Cave Creek: Govt acts on Noble Report

Government departments will in future be able to be prosecuted under health and safety and building legislation, Minister of Justice Phil Goff and Minister of Conservation Sandra Lee announced today.

“The Government believes strongly that there is no justification for allowing its own departments to be exempt from laws that we require every other New Zealand business to abide by,” Mr Goff said.

“Both for the health and safety of those working in or using public facilities, and as a matter of principle, it is important that the Government should be legally accountable for its compliance with these two acts,” he said.

“Government departments and agencies which are prosecuted and sentenced under new legislation will be subject to fines and orders of reparation or the award of part of the fine to victims. They would also be subject to remedial orders requiring them to comply with the acts.”

Cabinet’s decision to allow departments to be prosecuted will implement the last outstanding recommendation of the Noble Report on the Cave Creek tragedy. Fourteen people died when a Conservation Department viewing platform collapsed in Paparoa National Park on 28 April 1995.

In his report on the findings of the Inquiry into the disaster, Judge Graeme Noble recommended that the Crown exemption from prosecution under the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992, and the Building Act 1991, should be removed.

“Currently departments are required to comply with the acts, but because they are exempt from prosecution, enforcement of compliance is difficult. Enabling prosecution will also significantly raise the incentives for departmental compliance,” the ministers said.

Conservation Minister Sandra Lee said her private meeting last year with some of the family of the Cave Creek victims impressed on her the urgent need for the Labour-Alliance coalition to take action on the one outstanding recommendation made by Judge Graeme Noble.

"One of the hardest things I had to do during my first year as Minister of Conservation was to meet those family members face to face and pledge to them I would do everything possible to ensure that there would never be another Cave Creek."

"A high priority that I have given to the Director-General of Conservation is to establish and implement a national visitor asset management system. This will ensure high standards are met in the construction and maintenance of facilities," Ms Lee said.

On 28 April this year, it will be six years since the Cave Creek tragedy and five-and-a-half years since the completion of the Noble Report.

In May 1996 the then-Government indicated it would introduce a bill on the issue before the end of the year, but no such legislation ever eventuated.

“The Labour-Alliance Government believes that, as a general principle, the Crown should be subject to the law and the same legal processes as everyone else. It is now past time that we learnt from the Cave Creek tragedy and applied this principle to health and safety laws, to help avoid a similar tragedy occurring again,” Mr Goff and Ms Lee said.