I’m so pleased to see nearly 100,000 Kiwis have signed the petition support the helicopter pilots being prosecuted over the Whakaari/White Island eruption.

It’s ridiculous that Mark Law is being charged. He wasn’t even on the island when it erupted.

And yet he’s being charged with failing to keep staff and tourists safe, for the six months leading up to the eruption.

That is clearly not the problem. The six months leading up are not the problem. The problem is what happened on that day.

So, as I said on Friday, I’m becoming more and more convinced that the government needs to order an inquiry into the Whakaari/White Island eruption.

Because these are the two questions that need answering, regarding what happened on the day 

• Why didn’t police allow rescuers to go to the island? 
• What’s WorkSafe’s role here? It’s all well and good to charge every organisation that they can find now, but what about their audits in the months leading up to the eruption? Did they spot those very errors they are now charging people over? 

These are questions to answer not because we need someone to blame.

We don’t. A volcano is to blame.

These are questions to answer so that we don’t have the same situation again.  

It worries me to discover that the office of minister at the time, Tracy Martin, actively tried to kill off any chance of an investigation just days after the eruption 

Memos to the minster from her staff talk of the need to “manage down calls for an inquiry”, and advise that "indeed if we cannot use the inquiry word at all that would be best”. 

Nigel Hampton QC has described the recommendation to "manage down" calls for an inquiry as "odious". 

He thinks there should be an inquiry.  He’s been saying it for months. 

I totally agree with him.

It doesn’t have to be a royal commission of inquiry. It can be a fast ministerial inquiry 

But we can see WorkSafe has got this wrong. We can see there are bigger problems than charging Mark Laws for his processes six months before the eruption.