Neil Sands
For Sonya Rockhouse (pictured left) and Anna Osborne (right), the unimaginable tragedy of the Pike River mine disaster in 2010 triggered an ongoing quest to obtain justice for their loved ones and make New Zealand workplaces safer for those they call “the little people”, who don’t have the formal education or financial resources hold large corporations to account.
The pair were in exactly that position when an underground explosion at the West Coast mine killed 29 men in November 2010, among them Anna’s husband Milton, 54, and Sonya’s 21-year-old son Ben. Sonya’s other son Daniel lived, carrying fellow survivor Russell Smith a kilometer along the mine shaft to safety.
The shared experience of grief and injustice has forged Rockhouse and Osborne into a formidable unit.
They sometimes finish each other’s sentences, can talk at length about the inadequacies of industrial manslaughter legislation in far-off places such as Queensland, and have both vowed they will never give up fighting for reforms to a judicial system they say is letting people down through an ineffective workplace safety regime.
“It’s been made way too hard for little people who don’t have the money or the fight in them, because it’s exhausting, that’s how people have been allowed to get away with it,” Osborne says, before Rockhouse chips in: “Anna and I are lucky that we’ve got each other, we keep each other going. If Anna’s having a down week, then I’ll pick up the slack, and if I’m having a down week, Anna will pick up the slack.
“We kind of feed off each other and that’s what’s enabled us to be able to do it, along with the wonderful team that we’ve got behind us.”
‘Our laws are weak’
In the 16 years since the Pike River disaster, Osborne and Rockhouse have campaigned on multiple fronts. A major goal has been pursuing charges against those in charge of Pike River, including the mining company’s chief executive Peter Whittall, for a string of safety failures in the lead-up to the disaster.
Whittall had charges dropped in the wake of the disaster by agreeing to pay $3.41 million compensation to victims’ families, but the deal with regulators for what Rockhouse calls “blood money” was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in 2017.
Police then reopened their investigations. For the past 18 months they have been considering options for criminal prosecution, a drawn-out process which Osborne and Rockhouse hope will result in 29 counts of manslaughter against those who oversaw the mine prior to the explosion, which a Royal Commission found came after numerous warnings of a potential catastrophe.
“The pressure was on. Management and the CEO wanted the production to happen, and they sent those guys in knowing that the methane had peaked to dangerous levels,” Osborne said.
More broadly, they have pushed for the introduction of a new offence of corporate manslaughter [see separate story here]. They have pushed back against Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden’s changes to the Health & Safety at Work Act, which they say rolls back measures introduced to strengthen workplace safety after Pike River.
“Peter Whitall [unsuccessfully] bought his way out of a prosecution, behind closed doors, with lawyers and a judge.
“For him, that’s fine, but for the families, it was a huge slap in the face. We need penalties that fit the crime… For him to walk away, go back to Australia, have his job, remarry, spend time with his children and say that he feels nothing, no guilt about Pike River, it’s absolutely disgusting to the families.”
‘Proud of his mum’
So much time has passed since the disaster that Osborne and Rockhouse feared that the public had forgotten about it and the momentum for reform would evaporate.
They were pleasantly surprised by the reaction to last year’s movie Pike River, which features Melanie Lynskey as Osborne and Robyn Malcolm as Rockhouse.
“We want the corporate manslaughter law because in New Zealand our laws are very weak,” Rockhouse said. “Considering the crime, our laws do not fit the punishment.
“We were a bit shocked,” Rockhouse says. “I had it in my mind that people had moved on and didn’t really care that much. I thought we’d get a dozen to 20 people coming to see the movie, but it was the total and exact opposite. It fired things up again, so people are just sitting and waiting to see what’s going to happen with these prosecutions.”
At a select committee hearing last month, Osborne and Rockhouse shared memories of the loved ones they lost in the explosion, as well as insights into what’s behind the unrelenting determination that drives them.
The Health & Safety Amendment Bill passed, introducing major changes to the workplace safety regime that the pair said would erode safety measures at work.
“Milt always looked out for his people. He was a volunteer fireman, a local counsellor,” Osborne said. “I’ve always thought that among all the bad that came from Pike, he’d have taken some heart in the fact that his death helped keep others safe, even just a little bit.
“This bill takes that away. It takes away from every person at work in New Zealand and from the legacy of Milt and all the men he is lying within that shithole of a mine.”
Rockhouse said she felt compelled to speak for Ben “because he sadly cannot speak for himself”.
“Ben was a gentle boy, highly intelligent and very articulate. He was very kind and very fair with people, he believed they were good,” she said.
“I don’t know what he would have made of how hard we’ve had to fight for truth that should have been ours by right. We should never have had to fight, protest and campaign for justice, accountability or truth.
“I hope he’d be proud of his mum.”
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