Thanks all for a great conversation. It's a privilege.
Ngā mihi nui

Hi Kim, I can understand. Particularly in a climate of rising unemployment, mad housing prices and a sense of economic volatility. Can I ask a question? Is one of the problems for H&S practitioners that the "process" side of your jobs (the rules, trigger points, processes etc) is so big, and the task of getting that stuff over the line, such that there isn't enough time and creative energy left to think about this huge matter of communication, creation of safety for workers to speak up etc?

HI Steve, I imagine that has been incredibly difficult for your son in law. It's easy to forget that the ripple effect of this thing extends far, far beyond the immediate families.
Re corporate manslaughter, I am sympathetic to it but (perhaps surprisingly) I haven't really studied the pros and cons in real depth. I know there are some reservations from a legal perspective. I wonder if the HSW Act was being enforced as it should, with the capacity to reach high up the food chain with prosecutions, if it would be necessary to enact corporate manslaughter?

Hi Craig, really interesting question. It's probably hard for me to comment as an outsider, but I guess my hunch is that health and safety practitioners still struggle for mana and respect within their organisations often, particularly if the culture from the top (the boardroom) is still to regard H&S as a red tape cost. I don't do the work you do, but it strikes me as a really tough mix of procedures and internal mechanisms, messaging, honest communication, really really good listening skills, a fair bit of psychology and probably a bit of behavioural economics. So yes, I guess my impression is that you really need a rich mix of disciplines. Not sure if that really answers your question!

Hi Robert - ok, key lessons i think would be:

• Beware self-interested talk of industry self-regulation.
• Resist the temptation to call sound health and safety law "red tape".
• Never forget the human toll when health and safety is disregarded as a mere cost.
• Prioritise ways that workers' voices can be heard safety - they know what they do every minute and every hour and they are the experts in their tasks.
• Never let the inspectorate be degraded as it was through the 1990s and 2000s

Hi Angie, my perception of the agency is that it has done a really outstanding job. Incredibly thorough and careful, they have proved that safety came first a number of times, and the dedication of the staff there is palpable to me whenever i have met with them. I think there is a strong chance of important forensic evidence being recovered from pit bottom in stone, and this is a fundamental goal. The police team involved are very focused and - again in my perception from talking to them from time to time - highly motivated. Regarding pushing on through the rockfall, it won't happen under this arrangement, and I honestly doubt it will ever happen, but this is a story without end it seems, and nothing would surprise me.

I would say that managers and safety people have to find ways of hearing what workers at the "coal face" are saying. If the workers are not venturing their thoughts, then they need to find ways to make it safe for those thoughts and perspectives to be volunteered. I think a huge risk for managers is that you lose sight of how risky it is for workers to speak up. Am i really going to complain, if I have four kids in school and my partner is part time on the minimum wage and the landlord might be about to put the rent up? Am i really going to complain if I am not that confident about putting stuff down on paper on a form, and I never did too well at school and my spelling isn't great, and what if they tell me off? I think managers and companies absolutely have to think about how they genuinely hear their workers, and regard them as experts in the environment that they occupy every day - whether mine or shop counter or at the end of a chainsaw or wherever.

I think some would have trusted their instincts more and left. Bear in mind that these guys were routinely raising issues - hundreds of incident forms that were never acted on, a health and safety committee that was never listened to. Everything about Pike and the regulatory environment was so utterly threadbare that it's hard to do a simple retrospective in the way you suggest. I would say one crucial thing would have been for them to have unionised to a far greater extent than they did, but then you have to remember that the company was hostile to the union. They could have gone to the inspector more, but the inspector was powerless and lacking in mana. They could have gone to the board - and people did go to the board, but the board lacked the insight (and alertness) to do anything with that.

Hmmmm, Steve. I understand the question. To be honest I don't really know what I think. I would have to immerse myself in that one before I ventured a view. I can see the logic of your view (and it's consistent with my views on the need for hard penalties) but the social contract that sits beneath the original ACC scheme still seems to be of great value.

I think there are probably companies that have genuinely tried to integrate a strong health and safety culture and process into their operations. But the annual fatality figures really seem to show that we haven't got anywhere. Somehow - and I really don't know what the answer to this is - health and safety is very readily trivialised, made to seem like red tape with no upside, a cost with no return. So you get the endless anecdotal stories that tell a story of over-kill (excuse the expression) in terms of say scaffolding requirements, without the equivalent telling of the stories of people who are left with debilitating injuries or illness, and families left to struggle on economically because their breadwinner has been killed. Health and safety also seems to be a topic that politicians are very apt to latch onto as an indicator of an over-regulated state, often without any concrete evidence to back up their anecdotes.

Yeah, a huge issue Peter. And to that I suspect we can add the increased use of labour hire, which creates another institutional disconnect between the duties of employer to the employed.

HI Shirlene, I really can't offer any insight on White Island so will leave that one alone. Re the Whittall deal, the most important thing about the prosecution going ahead (as it should have) was that justice would have been seen to be done. The families were denied this most basic requirement and indeed the whole country was. I regard that arrangement as an absolute low point for our justice system, and a travesty that two families had to fight to the Supreme Court for a declaration that it was unlawful. And even with that declaration, there is no material consequence.

Further to Steve's question, as a journalist I naturally (and correctly I think) believe that the lack of deep coverage of health and safety, and the stories behind the incidents is part of the problem. When the forestry industry killed 10 in 2013 and faced a massive activist campaign led by Helen Kelly, the following year the industry went 12 months without a fatality. I think that tells us something about how we value and prioritise the human toll behind poor health and safety.

Hi Steve, thanks and a great question. It's a huge question of course, and if you are a H&S practitioner you probably have more answers than i do. But I am constantly reminded that our figures are terrible, and there is the ongoing conversation about Worksafe's rate of prosecutions. I fail to see how our record will change until there are proper consequences for disregard for workers' lives. That means prosecutions and penalties. Without going on too much, I suspect there are some big questions too that we have to think about regarding the structure of the NZ economy - our reliance on commodity markets, large numbers of small-time contractors who themselves don't have much security and carry high financial risks. The forestry sector being an exemplar.

There was a Prime doco-drama about four or five years ago Brendon. Sorry I can't recall the title but you should be able to search for it. My impression was that many people found it helpful in understanding the story. Haven't watched either Chernobyl or Bhopal - I must do that!

I think NZOG's role as the originator and on-going funder of Pike, and its lack of care for how the company was operating is one of the most important elements of the Pike story. In answer to the question, of course I think that proper accountability for H&S travesties requires law and enforcement that reaches into the boardroom, and this is what the HSW Act promised, but my understanding is that this hasn't happen in any material way yet, and certainly not with respect to large corporates. Will it happen? It depends on political will. I don't think we see much evidence of that regarding H&S - look at how readily this important law was trivialised in 2015.

If good regulation, competent employer and empowered workers are the essential "legs" of a decent health and safety system, then one way to think about Pike River is of a situation where none of these are present. The regulator was missing in action and disempowered; the company lacked skills and good governance and explicitly downplayed its risks while talking up its financial prospects; workers' concerns were actively ignored and there was an explicit hostility to them having a strong collective voice. The lessons are there to be learned for every organisation, for the regulator and for the labour movement.
I look forward to your questions and I'm sure I will learn a great deal this dialogue too.
Rebecca