Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse — whose husbands died in the Pike River Coal Mine disaster of 2010 — are publicly opposing the government's planned workplace safety law changes. They argue the reforms fall short of what the Pike River tragedy demanded and fail to address corporate manslaughter, RNZ reported on 17 June 2026.

The two campaigners have been among the most consistent voices pushing for stronger legal accountability since the explosion killed 29 men. Their current position is that the legislative direction does not go far enough — particularly on holding companies criminally liable for workplace deaths.

The reform history since Pike River

Pike River triggered a sustained period of health and safety reform. The first major response was the Health and Safety (Pike River Implementation) Bill, which passed Parliament in November 2013. That legislation created WorkSafe New Zealand as a standalone Crown agency, amended the Health and Safety in Employment Act, and established a new Mines Rescue Act — all recommendations from the Royal Commission inquiry into the disaster, which had called for a dedicated health and safety regulator.

New rules for mining operators required them to set up health and safety management systems and appoint people to specific safety roles — obligations that were not previously written into law with that level of detail.

The next major step was the Health and Safety Reform Bill, introduced in early 2014, which set a goal of reducing New Zealand's workplace deaths by 25 percent by 2020. This eventually became the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015. The key change was shifting legal duties to anyone running a business or undertaking — a wider net than the previous framework, which focused mainly on employers. An independent taskforce had recommended this approach, arguing the law needed stronger obligations to genuinely protect workers.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment now oversees this framework.

What the families are arguing for

The specific details of the government's proposed changes have not been fully outlined in publicly available reporting, but Osborne and Rockhouse's main concern is corporate manslaughter — criminal liability when an organisation's failures cause a workplace death. New Zealand law has never included this provision, and the families have consistently argued that without it, there is no real criminal deterrent on company behaviour.

Their frustration this week points to a pattern worth noting. New Zealand completed a Royal Commission inquiry, an independent taskforce review, two major overhauls of the law, and created a new regulator in the decade after Pike River — yet the corporate accountability question remained unresolved through all of it.

The practical gap matters. WorkSafe can prosecute duty-holders and impose substantial fines under the Health and Safety at Work Act, but the Act does not allow the prosecution of a company for manslaughter in the way it can prosecute an individual. Individual officers can face criminal charges under certain conditions, but there is no equivalent charge that would see an organisation tried for killing a worker the way a person can be tried for killing someone else.

Whether the planned changes finally address that gap — or sidestep it again — is what Osborne and Rockhouse are pressing the government on. Their intervention this week puts that question on the public record as the bill moves through Parliament.

The reform history sets a demanding baseline here. Each legislative step since 2010 has been framed as a response to Pike River. Families who lost people in that mine have reasonable grounds to measure each version against what was promised after 29 deaths. That scrutiny is unlikely to ease until the corporate accountability question is resolved one way or the other.