The first tranche of reforms to health and safety laws have been announced (via post-Cabinet press conference on Monday, a second press release on Tuesday, and a third on Wednesday). The changes announced so far are:

• a carve-out for small, low-risk businesses from general Health and Safety at Work Act requirements. These businesses will only have to manage critical risks and provide basic facilities to ensure worker welfare;
• amendment to the primary purpose of the Health and Safety at Work Act to focus on critical risk (rather than risks more generally);
• changing the boundaries between the Health and Safety at Work Act and regulatory systems that already manage the same risk (and possibly making health and safety regulations subordinate to other regulations);
• reducing notification requirements to regulators to only significant workplace events (deaths, serious injury, illness and incidents);
• providing a hotline for the public to report over-zealous road cone use;
• removing landowners responsibility if someone is injured on their land while doing recreational activities if another organisation is running the activities;
• day-to-day management of health and safety risks is to be left to managers so that directors and boards can focus on governance and the strategic oversight of the business.

While it would perhaps be strategic for us to put a kind face on these changes, let’s be real, these are a disappointing backward step when we should be moving forward.

Focusing on critical risk is not a bad thing for an organisation to do to prioritise their health and safety efforts. The challenge with importing critical risk into legislation is getting the definition right. Minister van Velden signalled in the press conference that she considers psychosocial and ergonomic risks will not be part of the definition. Politely, this needs a rethink since Worksafe’s recent Overview of work-related risk and harm in New Zealand suggests (at page 102) that musculoskeletal disorders and mental ill health are the number one and two causes of workplace harm. WorkSafe estimates musculoskeletal disorders cause a loss of 13,700 disability adjusted life years (DALYs) and mental ill health a loss of 8,500 DALYs each year. Between them, that’s more than four times as much harm as all acute injuries (5,350 DALYs per year).

As for exempting small businesses in low risk industries, those with long memories will remember that we’ve been here before and the results weren’t great. New Zealand and international evidence is clear that small businesses are significantly less safe on average than their larger counterparts.

Given WorkSafe’s struggles with resourcing over the last couple of years and the technical experts and talented staff who have been made redundant, asking WorkSafe’s remaining staff to man a road cone hotline and investigate complaints about temporary traffic management must feel like insult added to the previous injury.

Focusing on the compliance costs of health and safety rather than the costs of injury is looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Genuinely addressing the causes of workplace harm will have massive flow-on gains to productivity and relief for our overstretched health, ACC and welfare systems. That’s to say nothing of the benefits to workers and their families of keeping them healthy and uninjured.

We will continue to work constructively with the Government and others to improve safety and health outcomes. We will work to make sense of these changes and we will continue to push for better. We look forward to working with you to do so.

Ngā mihi

Jeff Sissons
NZISM CEO