Editorial: No one held to account for Pike River

The Pike Families Memorial, in memory of the 29 miners killed in the Pike River coal mine disaster. Photo / Mark Mitchell

THE emotion generated by dramatic and traumatic loss of life is a potent force.

It can defy logic, it can prompt irrational acts, it can make grown men weak at the knees ... Can it open up a dangerous mine on the West Coast?

After six years, the Pike River mine disaster is still not going away -- credit to the staunchness of those Greymouth people and the raw-uranium potency of overwhelming grief.

The failure to recover any remains of the 29 dead is increasingly embarrassing the National Party, and now its political opponents are waking up to this fact. The sense a national mood of support and sympathy for the bereaved and that emotion is something they can tap in to. It's an election year and manipulating emotion is about to become all the rage.

Master manipulator Winston Peters -- whose uncanny sixth sense about these things has kept him in politics long after his sell-by date -- was first off the block and now the Labour Party is getting in behind the "re-enter the mine" cause.

Like most people, I have no idea whether it is safe to go back in and, like most people, I don't think they will find very much if they do.

But as Mr Peters has volunteered to go first, I have no objection to him signing a liability waiver that he accepts full responsibility should anything happen to him and donning a hard hat, gas mask and boots for a descent tomorrow morning. Whatever happens, it's what some would call a win-win situation. However, setting emotion aside, we should should be more concerned with what happened before this catastrophic event on November 19, 2010. The absence of proper safety procedures, the absence of escape routes, the absence of mining inspectors to make sure such an inherently dangerous business was being run properly ...

And the absence of anyone being prosecuted or held responsible, when there is such a clear case to answer. Now that's something to get emotional over.