Significant news from Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden who issued a new letter of expectations, rearranging the regulator’s finances, and redefining its main purpose in legislation. The government is shifting its work and safety regulator’s priorities from enforcement to advice, saying this will help address concerns about underfunding and a “culture of fear”.
The CRA received comments from many collision repair businesses stated they wanted to know what the right thing was to do, only WorkSafe would say that’s not our job, but we will prosecute you if you get it wrong. The CRA believes the redefining of WorkSafe purpose is a constructive step in the right direction for workplace safety in NZ.
A final comment from Van Velden, “I’ve been hearing there is a real culture of fear of people around WorkSafe, and I want people to feel like if they ask for help they will get that help – and so for any business or any worker who wants to know what it is that they should be doing to keep their workers safe, they will know where to go.”
Insurers, recyclers, and importers are warning that as the use of electric vehicle (EV) batteries increases, so too does the potential for fire and liability incidents without clear national oversight. The Imported Motor Vehicle Industry Association (VIA) is urging the government to implement a standardised approach to the reuse and recycling of EV batteries. Insurance data, released in March 2025, showed a 17% year-on-year increase in lithium-ion battery-related fire claims. More than 50% of these claims involved devices that were not actively in use, underscoring the need for increased safety awareness and risk mitigation.
Cybersecurity: Do you have precautions around artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace? Do your employees go to third-party applications, like ChatGPT, as part of their work? If you go to ChatGPT, if you’re exposing anything to OpenAI or ChatGPT, they can see that and train in on that data. Be careful both in the AI you build for your business to make sure that it is safe and secure, but also about employee usage of third-party AI, making sure they aren’t exposing your intellectual property to these applications.
Recent headlines “Commerce Commission seeks more power to handle supermarket regulation” are a small but welcome shift from the Commerce Commission, which, in the CRAs’ view, hasn’t used or had the powers to address the detrimental effects of market dominance in numerous sectors in NZ. There appears to be more pressure on the Commerce Commission to act on these concerns.