Nearly Half Of Kiwis Affected By Poor H&S Performance As Annual Toll Rises To $4.9b

A new report released this morning reveals that close to 50% of New Zealanders are affected by a workplace incident to themselves, colleagues, family or friends.

The Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum’s 2024 State of a Thriving Nation report written by economist Shamubeel Eaqub also updates the cost of lost lives, lost earnings, serious injury costs to ACC and health issues to $4.9 billion for 2023. In 2022 that cost was $4.4 billion.

“Catching up to Australia’s performance would save New Zealand $1.4 billion each year, and if we were to match the UK’s performance, we would save $3.4 billion per year. This is a considerable human and economic price to pay,” says Forum Chief Executive Francois Barton.

“The statistics also tell us that a worker in New Zealand is twice as likely to die than they are in Australia,” says Francois.

The Forum has committed to reporting annually on the performance of New Zealand’s health and safety system. This year it commissioned a Kantar survey to understand people’s experience of workplace health and safety. This tells us:

• Nearly half of New Zealanders are affected by health and safety at work
• Fifty percent had a positive perception of New Zealand’s health and safety performance and response following an incident at work
• When asked how much they would pay personally to make work safer in New Zealand, 55% said they would pay a nominal amount, equating to $730 million a year.

“It’s telling that New Zealanders would opt to pay out of their own pocket for work not to hurt and that close to half of the population has been affected by poor workplace health and safety,” says Shamubeel Eaqub.

“While our performance is slowly improving, New Zealand’s fatality rate is 60% higher than Australia, and more than 500% higher than the United Kingdom. Australia and the UK have similar legislative settings as ours, but something is not working in New Zealand,” says Shamubeel.

In this year’s report we take a closer look into the regulatory system and where New Zealand sits in comparison with both counties.

The report finds that New Zealand’s regulatory interventions are more reactive than in Australia and that our regulatory system lacks a mechanism for oversight and coordination – or ‘system stewardship’ which is at the heart of the successful regulatory approach by the UK’s Health and Safety Executive.

“As our regulatory system matures, and in order to lift our performance towards that of Australia and the UK, we need to see more proactive activities from regulators and a clear and explicit commitment from government to improving oversight and accountability of the entire health and safety system,” says Francois Barton.

“With the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Hon Brooke van Velden announcing a review into health and safety, we urge her to consider the findings in this report to enable a more responsive health and safety system where businesses and workers know where to improve, where the risks are created and how best to mitigate those risks,” says Francois Barton.

“Every death, serious injury and ill-health from work is a reminder that we still have work to do," he says.

© Scoop Media