{"id":126520,"date":"2025-11-09T17:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T17:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/126520\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T17:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T17:16:09","slug":"29-deaths-at-pike-river-sparked-workplace-safety-reforms-why-are-they-now-being-dismantled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/126520\/","title":{"rendered":"29 deaths at Pike River sparked workplace safety reforms \u2013 why are they now being dismantled?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How long does it take for collective national grief to decay into casual disregard? How long for a shared \u201cnever again\u201d commitment to corrode to gimmickry?<\/p>\n

These are not rhetorical questions. We can measure the answers in years, months and days.<\/p>\n

\n Thirteen years, six months and 26 days passed between
\n the avoidable deaths of 29 workers at Pike River mine and a ministerial statement from Brooke van Velden, the nation\u2019s health and safety leader, zeroing in on road cones and Santa parades.\n <\/p>\n

Fourteen years, eight months and 10 days between the biggest workplace catastrophe in nearly a century and a ministerial statement spinning the facile notion that health and safety law is so burdensome that farmers fret about whether they can legally send the kids out to fetch the chook eggs.<\/p>\n

As 29 families prepare to mark the 15th anniversary of the death of their men in an incompetently run and under-regulated underground coal mine, van Velden, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, is watering down the regime that was written in their blood.<\/p>\n

She has instructed the regulator, WorkSafe, to shift its focus from enforcement of the post-Pike law to support and guidance for businesses.<\/p>\n

She alleges the agency \u2013 which prosecuted in fewer than 2% of workplace death and serious injury cases between 2021 and 2024 \u2013 inspires fear among business people that \u201cany little thing that [WorkSafe] finds\u201d can trigger legal action.<\/p>\n

She speaks of a \u201cculture of fear\u201d of WorkSafe, a claim unsupported by surveys of businesses that have actually interacted with the regulator.<\/p>\n

In May, Van Velden instructed WorkSafe to focus on critical risk, as if the industries that kill and maim the most workers \u2013 agriculture, forestry, construction, manufacturing \u2013 have not been the regulator\u2019s key focus for years. In the same breath, she instructed the agency to mount a tipline to which frustrated drivers could offer their reckons about excessive road cone use \u2013 never mind that WorkSafe doesn\u2019t set any requirements for how, or how many, road cones are deployed.<\/p>\n

\"2929 families are preparing to mark the 15th anniversary of the Pike River disaster. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Act MP plans to lighten the duties on company directors, who ultimately control the conditions in workplaces. She wants carve-outs for small businesses from health and safety law, yet they are responsible for 75% of ACC\u2019s work-related injury costs.<\/p>\n

In the screeds of briefings and cabinet papers outlining van Velden\u2019s reforms there is no evidence as to how any of this will reduce New Zealand\u2019s scandalously poor health and safety record, although in a written statement to the Listener she said, \u201cAdvice I have received is that the proposed changes will help to support the continued reduction in the incidence of serious workplace injuries and fatalities.\u201d She refused to be interviewed for this article.<\/p>\n

Her officials have warned her proposed changes \u201crun the risk of repeating the failure identified by the Royal Commission [of Inquiry] and the Independent Taskforce on Workplace Health and Safety in the wake of the Pike River Coal Mine tragedy\u201d. But she is proceeding, empowered by Act\u2019s coalition deal with National promising to reform health and safety law and regulations, and informed by the complaints of those who turned up to consultation meetings around the country.<\/p>\n

As the shock of the Pike River disaster recedes into history, the solemn political consensus to build a world-class health and safety system that would prevent any such future travesty has broken down. But van Velden hasn\u2019t destroyed it single-handedly. The responsibility is shared with her Labour predecessors, who helped lay the ground for her to pursue her deregulating agenda.<\/p>\n

Poorly implemented<\/p>\n

In the years after the Pike River mine blew up, the causes of New Zealand\u2019s high rate of workplace death, injury and occupational illness were systematically examined. Among the findings of the Royal Commission was that the Department of Labour\u2019s health and safety inspectorate was weak and preferred to work in friendly collaboration with the mine company rather than shutting the operation down for serious safety breaches (see \u201cFatal combination\u201d, opposite). It found safety came a distant second to the drive to get the mine into production. It called for a new, stand-alone health and safety agency, which became WorkSafe.<\/p>\n

\"ForestryForestry remains our highest-risk sector for\u00a0workplace fatalities. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

The health and safety taskforce concluded that although the performance-based model of health and safety introduced with the 1992 Health and Safety in Employment Act was sound, it had been badly implemented. New Zealand had adopted the so-called Robens model \u2013 developed in the UK in response to a series of workplace calamities \u2013 which set aside the historical tangle of prescriptive laws and created a single act that imposed duties on all employers to identify the risks they were generating and manage them effectively. This allowed for flexibility and innovation within businesses.<\/p>\n

To be effective, the Robens model needed to be underpinned by industry- and hazard-specific regulations, along with approved codes of practice and guidance to clarify what was required of employers and workers. The success of Robens also rested on a \u201cthree-legged stool\u201d \u2013 a strong regulator, capable employers and informed and empowered workers.<\/p>\n

In New Zealand, none of this happened in the decades after the 1992 Health and Safety in Employment Act. In an ideological climate of deregulation, essential regulations weren\u2019t developed, workers were stripped of their power and dangerous workplaces kept killing people \u2013 most notably at Pike River.<\/p>\n

In its 2013 report, the independent taskforce recommended sticking with the Robens model, but doing it properly this time. There needed to be a new act, a dedicated and properly resourced regulator, and up-to-date regulations and codes of practice to clarify what was expected of employers.<\/p>\n

Australia, which had successfully implemented Robens (and, like the UK, significantly improved its workplace health and safety performance), had established an approach New Zealand should follow.<\/p>\n

The taskforce chair, oil company boss Rob Jager, said New Zealand needed to cultivate a \u201cchronic state of unease\u201d where accidents were \u201csocially unacceptable\u201d. The group wanted New Zealand to become, by 2020, \u201cone of the best places in the world to go to work and come home at the end of the day, every day, safe and sound\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe high-risk sectors of farming, manufacturing, forestry, construction and transport would all be affected by the new regulations. Photos \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Then-minister of labour Simon Bridges saluted a \u201conce in a lifetime opportunity\u201d to create a system in which health and safety was \u201cnot a burden but an investment in good business practice, improved productivity and reliability, and an engaged workforce\u201d. His government targeted a 25% reduction in death and serious injury by 2020.<\/p>\n

Directors made liable<\/p>\n

WorkSafe was set up in December 2013, and the Health and Safety at Work Act came into force in 2016. Penalties for employers who breached the law were significantly increased, and directors now had legal duties to ensure their companies had effective health and safety systems. But in a sign that the post-Pike consensus was already eroding, worker representation \u2013 one leg of that three-legged stool \u2013 was watered down.<\/p>\n

Still, things started reasonably well. WorkSafe\u2019s capacity was built, including an increase in new inspectors (although as a ratio of the country\u2019s workforce, the inspectorate reached only two-thirds of the strength of Australia\u2019s). A high hazard unit and supporting regulations were introduced, targeting industries where the consequences of safety failure can be catastrophic. Tougher penalties began to flow, with fines of $200,000 to $400,000 becoming common. WorkSafe funding doubled compared with the Department of Labour era; staffing also doubled over the following seven years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really quite an optimistic period,\u201d recalls Ross Wilson, a lifelong champion for workplace health and safety who served as WorkSafe\u2019s deputy chair from its inception then as chair from 2018-22.<\/p>\n

By 2020, the rate of death from workplace accidents (per 100,000 workers) was down 30% on 2012, but progress had stalled, as it had on the rate of serious injuries. New Zealand was still killing twice as many workers per head as Australia, and four times as many as the UK.<\/p>\n

And by then we had endured another mass catastrophe: 22 tourists were killed and 25 severely injured when Whakaari\/White Island erupted in December 2019. Suddenly, WorkSafe was in the thick of the largest and most complex investigation it had undertaken, soaking up 40% of its inspectors and leading to one of the largest criminal prosecutions in our history.<\/p>\n

\"WorkSafeWorkSafe initially charged 13 parties after the Whakaari-White Island eruption; several including Whakaari Management Ltd had the charges dismissed before trial or on appeal. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

WorkSafe\u2019s decision to charge 13 parties along the adventure tourism supply chain, from tour operators and scientific monitoring agencies up to the landowners, promised to be precedent-setting. But although the tour companies pleaded guilty and took their punishment, more powerful players \u2013 including the landowners\u2019 company, Whakaari Management Ltd, which was earning $1 million a year from licence agreements with tour companies \u2013 pleaded not guilty and had charges dismissed or, in WML\u2019s case, successfully appealed conviction.<\/p>\n

The Whakaari disaster, along with extra responsibilities arising from the Covid pandemic response, diverted WorkSafe and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment from developing the regulations and codes of practice and guidance envisioned in the post-Pike years \u2013 a framework in which our culture of complacency towards workplace harm would shift to one of intolerance.<\/p>\n

Ross Wilson says by 2020 the post-Pike consensus had started to drift.<\/p>\n

In 2018, the Ardern government had produced a 10-year health and safety at work strategy that promised to drive \u201cambitious, sustained and system-wide improvement\u201d, including in the toll of work-related disease, which kills 750-900 people a year. The strategy was then left to coast without a clear implementation plan or accountability for progress.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the task of developing critical regulations was moving frustratingly slowly. The relationship between WorkSafe as regulator and MBIE as health and safety policy agency and overseer of WorkSafe\u2019s performance was difficult and sometimes tense.<\/p>\n

Of key importance was the plant and structures regulations \u2013 a new set of rules that would go to the heart of our shocking rate of workplace harm. The regulations would cover the work responsible for the most deaths \u2013 jobs involving machines, scaffolding, excavations, structures and heights. Of 822 people killed at work between 2008 and 2019, 652 (79%) were involved with plant and structures.<\/p>\n

The existing rules were decades out of date. In 2019, cabinet was advised the situation was \u201cconfusing, full of gaps and lacking in clarity for businesses and workers\u201d.<\/p>\n

The high-risk sectors of farming, manufacturing, forestry, construction and transport would all be affected by the new regulations. Among other things, they would cover appropriate guarding for machinery, regular inspection and registration of high-risk plant like boilers and cranes, and risk-based rules for working at heights. Equipment designers, importers and suppliers would also be covered.<\/p>\n

Also included were quad bikes, those ubiquitous items of farm machinery that kill an average of five people a year \u2013 sometimes children. The new rules would make it easier for WorkSafe to enforce the use of roll bars or other crush protection controls.<\/p>\n

Based on Australian experience, the regulations were expected to reduce workplace deaths by 20%, equating to benefits of $43m a year in lives saved, with only modest cost to businesses.<\/p>\n

Work on the new rules started in 2017 and after exhaustive consultation, MBIE in late 2019 reported \u201cbroad support for the proposals and the clarity they would provide\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer WorkSafe chair Ross Wilson and NZ Safety Council chief executive Karyn Beattie. Photos \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Karyn Beattie, who chairs the health and safety professionals group within industry body the Vertical Construction Leaders Group and is chief executive of the New Zealand Safety Council, says her sector wanted that clarity. In the absence of up-to-date regulations there was ambiguity and difficulty for head contractors \u201cimplementing standards on sites so that it\u2019s clear and fair across the supply chain. When you are engaging in commercial negotiations, everyone wants a level playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without clear regulations, businesses had been forced to create their own systems, such as pre-qualification for tenderers so lead contractors could compare \u201capples with apples\u201d on core safety standards.<\/p>\n

The lack of the regulations led businesses to rely on the advice of health and safety consultants who in New Zealand are not required to be qualified, says Beattie. \u201cWhat I see frequently is businesses engaging with highly inappropriate people, giving them advice which is wasting their money, or they are paying a company that\u2019s churning out manuals downloaded off the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while sectors like construction were hungry for the plant and structures regulations, some in the rural sector \u201cfelt strongly, and made their views known\u201d about quad bike rules, says Michael Wood, who was minister for workplace relations and safety in the Labour government from 2020-23.<\/p>\n

By 2022, the new regulations were well advanced. WorkSafe was allocated $10.5 million in Budget funding over four years to implement them. But by then the farming lobby had mobilised even further against Labour, particularly over its environmental, freshwater and Three Waters reforms. Wood\u2019s cabinet colleagues feared further backlash over quad bikes. Despite what Wood says was otherwise \u201cnear-universal support\u201d for the regulations across industry and unions, he failed to get them through cabinet.<\/p>\n

Van Velden hasn\u2019t destroyed it single-handedly. The responsibility is shared with Labour.<\/p>\n

Rebecca Macfie<\/p>\n

The spectre of farmer protests proved more influential than the case for modern regulations for the businesses and workers carrying the greatest burden of death and injury. By mid-2023, when Wood was sacked for failure to disclose conflicts of interest, the cabinet paper had been paused. By then, some $7m-$9m in WorkSafe and MBIE staff time had been invested, according to an estimate by Shane Strode-Penny, a former WorkSafe inspector who worked extensively on the regulations. <\/p>\n

Blaming the barricades<\/p>\n

As the incoming minister after the 2023 election, van Velden could have addressed business concerns about outdated rules, confusion and uncertainty by bringing the plant and structures regulations into effect. Instead, she defunded the work, and in May 2024, launched a whole new round of consultation on health and safety reform. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur health and safety culture can be summed up by the sea of orange road cones that have taken over the country,\u201d she claimed. \u201cFrom Santa parades to property development, you can\u2019t get a lot done without having to set up a barricade of cones.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an extraordinary display of unity, Business New Zealand, the Council of Trade Unions and industry and health and safety groups wrote a joint submission to van Velden in October 2024 pleading with her to adequately fund WorkSafe and to deliver urgently needed regulations such as plant and structures. They appear to have been ignored.<\/p>\n

At the same time as the former Labour government was steering the plant and structures regulations into the rocks, WorkSafe had been working to implement an ambitious strategy to tackle the root causes of workplace death, injury and disease. Under the leadership of then-chief executive Phil Parkes, it wanted to get beyond the proximate cause of accidents \u2013 for instance, the small subcontractor at the bottom of a complex supply chain whose worker is killed \u2013 and look \u201cupstream\u201d at those who control the business models, supply chains and contracting arrangements.<\/p>\n

Parkes argued badly designed work was the underlying cause of New Zealand\u2019s high rate of harm, and health and safety needed to be integral to how work was set up, not just an add-on.<\/p>\n

All this called for long-term commitment, and funding to match from the health and safety at work levy, which is collected from businesses by ACC to fund WorkSafe and other agencies.<\/p>\n

The levy pool is controlled by MBIE. But it thought WorkSafe was getting ahead of itself and ought to focus on the basics. It sent in consultancy firm SageBush to look at whether the regulator was effectively managing the money it was already getting.<\/p>\n

\"FromFrom Left, Simon Bridges, Minister of labour 2013-17; Michael Wood, Workplace Relations and Safety Minister 2020-23; current minister Brooke van Velden. Photos \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

SageBush in its 2022 report expressed strong doubts that it was, and questioned whether WorkSafe\u2019s \u201cupstream\u201d strategy was a good use of resources when \u201cknown areas of harm are not being addressed\u201d. It noted the number of WorkSafe investigations had declined markedly since it was formed (although WorkSafe argued this was because it was taking a more \u201ctargeted\u201d approach). The proportion of workplace injuries leading to action by WorkSafe (such as warnings or investigations) dropped from around 20% to just 5% over the same period, as the agency favoured \u201ceducational\u201d and other interventions, SageBush observed. And the consultants said WorkSafe wasn\u2019t developing enough codes of practice and other guidance, which firms needed to help them comply with their duties.<\/p>\n

Parkes and Wilson fought a rearguard action, but after Wilson retired as chair in September 2022 and Wood resigned in June 2023 the impetus for sustainable funding stalled, and the board withdrew its Budget bid. <\/p>\n

In September 2023, with an election approaching and Labour facing a loss at the polls, a cabinet paper in the name of Carmel Sepuloni, who replaced Wood as minister, accused WorkSafe of weak financial management and installed a crown monitor. Parkes resigned as chief executive. WorkSafe staffing was cut by 170. Morale at the agency was through the floor.<\/p>\n

Lessons not learnt<\/p>\n

By the time van Velden took over responsibility for workplace health and safety in November 2023, there was a vacuum where plant and structures and other urgently needed modern regulations should have been. As Karyn Beattie points out, in the absence of regulations, businesses were creating their own processes to comply with the broad duties of the Health and Safety at Work Act.<\/p>\n

The enormous toll of New Zealand\u2019s poor health and safety performance had also been further examined, including by a group of chief executives who understood that death, injury and illness caused by poorly designed work was bad for business, the economy and productivity. A report published by the Business Leaders\u2019 Health and Safety Forum was fresh off the press when van Velden was sworn in after the 2023 election; it put the cost to the nation at $4.4 billion. The forum\u2019s latest report, published a few months ago, put it at $5.4b.<\/p>\n

Just as van Velden was getting her feet under the table, the forum set up its own taskforce to understand why New Zealand was continuing to perform so poorly on health and safety, with a workplace fatality rate 60% higher than Australia\u2019s and 500% higher than the UK\u2019s. It concluded the country had \u201cfailed to learn\u201d and noted its findings were \u201ceerily similar\u201d to those of the post-Pike 2013 taskforce. Yet again, New Zealand had failed to follow through with the necessary regulations, codes of practice and guidance for those businesses wanting to do the right thing to keep their workers safe, and sanctions for those who did not.<\/p>\n

\"Father-of-sevenFather-of-seven Palaamo Kalati was killed by a falling container in August 2020 at the Auckland container terminal. A court heard changes to procedures made during the Covid pandemic had lessened oversight. Photos \/ Getty Images; Supplied<\/p>\n

Instead of heeding this comprehensive analysis, van Velden chose to inflame public irritation with road cones and the tipline that cost WorkSafe nearly $150,000 in just four months, which cut across industry-led work on a new risk-based approach to traffic management.<\/p>\n

Instead of calming the largely baseless fears of business owners that WorkSafe will storm in and prosecute them for some minor infraction, she chose to amplify them. She claimed businesses were putting warning signs on hot water taps and toasters in the name of health and safety but failed to inform the public that neither the law nor the regulator require such measures.<\/p>\n

Instead of implementing the plant and structures regulations, she launched \u201ctargeted\u201d consultation on new rules for scaffolding, machine guarding and farm machinery \u2013 all of which are dealt with by the regulations-in-waiting.<\/p>\n

Her dictate that WorkSafe must shift \u201cfrom an enforcement agency to one that engages early and well to support businesses\u201d is perhaps the clearest sign of all that one of the most devastating lessons from the Pike River catastrophe is being defied: that when the regulator puts business-friendly support ahead of clear-eyed enforcement of health and safety, workers pay the price with their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are now faced with a disturbingly similar situation to that which the Pike River Royal Commission was so critical of more than 10 years ago,\u201d wrote Ross Wilson in a recent article in Safeguard magazine. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe minister\u2019s proposed changes signpost a pathway back to the \u2018not fit for purpose\u2019 system failure which resulted in the deaths of 29 workers in the Pike River mine. Her apparent disregard for the lives of workers is chilling.\u201d <\/p>\n

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