Pike River Mine. Photo: Supplied / Pike River Recovery Agency
The father of one of the 29 men who died in the Pike River Mine hopes a High Court decision will change the justice system and stop what he sees as the abuse of legal privilege.
The High Court has ruled that the families may now see the privileged material that led to the decision by WorkSafe to drop 12 charges against Pike River Mine boss Peter Whittall.
Bernie Monk, whose son Michael died in the disaster, said for 10 years the families had fought for truth and accountability, and he believed the decision by Justice Jillian Mallon has taken them a big step forward.
"She's changed the course of justice and will stop people from using legal privilege and another word that they use is 'in the best interest of the country' ... I think she is going to change the way that that is done, and will change the whole justice system around what we have been going through in the last 10 years."
In her decision, Mallon said she considered that transparency through open justice outweighed factors pointing against disclosure of the documents - which were claimed to be privileged.
She said transparency was in the interest of justice, as without it there was scope for false speculation and misunderstanding, which could undermine confidence in the administration of justice.
The court action was taken by Chris Harder, with the support of Monk and Dean Dunbar, whose 17-year-old son Joseph also died in the mine.
Monk said they hoped that by taking this action, they could help others who might have to face similar issues in the future.
"Its easy to say 'truth and accountability', but when you have to actually get to that point it hasn't been easy. It's a game. And it's a game that we are going to ferociously attack."
Anna Osborne, Sonya Rockhouse and Bernie Monk, relatives of Pike River mine victims. Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Former ombudsman and an advocate for the families, Leo Donnelly, said the balance previously always sat with legal privilege, but this tipped it the other way.
"It has opened up the argument that confidence in the administration of justice means that you should have disclosure not just to show that something wrong happened, but also so that people are confident that nothing untoward did happen, which is a much wider argument."
WorkSafe has been approached from comment.
Sonya Rockhouse, whose son Ben died in the mine, did not want to comment on the High Court's decision, and she did not think it changed the situation a great deal from when she and Anna Osbourne took a case against WorkSafe to the Supreme Court in 2017.
At that time, the Supreme Court ruled that WorkSafe's decision to withdraw its prosecution of Pike River mine boss Peter Whittall, in exchange for payments to the victims' families, was unlawful.
Rockhouse said her focus was on the police prosecution case, which had been collecting evidence in the mine drift.
Monk said they were now awaiting a date to travel to Wellington where they would get to view and listen to the previously privileged information.