Exposure draft of Health and Safety at Work (Adventure Activities) Amendment Regulations 2023

Summary

Following the 2019 Whakaari/White Island tragedy, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety directed MBIE to undertake a targeted review of the adventure activities regulatory regime. This considered whether weaknesses exist in the adventure activities regime when adventure activities take place in naturally hazardous environments. 

In 2021 MBIE publicly consulted on possible changes to the adventure activities regime to address the areas for improvement identified in the targeted review. 

In October 2022, the government announced a package of changes to the adventure activities regime. 

Work previously undertaken in this area

The draft regulations implement the Government’s policy decisions, which were informed by the public consultation process held in 2021. We are now consulting with the public to further test and refine the draft regulations. 

These amendment regulations cover:

• a new duty requiring operators to take reasonable steps to communicate serious risks to participants
• modernising the registration process, including requiring operators to register directly with WorkSafe and adding rights for operators to appeal and request reviews of decisions
• expansions to WorkSafe’s powers to decline, suspend, cancel and add conditions to operator registrations, where justified on safety grounds
• new requirements for operators to notify WorkSafe of incidents where people are exposed to serious risk from specific key hazards and near-misses from natural hazard events. 

Public consultation information

The public consultation has 2 purposes:

1. Testing the draft regulations to ensure their clarity and workability and that the draft regulations align with the Government’s agreed policy decisions.
2. To consult on a small number of specific details yet to be decided, such as the specific incidents that should be notifiable. 

We encourage you to read the documents under 'Exposure draft materials' on this page. These include the draft regulations and an accompanying explanation of them. In the consultation guide there are several questions that we are seeking specific feedback on. 

The consultation guide summarises the exposure draft regulations made to date and outlines the feedback we are seeking via this consultation. 

Importantly, the consultation guide contains explanatory material on the exposure drafts for adventure activities regulations. It explains:

• what areas the regulations will cover
• how the regulations implement Cabinet’s 2022 decisions
• how the regulations are intended to work. 

We recommend that you read and consider these documents before giving feedback on the draft exposure regulations.

If you have any questions on the documents, you can email:

hswregs@mbie.govt.nz

Exposure draft materials

Following the Government’s decision to introduce a package of regulatory and non-regulatory changes to the adventure activities regulatory regime, MBIE has opened public consultation on exposure drafts of the new regulations.

You can find all associated documents below: