TABJ - July 12 - The inquiry into the Pike River coal mine methane explosion in New Zealand, which killed 29 people last November, continues to take shape, and onlookers are asking whether the region ought to follow Queensland’s lead and impose similar regulation on the industry.

According to Don Elder, the leading brain at Solid Energy, New Zealand’s number one miner for coal, Queensland’s standardised approach to managing its wealth of operations could provide to be an attractive template for the authorities governing Pike River and the wider New Zealand industry.

“Undoubtedly everybody benefits from that because you haven't got people reinventing wheel so everybody is able to move forward faster,” Elder told the nation’s Royal Commission of Inquiry; the body overseeing the inquiry underway.

Elder told the Commission—during his two days of testimony—that the accident and current favour for opencast mining should not be looked at as a move away from underground operations. He sad that he believes that underground coal mining in New Zealand still has a great future, provided standards are in place, people don’t just work to tick the boxes, and “over optimistic” operations such as Pike River are dealt with.

The bodies of those whose lives were claimed by this accident are still unrecovered and lying within the mine.