Conflicting forces at work.

The inevitability of the aftermath of the disaster continues to unfold. For everything felt and said, for every good intention against the odds, for every hope and aspiration we begin now to fully appreciate the conflict that walked hand in hand with the miners entering the mine each day, the bosses need to drive them underground to extract the black gold at the least cost, for the biggest profit. Men needing work, bosses needing profit to pay their investors. The Pike River Mine may be the last we see where a natural risk or danger is not only accepted but becomes an acceptable 'partner,' an errant 'friend' lulling death into the bowels of the underground.

When Peter Whitten spoke of 'his' mine, I wonder if he understood that the miners saw it as a dangerous beast of which they must reluctantly entertain to feed their families. And so as that conflict became above ground while the men lay dead beneath, many of their families and loved ones listened in hope to what Peter had to say. But who is Peter? Was he not part of the conflict that saw men needing to go underground in dangerous conditions, are we to suppose that he first of all wasn't a company man driven hard by his employers to return a profit at the least cost but was instead some kind of benefactor for good? Should anyone have really been entitled to believe that the mine owners would not cut their financial risk at first opportunity, cut off the money and call in the receivers absolving themselves of any further responsibility or that Peter Whitten wasn't always aware of that role, and his part to play in it, however reluctantly, should there have been a disaster?

Time will tell perhaps of why the mine exploded and what might have been done to avoid it, there may even be criminal culpability, but most likely there will be findings of 'unlikely events,' 'misguided or questionable safety decisions,' or 'preferred safety checks and rescue mobilisation' and 'recommendations for the future' but the owners, unless it can be proven there was criminal culpability, will have walked away, possibly ready to regroup under a different banner and sign if an opportunity presented itself again at Pike River. And still, after all of that, will be the shock and sense of loss for those working men gone underground to build better lives for their loved ones and families and the risk they took. What we may all yet realise that all that mattered was money finally, and now the aftermath is upon the coast it is money and costs that will be fought as strongly or more strongly against than any fire in the mine.