Winston Peters vows to make fixing health and safety overhaul a priority after election
Tuesday, 23 June 2026
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters says the party does not agree with a controversial Government bill that will overhaul health and safety law, but will vote for it when it returns to Parliament for its second reading.
Peters made clear the party would be supporting the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill only because it was bound to do so under its coalition agreement and promised to “fix this up” straight after the election.
“Do I think these reforms are what’s required? No, I don't,” he said.
“We don’t like it, we’ll say so, but we’re caught by the Coalition agreement on this matter.”
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Peters agreed it was unfortunate for the party to be voting in support of legislation, given its concerns.
“It’s very unfortunate, but that's the way sometimes it happens. You get dragged into a situation; you can’t change things.
“But you can change them after the election. It’s only 4½ months to wait. We’ll make it a priority.”
The Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill has been championed by ACT Party deputy leader and Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden, who expected it would return to Parliament for its second reading some time this week.
Van Velden has suggested the reforms could improve health and safety outcomes while reducing red tape by encouraging businesses to focus on critical risks.
However, the law change has been opposed by professional groups including the Institute of Safety Management and generated concern within accident insurer ACC.
Documents released under the Official Information Act show ACC advised on March 23 that the legislation carried “a real and material risk of increasing deaths, injuries, claims and costs”.
But the insurer said it had not been asked to participate in targeted inter-agency consultations on the legislation, so had “not had significant involvement in policy development”.
Families of the Pike River mining disaster are planning to protest against the legislation outside Parliament on Wednesday.
Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse, who lost family members in the 2010 disaster, have voiced concerns the bill would weaken health and safety and accused van Velden of “focusing all the time on the employers” after meeting with her in November.
Peters told The Post he was meeting with them this afternoon, and reiterated his view, first expressed in November, that the mine was a “murder scene”.
Van Velden this afternoon rejected criticism of the law changes, which were endorsed with only minor changes by a select committee last week.
“I believe there is alignment with the Pike River families. We also care about making sure people come home at the end of each and every work day,” she said.
Van Velden said she spent a lot of time in the community talking to small businesses and surveys suggested they wanted the Government to focus on critical risks.
“The MYOB Business Monitor survey that came out this year said one of the top priorities they wanted the Government to work on was simplifying health and safety for small business,” she said.
“I’m not out there listening to the ‘big guys’ and the big so-called experts.
“I’m listening to the small guys, the people who are constantly not heard by government, and for the first time ever, they have been listened to. They’ve been listened to by this Government that wants to make it easier to comply — and safer for workers — for small businesses.”
Institute of Safety Management chief executive Jeff Sissons has said the reforms have been a case of developing policy by anecdote, rather than good policy-making.
Van Velden denied that.
“He doesn't have a point. I’ve gone out there and talked to people on the ground who are having to actually deal in person with our laws,” she said.
“That’s the importance of what I’m doing here. Our laws shouldn’t be so complicated that people on the ground, out and about in our communities, don't know how to follow them,” she said.
Van Velden said she was tired of hearing there was one voice that represented all people.
“What I heard during our health and safety roadshow, where we allowed people from unions, businesses, workers, a whole range of different representatives to say their mind directly to a government minister — maybe for the first time ever — was overwhelmingly that our laws were too complicated and people wanted them simplified,” she said.