The Whakaari / White Island eruption claimed 22 lives. Photo: Unsplash / Farrah Fuerst
The defence for the owners of Whakaari / White Island has denied claims made by WorkSafe that they had failed to take appropriate steps to improve health and safety standards.
WorkSafe investigator Casey Broad previously claimed Andrew, Peter and James Buttle, through their company Whakaari Management Limited, had not done their due diligence in regards to meeting WorkSafe's health and safety standards.
Broad was one of the people in charge of WorkSafe's investigation into the Whakaari eruption, which killed 22 people.
In the second day of Broad's cross-examination in the Auckland District Court, the Buttles' lawyer James Cairney challenged his claim.
"You, personally, alleged that each of the Buttle brothers didn't take steps to keep up to date with workplace health and safety matters," he told Broad.
Cairney presented a 2013 email from Andrew Buttle to Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment advisor Stu Allan in which Buttle sought advice on "anything we're not covering that in your experience we should".
"This is an example of engagement with workplace health and safety matters," Cairney said. "In fact, you probably couldn't find a better example if you tried."
Cairney later presented an email from November 2018, a year before the deadly eruption, in which a representative from WorkSafe described a phone call with Andrew Buttle about health and safety regulations relating to walking tours on Whakaari.
"You signed an allegation letter and sent it to Andrew Buttle saying that you alleged he had failed to keep up to date knowledge of work health and safety matters," he put to Broad.
"But the first line of this [email] is WorkSafe thanking [Buttle] for his time on the phone discussing WML's understanding of how health and safety law might apply to the very thing we're talking about in this court."
Cairney also presented two previous audits of White Island Tours, one of the island's primary tour operators, by WorkSafe's predecessors.
One from 2005 congratulated the company on the "high standards [it had] set and consistently maintained". Another, from 2009, noted that it was "100 percent compliant".
"So at this point of time, from the perspective of the Department of Labour, or the precursor to WorkSafe, things really couldn't be going better in terms of the management of safety from White Island Tours," he said.
Cairney argued the Buttles had no reason to believe the island's safety measures were subpar, and that previous audits had suggested the opposite.
Andrew, Peter and James Buttle previously explained safety measures on the island during a recorded interview with WorkSafe in 2020, which was played for the court last week.