{"id":503007,"date":"2026-06-30T16:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/503007\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T16:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T16:52:11","slug":"nz-first-secures-win-in-health-and-safety-reforms-delaying-commencement-until-after-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/503007\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ First secures win in health and safety reforms, delaying commencement until after election"},"content":{"rendered":"

NZ First leader Winston Peters<\/a> has previously been critical of the bill, saying it would be \u201cdead on arrival\u201d. However, he has also said he would not \u201ccollapse\u201d the coalition by voting against it. <\/p>\n

Peters\u2019 coalition agreement obliges him to abide by the deal between Act and National, which says the Government will \u201creform health and safety law and regulations\u201d.<\/p>\n

He has said he would campaign on changes and implement those after the election. The delayed commencement of the law would allow him to do this before the reforms, passed in the present Parliament, take effect. <\/p>\n

The bill is due to finish its second reading this evening and go through committee stage, when it will be amended. <\/p>\n

The current health and safety regime emerged after the Pike River mining disaster and subsequent Royal Commission.<\/p>\n

The new law focused on prevention but has been criticised for being compliance-heavy and overly complex. <\/p>\n

Van Velden\u2019s reforms significantly relax the rules for organisations with fewer than 20 employees, which make up about 97% of New Zealand businesses, many of whom are sole traders. <\/p>\n

The bill would introduce a new concept called \u201ccritical risks\u201d, which are defined as activities most likely to cause death or serious harm.<\/p>\n

For organisations with fewer than 20 employees, managing these high-consequence \u201ccritical risks\u201d becomes the primary boundary of their risk-management obligations, with other aspects of health and safety becoming less critical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NZ First leader Winston Peters has previously been critical of the bill, saying it would be \u201cdead on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,95,54170,16574,10166,238079,186,29804,76217,5903,1888,134,78,111,43,139,1536,12885,69,29056,37410,8263,26096,6302,50435,544,11422,131,52302,698,6027,379],"class_list":["post-503007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-and","tag-april","tag-bill","tag-businesses","tag-commencement","tag-currently","tag-date","tag-delaying","tag-election","tag-first","tag-health","tag-in","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-november","tag-nz","tag-proposed","tag-rather","tag-reforms","tag-relax","tag-safety","tag-secures","tag-some","tag-standards","tag-than","tag-trigger","tag-until","tag-win","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}