Safety institute says ACC's exclusion from law overhaul may have breached Cabinet Manual
Monday, 22 June 2026
The Government’s decision not to invite ACC to targeted consultations on a controversial overhaul of health and safety law may have breached the Cabinet Manual, the head of the Institute of Safety Management says.
That was denied by Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden, who said ACC was consulted by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment on the “key and overarching Cabinet paper for the reforms” and that relevant ministers were also consulted.
Van Velden told Parliament’s Education and Workforce select committee on Thursday that the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill would encourage businesses to focus on “more critical risks”.
If it worked as intended, that could result in fewer people needing help from ACC for very serious injuries, she said.
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However, The Post revealed last year that ACC opposed her proposal to exclude small firms from the need to comply with some health and safety rules, warning that could push up insurance costs.
Additional documentation obtained by the Institute of Safety Management under the Official Information Act shows ACC’s concerns ran deep, with it warning of “a real and material risk of increasing deaths, injuries, claims and costs”.
But ACC said it was not asked to participate in targeted inter-agency consultations on the legislation, so had “not had significant involvement in policy development”.
Stats NZ data shows workplace-related injuries have been falling significantly under the current regime.
Institute of Safety Management chief executive Jeff Sissons said ACC had been cut out of consultations on the proposed rule changes.
“This is arguably a breach of the Cabinet Manual, given ACC’s very significant interest in the outcome and the likely hole that the reforms will blow in the work account,” he said.
The manual states that ministers are expected to “consult relevant ministerial colleagues before submitting papers that deal with significant or potentially controversial matters, or that affect other ministers’ portfolio interests”.
ACC Minister Scott Simpson, who sits outside Cabinet, made clear to the select committee last week that he viewed the state-owned insurer as an operational agency that dealt with the rules as they were, indicating he it did not have a role in such policy-making.
ACC “responds to the environment it is in”, and questions about the impact of the health and safety reforms were best directed to van Velden, he told the committee.
A majority of MPs on the select committee last week recommended the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill should proceed with only minor amendments and Sissons expected it could receive its second reading as early as Tuesday.
In a minority report, the Labour and Green members of the committee accused it of acting as “a rubber stamp”.
The law changes were likely to significantly worsen New Zealand’s already “disastrously bad workplace health and safety outcomes”, particularly for small businesses, they said.
Sissons vowed to continue opposing the legislation, saying it was too important not to fight against.
Van Velden had championed the legislation based on anecdotes from businesspeople she had spoken with who believed there was too much red tape, he said.
But business groups including the Business Leaders Health and Safety Forum were quite strongly opposed to the changes she was proposing, he said.
Downer NZ, which builds and manages critical transport and other infrastructure, earlier told a select committee that reducing small businesses’ health and safety obligations ignored the realities of modern workplaces and could lead to increased harm and ACC costs.
Sissons said it was “definitely ‘policy by anecdote’, not good policy-making”.
The freshly revealed advice from ACC was “more a hardening of tone than new concerns being raised”, he said.
“ACC seems extremely worried about a cost blow-out in the work and other accounts and are unconvinced that the changes are necessary, useful or well drafted.”