Health and safety reform is here: Is this the fix we needed?

The introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill (Bill) to Parliament marks a significant recalibration of New Zealand’s health and safety regime. This Bill delivers on the health and safety reforms signalled over the past year and represents the most substantive change since the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA) was introduced in 2015.

Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden has emphasised that the Bill is intended to reduce unnecessary compliance, focus attention on serious harm, and provide clearer guidance for businesses and organisations. The Bill also reinforces Parliament’s intent that the focus of HSWA is “work-related” health and safety - not public health or public safety - and it is not intended to be a “backstop” health and safety system.

Below we outline the key changes.

A sharper focus on critical risks

A central theme of the Bill is a re‑weighting of health and safety obligations, with greater emphasis placed on the identification and management of “critical risks”. The intent is to refocus health and safety efforts on preventing serious harm, and to move away from tick-box compliance.

Critical risks are defined as a “hazard of any kind that is likely to result in”:

Death
A notifiable injury or illness
A notifiable incident
An occupational disease listed under the Accident Compensation Act.

The Bill also introduces a new schedule of hazards that are automatically treated as critical risks, as they are already subject to specialist health and safety regulation, including asbestos, amusement activities, hazardous substances, and mining and quarrying.

Cutting red tape for small businesses

A key feature of the Bill is the introduction of a new definition of a “small PCBU” (person conducting a business or undertaking). A small PCBU is defined as a business with fewer than 20 workers, including where staff numbers fluctuate over the year.

For small PCBUs:

Core health and safety duties apply only in relation to critical risks
In complying with the Act, they must prioritise critical risks over other risks
They must still provide basic worker welfare facilities such as first aid, drinking water, lighting and ventilation.

This is a significant change. Small businesses will no longer be expected to apply the full weight of the health and safety regime to low‑level risks that are unlikely to cause serious harm. The aim is to make compliance more proportionate and achievable, particularly for low‑risk operators.

Larger businesses are not exempt from managing non-critical risks but are required to “prioritise critical risks first”.

Recreational land use and landowner liability

The Bill clarifies health and safety duties for landowners who allow people onto their land for recreational purposes.

Under the proposed changes:

Landowners will generally not owe health and safety duties to people using their land for recreation
Responsibility will sit with the organisation running the recreational activity
An exception applies where the recreational activity relates to the landowner’s business, or where work is happening at the same time and place.

The change reflects concerns that emerged following the Whakaari / White Island disaster about the scope of landowner health and safety duties in recreational settings (see our article here). It is intended to help address risk‑averse behaviour that has developed among some landowners, both public and private (for instance farmers, councils and schools), due to perceived liability risk and to support greater use of public and private land for recreational activities.

Officers’ duties: governance, not operations

The Bill clarifies the scope of the health and safety duty for officers of a PCBU to undertake due diligence, particularly where the same individual holds both a governance role (such as a director) and an operational role (such as a chief executive or manager). These changes appear to be in response to the conviction of Tony Gibson, the former chief executive of Ports of Auckland Limited for failures to comply with this duty (Maritime New Zealand v Gibson [2024] NZDC 27975, which is still under appeal in the High Court). Find our previous article here:

In particular, the Bill:

Confirms that an officer’s duty applies to their governance role only, and is distinct from the duties that apply to them when acting in another capacity within the business
Clarifies the meaning of “due diligence” by setting out a clearer and more complete list of what officers are expected to do to meet their governance obligations
Emphasises that officers must keep their health and safety knowledge current and relevant to the nature of the business or undertaking.

Together, these changes are intended to make clearer the difference between governance‑level oversight and day‑to‑day operational responsibility. The aim is to reduce uncertainty and over‑compliance, while maintaining accountability at board and senior leadership level for effective health and safety oversight.

Other notable changes

The Bill also includes several broader system changes, including:

Clarifying how the Health and Safety at Work Act interacts with other regulatory regimes, so that compliance with specialist frameworks (such as maritime or aviation safety) is treated as compliance with equivalent duties.
Strengthening the role of Approved Codes of Practice, including allowing industry groups to develop them, increasing their use as practical guidance for managing specific risks, and providing a clearer “safe harbour” where compliance with an approved code is treated as compliance with health and safety duties for that risk.
Re‑prioritising the functions of WorkSafe and other regulators to focus more clearly on guidance, codes of practice and enforcement of serious risks (including a clear expectation that WorkSafe pursues an ‘educate’ approach in the first instance and actively considers other enforcement options before recommending prosecution).

What happens next?

The Bill will now go through the parliamentary process, including select committee scrutiny and public submissions. Some stakeholder groups have already raised concerns about whether a narrower focus on “critical risks” may reduce attention on more common but less severe workplace harms, an issue likely to be explored during the select committee process.

While the overall direction of reform is clear, some aspects of the Bill raise questions about how the changes will operate in practice. The increased focus on critical risks and the aim of providing greater clarity and simplicity for business owners are welcome, but achieving these outcomes may be more complex than a legislative change alone. Small PCBUs will still need to undertake risk assessments to identify critical risks, but this leaves open how harm that falls outside that definition will be addressed. There is concern that more common instances of workplace harm, which have not been consistently managed under the current regime, may continue to receive limited focus in practice.

What businesses should be thinking about

Which risks in their operations are likely to qualify as “critical risks”, and how those risks are identified, prioritised and controlled.
Whether they fall within the proposed definition of a “small PCBU”, particularly where workforce numbers fluctuate.
How health and safety responsibilities are divided between governance level oversight and operational management, consistent with the distinction the Bill seeks to clarify.
The potential role Approved Codes of Practice may play in demonstrating compliance if the Bill is enacted.