My personal view is that this will take us back to the common approaches in NZ prior to Pike River.
On the one hand they want to only worry about critical risks. On the other, they want to waste WorkSafe time on trivia like road cones.
These proposals have been produced by political motivation rather than an understanding of how H&S functions in business.
All managers should have some H&S accountability, but the primary duty must remain with the Officers [CEO and board], as they are the ones who set culture and provide resourcing.
I do not have faith that the wellbeing of our workers is going to be more important than the drive to make it easier for business.
Resourcing could have been better spent on rolling out the Plant and Structures Regulations, resourcing MBIE to create the further suite of regulations that were supposed to supplement the HSWA (like the Model Act in Australia), and direct specific resource to WorkSafe to develop better guidance (together with industry) for how HSWA applies in practice, including the regulator’s position and expectations of businesses.
A farcical waste of time, energy and taxpayer money that would be better placed tackling the glaring issues with our H&S system, as articulated by several professional bodies and vested interest groups. Arrrgh!
These are seriously uninformed proposals. The Minister should be providing information on whom she has taken advice from.
This is taking H&S a big step backwards. The HSW Act changes were brought in due to the tragedy of Pike River, where the management of the mine was never held accountable.
Simplifying responsibilities to focus on critical risks in a manageable way is a huge step in the right direction.
It appears that in the efforts to appease ‘business’ the country is being set up to take a step backwards.
Just fund/resource WorkSafe to do their job now. We are past the engage and educate and need to get to enforcement.
I find it odd that Boards will retain clear accountability in the financial space but not leadership & accountability regarding people's lives & health.
These proposals are unlikely to consider musculoskeletal harm a critical risk. No mention of work-related health risks, including mental harm and carcinogen/airborne risks which are 13 times more likely to kill a worker than a safety risk. The proposals are not worker centered, will not reduce the harm, and will not make the regulators more effective.
More information from the Minister is required to understand the context. These high level provisions are wide open to interpretation. The devil is always in the detail.
This is all about perceived compliance cost, not the cost of harm.
Obvious populist pandering. It seems the Minister has very little idea how the HSW Act works in the real world. Perhaps you could send her some back issues of Safeguard?
The perceived claw-back and added ambiguity around on due diligence obligations for Directors and the shift of operational obligations onto management is a slight against the 29 who died at Pike River.
Not very well thought out, knee jerk, appeasement. In a country with such a bad record for workplace harm and death, why would you allow industry self-regulation?
About time, and good on the Minister for addressing a more practicable regulatory reform.
Based on what we know so far this seems like a missed opportunity. I am embarrassed we have a Minister who thinks a hotline for reporting overzealous road cone use is a good use of an under-resourced regulator.
These proposals are mostly a distraction to appease the government’s voter base and don’t appear to address much of the feedback from the Minister’s engagement road trips. The work on ACOPs is positive as long as it’s supported by WorkSafe and supported by Plant regulations.
The focus from the safety community seems to be the road cones. If they wanted to distract us, it’s working.
Just populist political point scoring aimed at politicians and voters with little real knowledge of safety culture as harm prevention and what helps to form a culture of care.
I’m broadly supportive of efforts to simplify the system, reduce duplication, and get more focus on what really matters, which is managing serious harm. That said, some of the proposals raise flags for me. We’ve got to be careful not to create over-simplified solutions to complex problems.
The changes seem designed to appeal to a narrow audience rather than improve health and safety outcomes across the board.
This review has made a mockery of health and safety. Reducing compliance and oversight for small businesses does not support enhancing a health and safety culture and increases risk.
The whole thing is laughable. Even for the proposals that I ticked “support”, I feel the focus would be best spent elsewhere.
Seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the requirements on small businesses. The HSW Act is already scalable. To call out mental health as something they don’t need to address is scary. Lost a lot of respect with this one!
