And if you’ve come on the off chance of getting any empathy and compassion from Workplace Relations and Safety Minister and Act New Zealand MP Brooke van Velden, you’re probably going to be even more out of luck.
Ms van Velden is overseeing a crusade to steer New Zealand’s barely fit-for-purpose health and safety laws away from those in which businesses and organisations may be culpable and prosecuted as a consequence of injury or death.
Instead, she is promulgating an environment which encourages businesses to seek support to do the right things for their employees beforehand.
This is being done in the hope that workplace accidents will somehow be less likely to happen after a lecture is given or a booklet is released on "being more careful", and that once that responsibility has been disbursed, businesses cannot be held responsible for any injury or death.
In other words, Ms van Velden is busy removing any teeth in legislation which, heaven forbid, might make an errant business ultimately responsible for any health and safety corner-cutting or other shortcomings towards protecting the lives of its workers.
Fifteen years ago on Wednesday, a large explosion of methane at the Pike River coal mine inland from Greymouth killed 29 men, 16 of them staff and the other 13 contractors. Two men somehow made it out, but their colleagues’ bodies remain in the mine.
An ensuing subsequent Royal Commission of Inquiry slated the mining company and its management for running a dangerous operation with many failings. It also pointed blame at the Department of Labour for a lack of oversight, which had too few mines inspectors without sufficient training.
WorkSafe NZ was subsequently established to do something about poor health and safety outcomes, and develop tougher health and safety regulations and make company directors responsible for overseeing them.
Two representatives of Pike River families flew to Wellington this week in an attempt to convince Ms van Velden that her workplace reforms were diluting health and safety laws and opening the doors to another, avoidable, disaster.
But Sonya Rockhouse and Anna Osborne, whose son Ben and husband Milton respectively both died in the explosion, left their meeting with the minister unimpressed and bewildered by her behaviour.
They told RNZ they did not feel at all reassured, saying instead it was "a complete waste of time".
Ms Osborne said she came away feeling really unhappy because "there’s just no guarantees that people who go to work are going to return home safely".
"She seemed to be focusing all the time on the employers," Ms Rockhouse said, "and I sat and listened to it for a little while and then I just couldn’t stand it."
At most, Ms van Velden gave the appearance of lip service without saying much, she said.
No surprise there unfortunately. While the two women are supportive of introducing a corporate manslaughter charge, which New Zealand First and opposition parties are also keen on, Ms van Velden is, of course, not, instead wanting to focus on "upfront guidance" for businesses.
She told RNZ she didn’t accept the concerns history might repeat, despite having no evidence that shifting WorkSafe’s focus from enforcement to guidance would lead to fewer workplace deaths.
Ms Osborne and Ms Rockhouse were probably fortunate to even get into Ms van Velden’s office.
Efforts by anti-bullying advocates to discuss the ongoing societal costs of mental health conditions and suicide as a result of workplace bullying have been ignored by the minister.
The minister’s reported attitude is totally out of line with what you might expect from someone meeting two women who have gone through so much.
