Hope for Pike River families

Written By: - Date published: 1:46 pm, August 15th, 2017 - 10 comments
Categories: accountability, disaster - Tags: , ,

Earlier today (Lloyd Burr at Newshub):

Support grows for new ‘Pike River Recovery Authority’

A cross-party Pike River policy will be unveiled at Parliament today, and it’s understood it outlines plans to create a new Government entity to look after Pike River Mine.

All parties except National and ACT are backing the move, which would see laws introduced to move the responsibility of the mine from Solid Energy to a new Government agency.

The agency would be modelled on the now defunct Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), which was set up in the wake of the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes. …

This has now been confirmed: Pike Families ecstatic over historic political agreement

Also: ‘We have an obligation to the families’ – new cross-party Pike River Mine agency would bring out bodies by end of 2018

Of course the exception is National (including Epsom branch) – isolated on this issue prior to the election….

10 comments on “Hope for Pike River families ”

  1. JC 1

    Tumeke!

    I’d mostly agree with Sonya Rockhouse comment “To be standing in Parliament. Less than a year later and watching leader after leader signing up to recover the drift, it’s just mind-blowing. It’s restored my faith in our democracy.”

    Almost…

    kiaora!

  2. A cross-party policy to implement a Pike River Recovery Authority.

    Excellent.

    All party’s are backing the move of course , – with the exception of National (including Epsom branch) ….

    And the family’s are ‘ ecstatic ‘.

    Its been 6 long years and more. They should never have had to wait that long. This is such good news for them and New Zealanders.

  3. Just as an aside , noticed this from the Newshub article…

    … ‘ Mine owner Solid Energy is in the process of being disestablished as a state-owned enterprise because of its dire financial situation.

    It’s not known what the current plans are for the mine when the company is wound up’…

    Is that all you ever were, National ?… just a cheap neo liberal front to deliberately run down all our public services like Health and Education for your greedy , mad headlong rush to sell off all our SOE’s at fire sale prices so your New Zealand Initiative mates could buy them up , asset strip them , make workers redundant and employ workers on flat rates on minimum wages and make fat profits out of fellow New Zealanders ?

  4. Thinkerr 4

    Really glad for Pike River families, but very sad too.

    This should never have become a political football, with the Prime Minister vowing to do everything possible for the families, then the party he represented being solidly the most unwilling to do anything from the day the promise was made.

    Time was when New Zealand was above all that.

    • JC 4.1

      Thinker. I Agree.

      There was a time…

      A Bitter Sweet day for the families of Pike.

      Sadly I should have taken a breath before responding to this announcement, and the post in Respect!

      Sadly now.. the 23rd of September is nieh.

      I can only take heart that it is Election Year. With an opportunity to make a change!
      To ensure that anything like this will ever occur again in NZ!

      “The Pike River tragedy is an ongoing source of grief to the families and the community. While public attention has moved on, their struggle to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones continues. There are many around the country who have not forgotten them.”

      https://thestandard.org.nz/pike-river-new-video-footage-proves-key-made-the-promise-he-denies/

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