It’s a scene many Kiwis know too well—an empty road flanked by endless rows of bright orange cones, seemingly without purpose or workers in sight. That frustration, once shared in private grumbles and online memes, now has an official outlet: a government-backed hotline for reporting excessive road cone use.
Unveiled at a post-Cabinet press conference this week, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden announced the initiative as part of a wider overhaul of New Zealand’s health and safety regulations. Dubbed a “real issue” by Luxon, the sea of road cones has become symbolic of what the government sees as overregulation and bureaucratic inefficiency.
“You can drive around this country at different times of the day and you’ve got whole roads shut down, no one is doing any work and the cones are frankly just clogging up the joint,” Luxon said yesterday. “It’s just symptomatic, frankly, of a country that is not getting things built.”
A Hotline for Cones—and for Change
The new hotline will allow the public to report what officials are calling “overzealous” or unnecessary deployments of road cones. While the exact operational details are still being finalised, van Velden confirmed that WorkSafe will be tasked with managing the complaints and providing guidance when instances of overcompliance are identified.
“Having WorkSafe focus on this will be a culture shift for the agency, but it signifies the broader direction this Government is taking with the health and safety system,” van Velden said. She added that the overuse of cones was brought up at nearly every public meeting during her recent travels across the country.
Luxon and van Velden were joined in the initiative by Transport Minister Chris Bishop, who will oversee the role of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) in the cone review effort.
The Bigger Picture: Health and Safety Reform
While the cone hotline has captured public attention, it is just one component of a broader regulatory reset. Cabinet has approved changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act that will narrow its focus to serious risks—those that could cause death, serious injury, or illness—particularly for low-risk, small businesses.
“For example, a small clothing shop would still need to provide first aid, emergency plans, and basic facilities—such as suitable lighting—but wouldn’t need to have a psychosocial harm policy in place,” van Velden said.
According to the government, these changes are meant to reduce “tick-box” compliance and eliminate redundant paperwork that confuses employers and employees alike. Luxon argued that such well-intentioned rules had often spiralled into impractical expectations.
“We’ve got signs that are actually there to warn you about hot water taps, we’ve got signs to say please hold on to the handrail … that is where we have jumped the shark and it’s gone mad,” Luxon said.
The reforms are expected to be introduced to Parliament by the end of the year, with changes coming into effect in early 2026 if passed.
Public Reaction Split
While the government frames the reforms as common-sense deregulation, reactions from stakeholders have been mixed. The Retail NZ chief executive Carolyn Young welcomed the changes, saying they would remove a “huge burden” from the country’s 27,000 small retailers.
However, safety experts were less impressed. Mike Cosman, chair of the Institute of Safety Management, criticised the reforms for failing to address New Zealand’s high rate of workplace fatalities—between 50 and 70 deaths annually, more than four times the rate in the UK.
“The reforms are focused instead on costs to businesses of prevention and not the much greater costs of harm,” Cosman said. “This seems to be looking through the wrong end of the telescope to us.”
He also criticised the government for ignoring recommendations from experts, unions, and high-risk industries provided last October.
A Symbolic Shift
While the hotline may strike some as trivial, the government insists it’s about more than just traffic cones. Van Velden said it represents a cultural shift in how regulation is approached, shifting focus to high-impact risks and away from bureaucratic formalities.
“There is a sentiment that road workers are annoying,” she said, before Luxon interjected, clarifying, “Road cones are annoying.”
In that spirit, the hotline might be the beginning of a broader public reckoning with how New Zealand manages both risk and responsibility.