4 November 2025
By Tom Peters,
Socialist Equality Group
Pike River,
directed by Rob Sarkies and written by Fiona Samuel, was
released in New Zealand last month, accompanied by a major
publicity campaign and universally glowing reviews in the
corporate media.
The film portrays the 2010 Pike River
underground coal mine disaster, in which 29 workers lost
their lives, and the fight by the families of those killed
for answers, for the return of their loved ones’ remains,
and for justice and accountability.
Overwhelming
evidence was uncovered that Pike River Coal cut corners,
broke numerous health and safety laws and built a mine that
was essentially a gas bomb waiting to blow up. It had no
adequate emergency exit, its main ventilation unit was
dangerously installed underground, and it had grossly
inadequate methane gas monitoring and drainage
systems.
As the film shows, a 2012 royal commission of
inquiry found that the company ignored many warnings from
workers about unsafe conditions because it was fixated on
the pursuit of profit and production. Yet nobody has faced
any charges over the tragedy, and the remains of those who
died are still sealed within the mine, along with crucial
evidence.
On Radio NZ’s website, film-maker Gaylene
Preston hailed Pike River as “a perfect film.”
The Post’s reviewer Graeme Tuckett called it “a
damn near-perfect film.” Newstalk ZB’s Francesca Rudkin
said it was “a very uplifting film about friendship, about
advocacy and what you can achieve,” even while noting that
there has been no justice for the victims.
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The World
Socialist Web Site’s review of Pike River following
the Sydney Film Festival noted its definite strengths, as
well as its glaring omissions. There are powerful scenes,
including when the grieving families confront National Party
Prime Minister John Key about his broken promise to re-enter
the mine and retrieve the victims’ remains, and their
reaction to the regulators’ outrageous and unlawful
decision in 2013 to drop health and safety charges against
Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall.
The
performances of Melanie Lynskey as Anna Osborne, whose
husband Milton died in the disaster, and Robyn Malcolm as
Sonya Rockhouse, whose son Ben was killed, have been justly
praised.
Taken as a whole, however, the film—and the
publicity surrounding it—is most notable for what it
conceals: namely, the complicity of the Labour Party and the
trade union bureaucracy both in the disaster itself and in
the 15-year-long cover-up. Indeed, the final half-hour,
which depicts the run-up to the 2017 election, is
essentially a political advertisement for the Labour
Party.
Early in the film, as the families seek answers
from Whittall and health and safety manager Neville
Rockhouse about why the mine exploded, there is a
significant omission. There is no mention of the fact that
71 of Pike River’s workers were members of the
Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) and
that EPMU leader Andrew Little—who was also the president
of the Labour Party at the time—publicly defended the
company following the first explosion.
Asked whether
he had any safety concerns about Pike River, Little told the
New Zealand Herald: “No… [the company has] an
active health and safety committee, the union is
well-represented on it. There’s been nothing unusual come
out of that that would alert us to the sort of things that
have happened here. So, there’s nothing unusual about Pike
River, or this mine, that we’ve been particularly
concerned about.” [video: https://www.facebook.com/nzherald.co.nz/videos/176658269017025
]
This statement was completely false. Workers had
raised concerns about the extremely dangerous conditions in
the mine, both with management and with the EPMU. A group of
workers walked out in protest over the lack of emergency
equipment underground not long before the disaster. The
union bureaucracy did not even issue a press statement about
the incident, let alone organise industrial action to stop
work until the mine was made safe. It acted as an adjunct of
the company, remaining silent about the real conditions in
the mine, and allowing workers to risk their lives so as not
to interrupt production.
While a two-hour-long film
cannot be expected to cover every detail of the disaster and
its aftermath, there is no justification for the exclusion
of the role of the EPMU (now called E tū).
Andrew
Little, who is now the mayor of Wellington, was even allowed
to speak at Pike River’s premiere screening in the
city, posturing as a champion of workplace safety.
Shamefully, no one involved in the film raised any objection
to Little’s speech or pointed out the role that he and the
EPMU actually played.
Bernie Monk, whose son Michael
died in Pike River, told the WSWS it was “bloody wrong”
for Little to be given the platform, considering his
record.
The explanation for these omissions is
political: the filmmakers have rewritten history in order to
promote Labour and the unions. This is evident throughout
the film.
A pivotal moment is the decision by
Rockhouse and Osborne to blockade the road to the mine in
2016, preventing it from being sealed by the National
government. “We’re here for our men,” Osborne tells
the media. “We were promised that they’d be brought home
and we want that promise kept.” Rockhouse says: “I
can’t have [Ben] buried in concrete. I want the truth for
my son, and I want justice.”
Local concrete
companies decide to support the families and refuse to seal
the mine.
At about this point, a certain Rob Egan
volunteers to be a “social media manager” for the
families, setting up the Facebook page “Stand With Pike”
to promote the protest. The film does not explain that Egan
is a highly experienced political operative, a former
advisor to at least two Labour Party leaders and co-owner of
the public relations firm Piko Consulting.
Egan
suggests to Rockhouse and Osborne that the families should
help elect a Labour Party-led government. They travel to
Wellington, along with Bernie Monk, and secure a pledge from
Labour and its allies—the Greens and the right-wing
nationalist NZ First Party—to re-enter the mine, recover
the bodies and gain the evidence necessary for criminal
prosecutions.
Labour leader Jacinda Ardern, playing
herself in the film, greets the families’ representatives,
beaming from ear to ear, and says “Of course we’ll
sign” the commitment.
The film ends soon afterwards
with Rockhouse, Osborne, Egan and others celebrating the
formation of a Labour-Greens-NZ First coalition government
in October 2017. This is depicted as a momentous victory for
the Pike River families.
The text that appears on the
screen misleadingly states that the Ardern government
re-entered the mine. A video is shown of Rockhouse and
Osborne walking a few metres inside the drift (entrance
tunnel).
In fact, in 2021 the Labour-led government
shut down the re-entry operation and refused to allow
investigators to enter the mine workings, where the most
important evidence is located, including the underground
fan, a possible ignition source for the first
explosion.
The Labour government was able to achieve
what the National Party had failed to do, placing a concrete
seal on the mine portal. Andrew Little, as the minister for
Pike River re-entry, continued the role he had played as
EPMU leader, covering up on behalf of the business interests
responsible for the disaster.
The government
established a so-called Pike River Recovery Authority,
including a Family Reference Group (FRG) that included
Osborne and Rockhouse, as well as Rob Egan and Tony Sutorius
(a documentary film-maker close to the unions, who is also
depicted positively in Pike River). Monk resigned from the
FRG in 2019 after refusing to sign a confidentiality
agreement that would have prevented him from speaking
publicly about information relating to the
re-entry.
The FRG issued a statement in March 2021
which falsely stated: “Families accept, with heartbreak,
Andrew Little’s advice that there will be no more
government money to expand the [re-entry] project at this
time.”
In fact, the majority of the families opposed
the shutdown of the re-entry operation and the sealing of
the mine. The FRG “made the call without coming to the
families,” Monk told the WSWS. “They never came to the
families and asked us. They got told by Little they
weren’t going to go into the mine,” and they went along
with the government.
The families were backed by
thousands of people across New Zealand and internationally,
including world-renowned mining experts led by Tony Forster,
the former chief inspector of mines, who produced a plan for
the recovery of the mine workings. Minister Little rejected
the plan, claiming that it was too difficult and too
expensive to enter the mine workings safely—the same
unsubstantiated claims made by former Prime Minister John
Key.
The entire political establishment, the unions
and the media all backed the Labour government’s decision.
The “Stand With Pike” Facebook page administered by the
FRG refused to allow posts opposing the termination of the
underground investigation.
Commenting on the film
Pike River, Monk told the WSWS it went some way to
showing what the families “had to go through and how the
politicians [in the Key government] covered things up and
shat on them all the way through.” But he added that the
Labour Party, having used the families to “get back into
power” in 2017, “didn’t do any better than the
National Party.”
Monk and other families and
supporters are still fighting to reveal the full truth about
the disaster and to expose those complicit in the 2013
dropping of charges against Whittall.
Monk hoped that
the film would “put the pressure on the police to make a
decision on whether they are going to bring charges or not
bring charges.” The criminal investigation into the Pike
River disaster is technically ongoing, but there is no
guarantee that anyone will be charged. An initial police
investigation following the disaster was dropped in 2013, on
the pretext that forensic evidence buried in the mine could
not be examined.
Those seeking a full account of the
Pike River disaster and the 15-year cover-up—including the
role of all the capitalist parties and the union bureaucracy
in shielding the company—are encouraged to consult the
extensive archive of the WSWS and the book Pike River:
The Crime and Cover-up.
Original url: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/11/04/eooy-n04.html
