents a complete change of heart by the EPMU officialdom because it was never critical of  Pike River Coal (PRC) during the time that  the mine was open. The EPMU represented approximately half of the 140 miners on the site.

After the first explosion the EPMU strongly defended the management of PRC.

EPMU National secretary Andrew Little (now a Labour MP)  told the New Zealand Herald on November 22  2010 that  there was “nothing unusual about Pike River or this mine that we’ve been particularly concerned about”.

He then appeared on TVNZ’s  Close Up  to again defend PRC management.

He told Close Up that underground mining was inherently unsafe and the risk of gas explosions, particularly on the West Coast, was high.

While the industry was aware of the risks and took the necessary precautions, unfortunately these kinds of incidents still happened, he argued.

On November 26, 2010 the Dominion Post  ran an article that denounced ‘wild’ rumours that the mine was not safe. It declared  that  “Any suggestion of obvious or known safety lapses does not find traction with unionised staff or union leader Andrew Little.”

Andrew Little’s conciliatory views toward  PRC management were echoed by Labour MP Damien O’Connor. He suggested that no one was responsible for the accident and that the  disaster was “just one of these things that the West Coast unfortunately has had to get used to over the years”.

Little and O’Connor’s views would of found  favour with the Minister for Energy and Resources, Gerry Brownlee. He insisted that PRC had “an absolute focus on health and safety”.

So here  we had the Government, the Labour Party and the EPMU all lining up to defend the management of PRC.

At the  time this writer commented: “All workers at the mining site should be seriously concerned that the EPMU has such a benevolent view of its safety standards.”

The views of Andrew Little and the EPMU flew in the face of expert opinion.

While Andrew Little  was defending PRC an Australian gas drainage engineer, who wished to remain anonymous because he feared ‘recriminations’, said he visited Pike River in 2009  and observed that its  operating standards were “extremely poor”.

He said  that he had been told by miners  that the mine was flooded with methane gas about three weeks before the first explosion.

He said  miners had bored through ‘high flow methane holes’ without any risk assessment conducted or procedure on how to manage gas flow from the hole in place. He was critical  that PRC has not yet implemented a gas drainage drilling regime that could relieve the pressure when there was  a  build up of gas by drilling a hole in the coal seam.

The New Zealand Herald, also in November 2010,  quoted Gerry Morris of Greymouth, a former writer for Coal magazine, who said he had heard regularly from contractors at the mine “over the last two or three years that this mine is unsafe, there’s far too much gas, there’s going to be a disaster here one day”.

But despite the overwhelming evidence that there was  something seriously and dangerously wrong at the Pike Rive mine, the officials of the  EPMU did nothing.

The mine opened in November 2008  and on not one occasion did the EPMU  initiate industrial action or even criticise PRC’S  safety standards, even after a group of workers  walked off the job to protest the lack of basic emergency equipment.

The walk out by miners was revealed by miner  Brent Forrester. He told TVNZ’s Sunday on December 5 2010 that  he once helped organise a walkout of about 10 miners to protest the lack of basic emergency equipment, including stretchers and an emergency transport vehicle. They received no support from the EPMU. Andrew Little  even insisted that  PRC “had a good health and safety committee that’s been very active.”

It was exactly this benevolent attitude  by the EPMU that allowed PRC – and the Department of Labour – to continue as if it was just ‘business a usual’. It appears that no-one was  protecting the interests and concerns of the workers on the mining site. The EMPU failed to organise industrial action  to address safety concerns  at the  mine in favour of  ‘cooperating’ with management, what it and the CTU sometimes  refer to as ‘modern unionism’.

There won’t be any resignations from within the EPMU for dereliction of duty and, of course, Andrew Little  has escaped to Parliament.

One of the things we were promised by this government was an adherence to the fiscal responsibility rules, meaning that government spending would remain within certain parameters, to allow for reducing debt and paying for existing services. Socialist governments are famous for spending money like there is no tomorrow; after all, it is other people’s money. This government promised to be different. By promising to adhere to the rules around fiscal responsibility, they essentially claimed that they would be as responsible with taxpayers’ money as was the previous government.

Well, guess what? 18 months in, that promise just went out the window, along with just about everything else they ever promised. This government really is a joke. quote.

The Government this morning announced that it will shift its debt target from a single figure to a percentage range.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson explained the Government is looking at a range of around 15 to 25 per cent of the GDP.

Don’t you just love the way this government treats its voters like idiots? So let us just stop and think for a minute as to exactly why they might want to move from a specific target to a ‘range’. Then let’s be honest. They are not doing this because they want to reduce debt, are they? No. They want to increase debt by an extra 5%. And don’t forget – this is after their little ‘off balance sheet’ trick with debt for Kiwibuild that they pulled last year. quote.

Alternatively, it could opt to spend a little less and aim to further pay down debt. end quote.

Take it from me. They are not doing this so that they can pay down debt. If that was their aim and it was actually possible, we would know about it, as they would be shouting from the rooftops about how prudent they are. quote.

National Party finance spokesperson Amy Adams said the move was an admission of defeat on fiscal responsibility.

“This is a blunt admission the Government can’t manage the books properly, it is not wriggle-room. This makes the fiscal hole look like a puddle,” she said.

“This decision will mean billions of dollars more debt because the Government can’t manage the books properly and wants to spend up on big wasteful promises in election year.” end quote.

Yes, it will. It wants to bribe the voters. Remember Helen Clark’s interest free student loans bribe in 2005? We are probably looking at a repeat of something like that. With a slowing economy though, that is the last thing they should be doing. quote.

But Robertson said the move to a range reflected the fact that circumstances could change over time and did not necessarily mean moving to the outer limit.

“A range gives governments more capacity to take well-considered actions appropriate to the nation’s circumstances,” he said.

“It establishes boundaries within which debt is kept to sensible and sustainable levels and where fiscal choices are driven by impact and value,” Robertson said.

A newspaper. end quote.

Yes Grant. Of course, you are managing the economy brilliantly. Oops. I just had to duck out of the way of a flying pig.

How do you feel about the government passing a law to give police and media control over what you say or post on social media?

Pretty soon it will be illegal to say and write anything that anybody considers offensive. No lines will be drawn in the sand, no guidelines laid down, the sole measure will be whether somebody chooses to be offended.

Shutting windows, drawing curtains and locking doors won’t keep Jacinda Ardern out of your home or your conversation.

The law Ardern wants will dictate what we are allowed to talk about. It will effectively be censorship on the fly, and another draconian measure to morph New Zealand into New Draconia.

Proponents of introducing hate speech law argue that it leads to violence and terrorism. You can make up your own mind about this, but what you think doesn’t actually matter.

Along with NZ 16 other countries and Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Google and Amazon have signed the “Christchurch Call” pledge. Facebook explains their commitment to the pledge. Quote.

…we are sharing concrete steps we will take that address the abuse of technology to spread terrorist content, including continued investment in technology that improves our capability to detect and remove this content from our services, updates to our individual terms of use, and more transparency for content policies and removals.” End of quote.

Facebook Newsroom

If you think this sounds like big brother watching, you are not alone. Quote.

Dr Bronwyn Howell, a programme director at Victoria University and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has closely followed the developments in Paris and outlines exactly what the pledge entails. She is extremely concerned, however, that the process has been hijacked for political purposes:

“At first glance the pledge appears, as intended, a positive example of collaborative negotiation toward a self-governing regime… A deeper examination, however, leads to a more worrying conclusion.

While governments have agreed to a range of difficult-to-enforce aspirational goals, the tech companies have agreed to take a number of concrete, observable, and measurable steps on which it will be much easier to hold them explicitly accountable.

Here you have it – the fight for equality is simply a licence to censor your views under the guise of preventing terrorism. Quote.

Picture a dinner party where half the guests are university graduates with prestigious white-collar jobs, with the other half consisting of people who are trade workers, barmaids, cleaners and labourers. While one side of the table trades racy jokes and uninhibited banter, the other half tut-tuts this “problematic” discourse.” End of quote.

Currently, the white-collar brigade are forced to take disagreeable opinions on the chin, but under the proposed law changes they could single out individuals for inciting hatred (hate speech) and make a police complaint.

Claire Lehmann reported on the Australian media reaction after the recent surprise election result. Quote.

And thanks to social media (and the caustic news-media culture that social media has encouraged and normalized), these attacks are no longer confined to dinner-party titterings and university lecture halls.

Brigid Delaney, a senior writer for Guardian Australia, responded to Saturday’s election result with a column about how Australia has shown itself to be “rotten.” End of quote.

Rotten? Really? Delaney dehumanises her political opponents, they are not people anymore, they are rotten fruit. Quote.

One well-known Australian feminist and op-ed writer, Clementine Ford, has been fond of Tweeting sentiments such as “All men are scum and must die.”

Former Australian Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, who also has served as a high-profile newspaper columnist, argues that even many mainstream political positions—such as expressing concern about the Chinese government’s rising regional influence—are a smokescreen for racism.” End of quote.

Claire Lehmann writing for Quillette

In other words, if you dare to disagree with me, I have the means to silence you.

This is the government’s plan for New Draconia, and this is how you can expect to be treated under the proposed elitist hate speech law.

Today, 21 May 2019 a team entered the Pike River mine drift tunnel. Was Winston Peters there as he promised in 2016 and reaffirmed in 2018? Nope! Just another failed empty promise from the master of failed empty promises. Quote.

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is sticking by his promise to be the first person to re-enter the Pike River mine drift.

Mr Peters first made the promise in front of Pike River families in December 2016, saying: “I’m that confident on the expert advice that you have, that I’m offering to be on the first party back in.”

During the post-Cabinet news conference on Monday afternoon, he reaffirmed the pledge.

“I made that statement a long time, before anybody wanted to enter the mine because I do have an experience of mining or working underground… so it’s nothing new in terms of danger,” he said. End quote.

Newshub 18 June 2018

Quote. Winston Peters said the re-entry was a “victory for the families who are fighting tirelessly for answers”.

“Re-entry into Pike River is about justice. It’s about finding out the truth, and it is about doing what’s right for the families of those 29 men,” the New Zealand First leader said. End quote.

A Newspaper

So where’s Wally Winston? Piking out in parliament, certainly not at Pike River.