New Zealand Acoustics Vol. 29 / # 1 40 Associate Professor Wyatt Page School of Public Health, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand Email: w.h.page@massey.ac.nz Abstract With the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, many of the existing health and safety regulations are being replaced. The first suite of new regulations supporting the Act was released by the Government on 15 th February 2016 but this did not include occupational noise regulations. This discussion paper considers the direction that occupational noise law in New Zealand may take over the next few years. This paper identifies some of the issues in the translation of the Australian model regulations into the New Zealand context and identifies other gaps that the author thinks needs addressing. It also considers the approach taken with the new ‘Asbestos’ regulations and whether or not a similar detailed approach should be taken in addressing occupational noise issues. Original peer-reviewed article Occupational noise law in New Zealand – Where will it go? occupational noise and is due for replacement. Such replacement would likely be drawn from the Australian ‘Model Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011’ 2 which have already been referenced in the new Act’s regulations. An example of these regulations is the ‘Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016’. This regulation sets out duties and responsibilities for managing general risk in a workplace. A PCBU (a person conducting a business or undertaking) who fails in their duties and responsibilities may be convicted of an offence, leading to a possible fine up to $6,000-10,000 for an individual and $30,000-$50,000 for any other person. In 2016, these fines are significant - but what about in ten or even twenty years’ time? Will they lose their impact, particularly if the regulations remained unamended for a long time? The issue of fines remaining current and relevant has been addressed in Australian regulations where fines are stated in terms of the number of penalty units (PUs) 3 . The value of a PU varies between Australian States and Territories and it is adjusted annually based on the Consumer Price Index. Thus, the value of a fine will maintain its significance. However, although New Zealand has followed the Australian model regulations (which serve as a template for the state and territory versions), New Zealand did not adopt the use of PUs for fines. The reason for this is not clear as over the past few years there have been two Bills (the ‘Therapeutic Products and Medicines Bill’ and the ‘Patents (Trans-Tasman Patent Attorneys and Other Matters) Amendment Bill’) put forward for consideration and they both include the use of PUs. Also, the New Zealand ‘Legislation Design and Advisory 2 Model regulations in Australia are the basis for the legally binding regulations enacted or passed by Parliament in each jurisdiction of Australia. This means that each State/Territory in Australia has a slightly different version of the regulations but largely they are the same as the model regulations. 3 Is an amount of money used to compute pecuniary penalties for many breaches of statute law. Fines are calculated by multiplying the value of one penalty unit by the number of penalty units prescribed for the offence. 1. Introduction Imagine if, in every workplace, in every home, on every street and in every country there was an invisible harm which caused irritation and annoyance at low levels, lost productivity and diminished health at medium levels, and permanent disability at high levels. Then, you would expect this imaginary harm to be monitored, easily assessed and comprehensively covered by ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) as well as specified in law. The harm is real. The harm is Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL). Yet, for most SMEs 1 in New Zealand, NIHL is not generally monitored. Worksafe NZ barely mentions NIHL it in its 12,500 annual workplace assessments. And the burden of proof is so high that very few people who need support for NIHL actually make a claim. And when major law reform took place in Health and Safety, leading to the new Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 which has the stated purpose that workers “should be given the highest level of protection against harm”, someone forgot to include this particular harm - even though it has been listed in the previous Act for 23 years. This is a harm that at high noise levels over a period of time causes permanent disability, so by the time you retire to enjoy the good life, you have a severe social handicap, can’t hear your grandchildren on Skype and struggle to have a conversation in your favourite café. So what can be done about it? 2. 2. New regulations due Regulation 11 of the Health and Safety in Employment Regulations 1995 [1] sets out the current law regarding 1 Small and Medium-sized Enterprises