Health and safety reforms deserve the early airing

Wednesday, 30 July 2025

Brooke van Velden announces she's consulting on scaffolding reform that she'll announce later this year

ANALYSIS: Are we being held back by health and safety “red tape”, or do we still not take workplace injuries nearly seriously enough, as is often claimed?

Whatever anyone’s hunch, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden should at least be applauded for giving a loud and early heads up that the Government will be consulting on changes to several rules.

It is clear she envisages a more permissive regime with regard to the use of scaffolding and edge protection that will mean they won’t be required in some situations where they are now, dangling the prospect of cheaper paint jobs and repairs for home-owners.

The general thrust of her comments suggests a loosening of rules, in keeping with Act Party instincts.

“Farmers know their farms and the risks that come with farming life better than anyone,” was one of her comments on Tuesday.

Today she is heralding “regulatory relief” for manufacturers, promising that machine guarding rules (think not chopping your fingers off at the meatworks, perhaps) and “impractical” rules governing exposure to wood dust will be simplified.

“The changes there will help businesses focus on managing genuine risks rather than navigating red tape,” she says.

But it is not clear how far the tranche of reforms may go, and it appears genuinely too early to tell whether new guidance that will be drawn up on the use of quad bikes on farms will encourage more, or less, relaxed practices.

That’s actually a good thing. It would hardly be a step forward for democracy if ministers signalled a shake-up was in the wings only once they had made up their minds on the details and were ready to present the public with a fait accompli.

Announcing the decision to build a third medical school at Waikato University before making the business case public is the opposite way of doing things.

It is not yet clear whether the Government expects to see a more or less liberal regime for the use of quad bikes on farms.

The earlier politicians signal their intent and provide information on their thinking, the more opportunity there is for people to have their say before decisions are set in stone.

People like former health and safety inspector Clive Doubleday, that is, who told The Post on Monday he was haunted by the 33 workplace fatalities he had to investigate in his career.

“I've seeing bodies run over by tractors, and cut in half by concrete slabs coming down. I've seen somebody fall one metre onto a reinforcing rod and his feet don't reach the ground.”

He suggests architects and engineers should spend a week in wheelchair before they get their degree.

“The apprentice has no clout. He can't say ‘stuff you, I'm not getting up there’. Next minute he hasn't got a job.”

The harsh reality is that there is an unavoidable trade off between injuries and deaths, and spending on health and safety measures.

Van Velden effectively acknowledged that by saying changes would ensure scaffolding use was better aligned with the level of risk.

“If it’s not very risky, they will not need to use expensive scaffolding.”

So that’s less protection for activities that are low risk, not no risk.

The optimal outcome may be one where the costs and benefits of a looser or stricter approach — including for workers’ peace of mind — balance out.

Institute of Safety Management chief executive Jeff Sissons says there’s evidence NZ now uses scaffolding more than some other countries and has fewer deaths from falls as a result.

Van Velden may be right it wouldn’t be helpful if home-owners opted to do jobs unsafely themselves to skip paying for safety measures.

But there are a few factors, aside from blind ideology, that could tend towards the Government pushing the pendulum too far in the direction of laxer rules.

One that van Velden says businesses have raised with her and that she is thankfully aware of, is the problem of the “lowest common dominator”.

The company that is willing to do a job with the least edge protection, safety procedures, or whatever, is likely to be able to give the cheapest quote.

So leaving businesses with discretion over how rules should be interpreted or implemented exerts a constant downward pressure on practices and standards.

There can also be a less obvious but important trade-off between fine-tuning rules to take into account “common sense” and their enforceability.

One reason that the current edge protection rules have been effective is that tradespeople have been routinely fined when observed working at height without it.

The more the “carve-outs” and the greater the flexibility of rules to take circumstances into account, the larger the room for debate over whether rules have been in fact been broken.

That translates into a lower risk of businesses being penalised for rule-breaking and, in turn, lower levels of compliance.

Another consideration is that the costs of workplace injuries can be disguised by New Zealand’s accident insurance regime, through ACC.

It is probably no coincidence that in countries where safety records are better, businesses are often more afraid of their insurers and how they might up their premiums after an accident, than their safety regulator.

It is also probably fair to generalise that politicians and officials spend more time fretting over unexpectedly high house maintenance bills than they spend themselves up three-metre ladders empathising with the everyday hazards faced by tradespeople.

In other words, there may be a risk of an “us and them” mentality underpinning different perspectives on reforms.

The origins of modern scaffolding regulations in New Zealand date back to a Royal Commission inquiry held in 1957 following an accident at what is now the Harbour City Centre on Lambton Quay.

Two members of the public were killed and nine injured when scaffolding collapsed onto the footpath and street.

“Some bystanders in Lambton Quay commented that, when the scaffold collapsed, the sound was similar to that of a jet engine,” the commission wrote in its report.

“As the superstructure crumbled, people ran from beneath the verandah, and as the tangled mass descended, some workmen were seen to be riding down with it, whilst others ran along platforms to safety on that part of the scaffold which did not fall.”

Would a full-blown Royal Commission have been held if the accident had happened somewhere else, though?

As Doubleday observes, who walks down Lambton Quay? Politicians.

“You think it's tough now, try the Construction Act 1959.”