Mike Hosking: On CTV building collapse, police have done not just the right thing but realistically the only thing

I can't remember when we said it, but we said it several times and started saying it quite some time ago: the police would never end up charging anyone for the collapse of the CTV building.

It's not like they didn't look hard.

Over a million dollars on the investigation, up to 13 police at any one time.

Over 18,000 documents.

Legal advice. Expert opinion.

But, and this is the critical part with which they were always going to come face-to-face, could they secure a conviction? And the answer, as we said from the beginning, would always be no.

Charging someone is easy. Getting it legally across the line in a case like this is way harder, if not nigh on impossible. Why? Because the collapse of a building, or any similar sort of catastrophe, is rarely if ever the fault of a single person.

We can cite Peter Whittle and Pike River in this as well.

The Whittle case got complicated by the pay out, and the Supreme Court was pretty clear the other day on the illegality of the money. But the original issue for Work Safe was could they charge one person for what the Royal Commission clearly showed was systemic failure? I would have thought the answer would have been remarkably similar to the CTV decision.

There is no question there was blame all over the place, and the various investigations have shown even the council failed in its duty. So, who do you charge? The designer, the architect, the contractors, the builder, the council, just who was it that did enough specifically and individually wrong to make a building collapse in an earthquake? And the answer is no one.

The moment you go down the path of legal responsibility on something as complex as a building collpase or a mine explosion you have to be very confident that the spectre of a large amount of finger pointing in different directions isn't going to ensue. And in these cases, you could not have even come close.

Which doesn't solve the grief part of the equation of course.

Tragedy cuts deep and it is human to want to see someone held to some level of accountability. But emotion is not law. And law is not about retribution or blame come hell or high water. It's methodical. It needs to be transparent. It's complex. That's why the police in this case have done, as hard as it may be to hear for some, not just the right thing but realistically the only thing.