MEDIA RELEASE
Rethink of Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill urged
A coalition of New Zealand's peak workplace health and safety organisations — representing employers, workers, and health and safety professionals — has written jointly to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon Brooke van Velden, and members of the Education and Workforce Committee, calling for refinements to the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill currently before Select Committee. The letter has been written by representatives of employers, workers and health and safety experts and endorsed by nearly all of the key players in the health and safety system.
“We support the intent of the Bill; to reduce unnecessary compliance burden and to continue to support reduction in workplace harm” said Mike Cosman, NZISM spokesperson. "However, there four areas of the Bill that we believe could unintentionally undermine those goals if not fixed.”
Our four areas of concern are:
- The definition of "critical risk" — the current definition of critical risk is ambiguous and may miss the biggest sources of workplace harm (musculoskeletal and psychosocial risks). This is likely to result in greater harm to workers and significant flow on costs to employers and ACC.
- The carve-out for small PCBUs — limiting small businesses' duties to critical risks only would remove protections for more than 90% of New Zealand businesses and 25% of the workforce. Small businesses are generally less safe than their larger counterparts: We propose that they are helped more to keep their workers safe, not excused from doing so.
- The relationship between other laws and health and safety — allowing compliance with other laws to trump obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act may weaken protections in many sectors (including transport, healthcare, and education).
- Greater legal weight for Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs) — provisions which lock in provisions of Approved Codes of Practice as ‘safe harbours’ risk locking in outdated standards and discouraging innovation.
Now is a critical time to get the Bill right. We have offered to engage further with the Minister and the Select Committee to help develop workable, enduring solutions.
The joint letter is signed by the Business Leaders' Health & Safety Forum, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management (NZISM), and the Health and Safety Association of New Zealand (HASANZ).
The letter is endorsed by the majority of the key players in New Zealand health and safety; the EMA, the GM Safety Forum, Te Rōpū Marutau o Aotearoa, Women in Safety and Health Excellence NZ, Hazardous Substances Professionals NZ, the Institute of Organisational Psychologists, the NZ Occupational Hygiene Society, the NZ Occupational Health Nurses Association, Physiotherapy NZ, the NZ Society for Engineering Safety, Minex, Construction Health and NZ, ShopCare Charitable Trust, and the Forest Industry Safety Council.
ENDS
For media enquiries, please contact: Mike Cosman, NZISM Law Reform spokesperson 021 479 674
Hon Brooke van Velden MP
Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety
Katie Nimon, Carl Bates, Dr Vanessa Weenick, Grant McCullum, Hon Phil Twyford, Hon Ginny
Andersen, Shanan Halbert, Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan, & Dr Parmjeet Parmar, MPs
Members of the Education and Workforce Committee
Friday, 1 May 2026
Dear Minister and Members
Joint Statement on the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill
We write on behalf of leading organisations across New Zealand’s workplace health and
safety system, including peak bodies representing employers, workers, and health and safety
professionals.
We support the stated objectives of the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill (the Bill),
including to reduce unnecessary compliance costs, improve certainty for duty holders, and
support continued reductions in workplace fatalities, injuries, and illness.
Our respective views on the Bill are diverse, and many of us see some of the changes as
positive. Importantly, however, there are four areas of the Bill which concern us all and risk
undermining these stated objectives and weakening health and safety outcomes in practice.
We raise these matters to support the development of a durable, principled regime that
improves clarity without compromising protection.
Definition of critical risk
We support the intent to encourage PCBUs to focus on the risks that matter most in their
workplaces. Clear and proportionate prioritisation of risks is an important feature of effective
health and safety performance.
Our concern is that the proposed definition of “critical risk” increases the likelihood of
ineffective “tick box” checking against Schedule 1A, of ambiguity in the application of “likely”
in the “catch all” test and ultimately risks creating more confusion than clarity, especially for
smaller and less capable PCBUs.
As drafted in the Bill, it is unclear whether “likely” refers to the probability of an incident
occurring or whether it refers to the probability of serious consequence if the incident occurs.
In our view, the definition of critical risk must be clear, workable, and legally robust, so it
supports better risk management rather than confusion or unintended risk transfer. The Bill
requires further refinement so that it strengthens, rather than weakens the identification and
effective control of critical risks.
