New Zealand’s health and safety performance seems to be dire still. 

In 2013, an independent taskforce identified three key failures in the country’s health and safety system in the wake of the Pike River tragedy. 

Eleven years later, Newsroom reveals that despite knowing these faults, not much has changed.

Legislation continues to be poorly implemented with insufficient follow through, the primary regulator is still under resourced, and there is still poor coordination across the agencies tasked with injury prevention, they said. 

Mike Cosman, Chair of the New Zealand Institute of Safety Management, told Kerre Woodham that he was part of that taskforce, and sadly only about half the job was done. 

He said that whilst other countries we would normally compare ourselves to —Australia, the UK, Europe— have continued to improve, our performance has staggered along. 

It’s not getting worse, Cosman said, but it’s certainly not getting better at the speed that you would hope. 

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