While the Royal Commission should eventually deliver the big findings, New Zealand’s Department of Labour and its police are conducting their own inquiries.

Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union national secretary Andrew Little said police interviews will begin this week.

“They are clearly not targeting our guys, they are looking at management,” he told ILN.

He said there was a big question about the adequacy of the gas monitoring at the mine before the first explosion, and expects this issue to be a feature of investigations.

“I think the police are concentrating on that too. About what the company knew or ought to have known about the adequacy of the monitoring that they had.”

Queensland Mines Rescue Service state manager Wayne Hartley is directly involved with recovery efforts at the mine and said the operation had gas monitoring but this was not real-time monitoring.

“Very few mines have real-time – it’s all tube bundling systems, they had fixed systems, sampling systems yes,” he recently told ILN.

Hartley said the mine also used gas analysis software but could not confirm whether the mine had a gas chromatographer onsite.

He added that the monitoring systems in place were wiped out by the first explosion.

Pike River chief executive Peter Whittall has also previously told ILN the gas-monitoring systems at the mine were of the same standard as those used in mines in New South Wales and Queensland.

But other information obtained by ILN indicates that Australians who went to assist efforts at the mine believed the disaster could have been prevented, especially in relation to gas monitoring at the mine.