GOVERNMENT AGENCY CORRUPTION

Nearly five years back White Island erupted with the loss of 25, mostly foreign tourist lives.

At the time, commenting on this, I wrote about a lunch I’d had a decade earlier with the then but now deceased volcanologist, Professor Clark of Victoria University. He’d told me that at some time, albeit possibly hundreds of years in the future, White Island would inevitably explode to such a degree as to take out a fair portion of Auckland.

Following the explosion, two helicopter pilots received awards for heroism in their recue efforts.

Stuff journalist Marty Sharpe last week produced an extraordinary article re the subsequent prosecutions by Worksafe of these pilots and diverse others. This resulted in one being found guilty by a jury, six having the charges dismissed and six pleading guilty.

What Marty Sharpe has now revealed however, is not merely scandalous but criminally corrupt.

For it transpired that the Worksafe agency appointed an inspector, Paul Patterson, to do the initial investigations. Patterson’s expertise credentials were first rate and with an assistant he toiled at what Sharpe describes as “arduous and intensive work” involving 12 hour days, five days a week for over nine months.

Ultimately, Patterson’s 53 page report cleared the various helicopter operators from any wrongdoing, indeed to the contrary as he spoke praisingly of their efforts.

To cut to the quick it transpired this report was not to Worksafe’s agenda. So they re-wrote it to their desired outcome but fraudulently left Patterson’s signature on it.

There was a lengthy row and eventually Patterson’s name was removed and the new report professing criminal negligence led on to the prosecutions.

Disgusted, Patterson resigned. Various defendants copped massive fines.

What Marty Sharpe’s article reveals is simply corruption by a government agency with a pre-determined agenda.

It must not be left there and a full enquiry need be held, not merely into this affair but Workspace itself which seems hell-bent on prosecuting employers over trivia. We constantly read of their often preposterous prosecutions of employers over plainly contrived purported offences.

This is an agency we can well do without and should be top of the list in the government’s overdue mission to cut the fat out of the bureaucracy.

Well done to Marty Sharpe for exposing this basically criminal conduct.