Brooke van Velden: Workplace Relations and Safety Minister on the health and safety law reform

A pledge to "bring back common-sense" to New Zealand's approach to workplace health and safety. 

The Government confirms small businesses will only need to manage risks relating to death or serious injury to reduce compliance costs.  

It's also planning a telephone hotline to report excess road cone use. 

Minister-in-Charge, Brooke van Velden told Mike Hosking most companies are happy with the core of the Workplace Safety Act, but don't know how to comply. 

She says the Government will clarify it so businesses can focus on its critical risks, rather than posters warning of a hot water tap or staircase. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Health and Safety Week because finally the government looks
to bring a bit of real world back to the
mad business of rules and regulation around the workplace in
our roads. So low risk businesses are set to have
life made easier good. The focus will be on risk
good as opposed to a lot of rules. Our Workplace
Relations and Safety Minister Brooklynvelden is with us. Very good
morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Now, I was following your press presser yesterday with the
Prime Minister with a great deal of interest, and you
tease this, You tease us with a whole seemingly a
whole week worth of reveals. Do you have a whole
week worth of reveals coming?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I do, indeed, and not only that, but I've got
months of reveals coming. This is just the first of
the first tranch of health and safety reforms through the year.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Are you upending us?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, what we've heard is that for most companies, by
and large, they're happy with the bones of the Health
and Safety at Work Act, but we are making some
significant changes. Like you have said, one of the things
I heard from traveling from Fang Day to Bluff talking
to small business and workers was that most of them
don't know what to do to comply, and we know

(01:04):
that businesses are already stressed. We're trying to figure out
the Holidays Act on top of this, as well as
how do you get money in and out of the door.
We're going to make it a lot clearer, so you
only need to focus on your critical risks, things that
will actually cause people harm, rather than posters saying warning
hot water or warning here is a staircase. We've got

(01:24):
to bring some common sense back to New Zealand and
to business.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
How much of that is ideological on your part versus
practical because in my experience, to be frank, a lot
of that stuff, you know, the silly stuff is ignored anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, a lot of it is companies finding they're spending
a lot of money on over compliance because they are
fearful of prosecution, you know, and we've heard it even
in the case of traffic management that sometimes some companies
are spending nearly half of their project cost on temporary
traffic management. So we're bringing some common sense back and saying, look,

(02:00):
in some cases you're doing too much and in some
cases we need to focus less on the paperwork and
making sure that works safe has a paper trail and
more on how you actually reduce harm in your workplace.
Let's go back to what you can recognize as things
that could cause death or serious illness and injury, and
not sweet the small stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
The road cone thing, the temporary traffic management is somebody
ultimately in this country in charge of that or is
it a local authority thing? And therefore getting on top
of it in a consistent fashion is going to be
a problem.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
We can get on top of it. What we've heard
everywhere in New Zealand is there are far too many
road cones. And I agree Minister Chris Bishop is responsible
for MZTA. They have a new temporary Traffic Management guide
that has been released and what we'll be doing is
working together to ensure that people around the country know
what it is and that it is a risk based

(02:54):
guide and we should see fewer road cones on the streets.
But what I'm doing is guiding work to go out
into the community, find instances of over compliance, too many
road cones and actually tell people that they're doing too much.
We actually need some sense and letting people know that
there is guidance out there.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Is there this hotline, is there a person on the
end of it, are they offshore in Malaysia and will
anything actually be done.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
What I've been doing is having some very blue conversations
with work Safe that the will will be funded through
their baselines. Now, we don't have a number for the
phone line just yet because I don't want people calling
in before the program's actually live. But we'll be working
for twelve months. People can let work Safe know. The
investigators will be going out and letting people know whether

(03:47):
or not they're doing too much or whether they think
the guidance is actually sufficient and they're doing enough. But
my hope here by the end of it is that
we will actually have a bit more respect for road
workers and people putting out the cone because we'll be
seeing less of it and they'll be less frustration. People
will be able to pick up their kids, go to
work and know that the road cones they're seeing are

(04:08):
genuinely there to reduce their harm and the harm of
people working.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
All I can do is wish you the very best,
appreciate time Brook ben Felden workplace relations in say a
few minutes

Speaker 2 (04:16):
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