Neil Sands
Labour will introduce a new criminal offence of corporate homicide offence if it wins November’s election, saying the move is a long-overdue response to workplace health and safety failings exposed by the Pike River mine disaster in 2010.
“New Zealand has one of the highest rates of workplace deaths in the developed world, yet companies and industry can’t be held accountable for corporate homicide,” Labour’s workplace relations and safety spokeswoman Jan Tinetti said.
“The vast majority of businesses do what’s best for the health and safety of their workers, but this law will introduce consequences for those that don’t.”
New Zealand has 60-80 workplace deaths a year, which per capita is almost double the rate in Australia and more than six times the workplace fatality rate recorded in Britain.
Over the years, the issue of corporate accountability for workplace deaths has gained most attention in the wake of major disasters such as Pike River mine explosion in November 2010 (29 dead); the CTV building collapse, February 2011, (115 dead); Whaakari/White Island volcanic eruption, December 2019, (22 dead), and most recently; the Mt Maunganui landslip in January this year (six dead).
Tinetti said it had been evident for at least 16 years that there was a “glaring hole” in the workplace safety legislation.
“New Zealanders will remember the tragedy of the Pike River Mine disaster, the 29 men who lost their lives, and the failures cited by the Royal Commission around inadequate health and safety systems,” she said.
“We know affected whānau have been waiting a long time for this and we thank them for their tireless advocacy. It’s time we get this right for all those who have lost their lives at work when they should have been safe.”
Life terms, $10m fines
The proposed new offence is modelled on a private member’s bill that Labour MP Camilla Belich submitted in 2024.
It would mean a person or corporate entity with a duty of care was guilty of corporate homicide if “they engage in conduct that exposes any individual to whom that duty is owed to a risk of death or serious injury, and either intended to cause the individual’s death or serious injury, or were reckless as to the risk to the individual of death or serious injury; or their conduct constitutes gross negligence on the part of the person; and that conduct causes the death of the individual.”
Maximum penalties would be life imprisonment for corporate entities and a $10 million fine for corporations.
Currently, the most serious offence under the Health & Safety at Work Act 2015 is reckless conduct in respect of duty which exposes a person to the risk of death or serious injury.
It carries maximum penalties of a $3 million fine for a body corporate or up to five years’ imprisonment and/or a $600,000 fine or an individual.
However, prosecutions have been rare, in part because recklessness is difficult to prove in court, requiring the regulator, WorkSafe, to establish that the duty-holder recognised there was a real possibility of death or serious injury before an incident occurred.
The Labour bill uses the threshold of gross negligence – the same that is used in Australia – which removes the need to prove deliberate risk-taking, making prosecutions less complex and easier for the regulator to pursue.
‘Clear need’
The families of Pike River victims have been pushing for corporate homicide legislation for years, Sonya Rockhouse ad and Anna Osborne renewing their call in an interview with LawNews in April.
Osborne said the legislation was needed to protect “little people”, who don’t have the formal education or financial resources hold large corporations to account.
Veteran barrister Nigel Hampton KC, who has represented victims’ families in the CTV and Pike River disasters, told LawNews earlier this year that there was a compelling case to introduce a corporate homicide offence.
“I’ve seen the difficulties the police have had trying to establish criminal cases in both CTV and Pike River to bring manslaughter charges against individuals because of the way that our criminal law is fashioned.
“There’s difficulty in sheeting home individual responsibility to one person, because there may be a significant body of other people involved in a grossly negligent series of acts that have caused a particular disaster.”
Hampton said common law jurisdictions, including Britain and Australia, have laws that hold corporations and Crown entities to account for egregious acts of criminal negligence resulting in death. He says there is “a clear need” for New Zealand to do the same.
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