Not all down to the courts

So that’s one way to survive in a minefield. Stay completely still. WorkSafe chief executive Phil Parkes announced a raft of prosecutions arising from the Whakaari eruption, but beyond this his press conference yesterday was one of clenched inertia. He wouldn’t budge.

Charges against whom exactly, and on what grounds specifically, to the exclusion of who else precisely, were none of our business, until such matters were negotiated via the courts. It fell to some, including GNS Science, which monitors volcanic activity, and Volcanic Air, which ran tours there, to step forward and acknowledge they are among those targeted.

From Parkes’ stay-put and carefully uninformative perspective, wider issues at this point were still to be squinted at from afar, as we all stand stock still and waited our patience. This immobile stance might be defended on the basis that neither those killed and harmed, nor the wider public, would thank him for saying something that might unhelpfully complicate either the rights of the accused or the prospects of a fair trial free from unnecessary complications.

But the announcement was more a promise of progress than an example of it. Much remains to be done, and neither sluggishly nor entirely through our courts. Prosecutions are but one way to address the need for accountability but, in any case, this isn’t to be confused with corrections to systems and culture. Court activity cannot inertly sideline a separate imperative to draw every bitter lesson from this tragedy and put each one to public good, as expeditiously as possible.

Among the very few wider comments that Parkes made were some that should resonate in terms of two other wretched tragedies revisited yesterday.

He started the press conference with the resonant reminder that not every unexpected tragedy is unforseeable. Elsewhere in the news cycle, the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (Fianz) released the submission it had made to the royal commission of inquiry on the mosque attacks.

It calls out a failure to analyse and assess the threat of Right-wing extremists any earlier than the months before the attack occurred, because of the ‘‘systemic dysfunction’’ of the intelligence community, which lacked the diversity to deliver proper engagement with the Islamic community itself. So what’s to be done about that? The question is not rhetorical.

Meanwhile, back at yesterday’s media conference, Parkes also said it would be an appropriate legacy for those who had lost their lives if every business and every worker in the country looked to improve the way our work is done – because improvements in approaches and outcomes during the past decade had left ‘‘much, much more’’ still to do.

Missing from the ‘‘every business, every worker’’ umbrella was another outfit, our Government and its agencies. The CTV Families Group has called for a high-powered review of the police decision not to lay charges over the 2011 quake building collapse which killed 115 people. The group also refers, as well it might, to the WorkSafe decision to drop charges against Pike River mine boss Peter Whittall, upon his

$3.41 million payment to the families. Some called that blood money, the Supreme Court ruled it an unlawful deal, and the NZ Law Society is considering an investigation.

So no. Let’s be careful not to keep our focus too tightly on the courts. Parkes, for now, might be well advised to do so, but we aren’t. There’s much to be getting on with.

Much remains to be done, and neither sluggishly nor entirely through our courts.