Key Health and Safety Consultation Process to Commence: Part 1

Tuesday July 30, 2024 09:38

The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 is the principal piece of legislation defining the statutory obligations of New Zealand business in relation to the safety and welfare of their employees. It shifts the focus from previous legislation ( Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 ) which was mainly about monitoring and recording incidents related to health and safety, to a system where risks are identified and managed before they are able to affect the lives of workers, customers and the general public.

A number of regulations have subsequently been created to implement the provisions of the act including Health and Safety at Work (Hazardous Substances) Regulations 2017.

The principal focus of responsibility and action throughout the legislation is the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) rather than the corporate business entity.

The Health and Safety At Work Act – 2015 was enacted in part on 5 September 2015 and in full on 4 April 2016 and is now over 8 years old.

The aim of the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSW Act) was to reduce New Zealand’s workplace injury and death toll by 25% by 2020 and reverse the trend of ongoing unacceptable high rate of deaths, serious injuries and health hazards occurring in New Zealand workplaces.

Unfortunately, it has not delivered on the expected outcomes we hoped for, and we still have a workplace health and safety record that has not improved and is twice as bad as Australia’s and three times that of the U.K. ( on a per capita basis ).

In a prompt response to this situation, the new coalition Government has signaled a review of the Health and Safety At Work Act – 2015 and has released this statement:

Workplace Relations and Safety

A substantial consultation on work health and safety will begin today with a roadshow across the regions over the coming months.

This is the first step to deliver on the commitment to reforming health and safety law and regulations, set out in the ACT-National Coalition Agreement.

“Businesses and community organisations spend a huge amount of money trying to keep people safe, but it’s worthwhile asking: are the rules and expectations proportionate to the actual risks, and when should common sense prevail?

“Lawyers and company directors should not have to be kept up late at night anguishing over what ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’ means.

“That’s why we’re holding this consultation and also why I am travelling across the country in the coming months to hear from businesses and workers who are impacted by the current rules and regulations. I want to listen to experiences with our work health and safety system, including what they think the role for government should be and where they think we’ve got the requirements right and wrong.”

The Government is seeking feedback on people’s experiences with the health and safety system, including views on issues such as:

  • Whether health and safety requirements are too strict, or too ambiguous, to comply with.
  • Difficulties caused by the overlap between work health and safety legislation and other requirements.
  • The actions that businesses undertake, the reasons behind these actions, and their effectiveness.
  • Whether consequences for not complying with health and safety obligations are appropriately balanced and reasonable.
  • Whether the threshold at which work-related risks need to be managed is under- or over-cautious.

“The actions businesses and workers need to take to protect health and safety should be appropriate and meaningful, rather than just another tick-box exercise.
“New Zealanders expect and deserve to have their family members return home safe and healthy at the end of each and every workday. Where we have to follow rules to keep ourselves or others safe, those rules should be clear, sensible and proportionate to the risk,” says Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden. 

All feedback is sought by 31 October 2024.
Submissions will close on 31 October 2024 at 5pm.

You can make a submission by:

Where possible, please use evidence to support your views. Examples can include facts and figures or references to independent research.
Please see page 5 of the consultation document for information on how MBIE may use or release the information you supply as part of this consultation.
Please include your contact details in the covering letter or email accompanying your submission. Please direct any questions you may have on the submission process to: HSWHaveYourSay@mbie.govt.nz. 

Next time, in part 2 of this series we present what we think the Government could be planning, possible changes to the legislation that could improve health and safety in the workplace and reduce some of the burden of compliance.

If you have any concerns around this topic or other Health & Safety matters, your Securo Consultant is available to help.  We can also advise on hazard management and provide access to specialist health professionals who provide health monitoring services.
So please give them a call or alternatively contact Securo head office on 0800 55 33 44.

Parts of the information in this newsletter has been derived from guidance documents published by WorkSafe NZ which are available at www.worksafe.govt.nz, Ministry of Business and Innovation (MBIE) and parts of the Health and Safety At Work Act – 2015.