Life imprisonment for workplace deaths changes the calculus for every director in a high-risk industry

Labour has committed to introducing a corporate homicide offence if it wins the next election, exposing companies to fines of up to $10 million and individuals to life imprisonment where a death results. This is not a compliance tweak. It is a criminal exposure story, and it lands on a legal landscape that is about to shift twice inside a single electoral cycle.

Under the proposed law, a person or company can be found guilty where they had a legal duty of care, exposed someone to a risk of death or serious injury, and someone then died. Labour workplace relations and safety spokesperson Jan Tinetti announced the policy at E tu’s campaign launch, calling the absence of such a charge a “glaring hole.” There is currently no corporate manslaughter or corporate homicide offence in New Zealand law.

The ceiling jumps from $500,000 to $10 million

The scale of the change is the point. Under current law, the maximum fine for a health and safety offence likely to cause serious harm is $500,000, with imprisonment capped at two years. Labour’s proposal replaces that ceiling with $10 million and life imprisonment.

For a large corporate with legal teams and compliance infrastructure, a $10 million fine is material but survivable. For a mid-sized construction firm or a farming operation, the personal criminal liability facing a director or owner-operator is a different order of risk entirely. The three-part test, duty of care plus exposure to risk plus a resulting death, is broad enough to reach contractors and subcontractors, not just boardrooms.

Tinetti argued the threshold targets bad actors. “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,” she said. The deterrent, in other words, is meant to operate in the shadow of prosecution rather than in a torrent of convictions.

The safety record that drives the argument

Tinetti said New Zealand has “some of the highest workplace deaths in the developed world”. The comparative data backs the direction of that claim. A 2026 Newsroom investigation found New Zealand had 30 percent more workplace injuries than Australia in 2022 while employing 30 percent fewer inspectors.

The cost side is climbing too. ACC data for 2025 shows 169,364 new work-related injury claims with active costs of $1.26 billion, up from $722.9 million in 2017. Construction generated 27,121 new claims, while agriculture, forestry and fishing added a further 17,269. Those are precisely the sectors most exposed to the proposed offence.

The law-in-waiting problem

Here is the awkward part for anyone trying to plan. The government’s Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill passed its third reading in July 2026 and comes into force on 1 November 2026. It exempts businesses with fewer than 20 workers from managing non-critical risks and lets companies meet duties by following industry codes. Labour has promised to repeal it.

So directors face regulatory whiplash. New rules bed in from November, then potentially reverse after the election with criminal homicide exposure bolted on top. The Institute of Directors warned in a March 2026 analysis that even the current government’s changes could increase uncertainty. Dentons partner James Warren and HSE Global’s Phil Parkes wrote that “cowboy” operators could “continue to undercut pricing in their markets by operating less safely,” and concluded the reforms could mean “increased compliance activity and uncertainty” for directors and officers.

Does it actually make workplaces safer

The UK’s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act came into force in 2008. Tinetti cited 30 convictions since. For a country of 67 million over 18 years, that is a modest tally. In 2022, Victoria University academics examining the UK experience concluded the law had produced high-profile prosecutions but “hasn’t been a quick fix to workplace safety problems,” and that whether workplaces were actually safer remained unproven. They floated a cheaper alternative, disqualifying convicted directors from management for five years under the Companies Act.

The political context is inseparable from Pike River, where a 2010 methane explosion killed 29 workers. Sonya Rockhouse, whose son Ben died in the disaster, called the policy “fantastic”. A 2012 Independent Taskforce recommended extending manslaughter to corporations; it was never enacted. Labour’s proposal is essentially the same ask, 14 years later.

Whether it passes or not, the message to directors is clear. Personal criminal risk is moving up the agenda, and pricing workplace safety as a compliance line item rather than an existential one is looking increasingly out of step with where the law is heading.

Sources

• RNZ: Labour’s proposed corporate homicide charges welcomed by Pike River Mine families (2026-09-18)
• Scoop: Labour Will Introduce Corporate Homicide Charge (2026-09-18)
• Newsroom: Pike River families say workplace safety reforms are ‘sociopathic’ (2026-03-26)
• IoD: Health and safety reform – Key implications for directors and officers (2026-03-13)
• ACC: Injury statistics Q2 2026 (2026-07)