The Health and Safety at Work Amendment Act 2026, which received Royal Assent in July 2026 and comes into force on 1 April 2027, is intended to reduce compliance burdens for small businesses while encouraging them to focus on the risks that matter most. The Government says the reforms will help businesses concentrate on preventing serious harm rather than spending time on low-value compliance activities. A key feature of the amendments is the expanded use of Approved Codes of Practice (ACOPs), designed to provide clearer guidance on what legal compliance looks like.

For many well-managed businesses, however, the practical impact is expected to be limited. Organisations already managing significant workplace hazards—such as machinery, vehicles, electricity, hazardous substances, construction work, or working at height—will still be expected to eliminate or minimise these risks so far as is reasonably practicable. Importantly, the amendments do not introduce a new legal category of “critical risks.” Businesses remain responsible for identifying and controlling risks capable of causing serious harm, and failure to do so is unlikely to satisfy their legal obligations.

Although the reforms encourage small businesses to prioritise significant risks over minor hazards, this principle is not new. The Health and Safety at Work Act has always required businesses to apply the concept of “reasonable practicability,” meaning resources should be directed according to the likelihood and severity of potential harm. Higher-risk hazards justify greater investment than low-risk issues. In practice, many businesses have struggled not because they focused on genuine hazards, but because they invested heavily in paperwork and compliance systems that contributed little to improving safety. Whether the amendments will meaningfully reduce this administrative burden remains uncertain.

The case for legislative reform is also open to debate. The Regulatory Impact Statement identifies legal uncertainty and compliance costs as the main concerns for small businesses, but provides limited evidence that businesses were routinely neglecting serious risks while over-managing trivial ones. It also does not show that smaller businesses consistently experience poorer outcomes in managing critical risks than larger organisations. Workplace injury statistics have generally improved over the past decade, with workplace fatality rates reaching historically low levels by 2021, despite increasing numbers of accepted injury claims. While these trends do not prove the 2015 legislation caused the improvements, they also do not clearly demonstrate a need for major changes to health and safety duties. The evidence suggests the reforms are aimed more at reducing compliance costs and improving legal certainty than correcting widespread failures in risk management.

The expansion of Approved Codes of Practice may ultimately provide the greatest practical benefit by giving businesses greater confidence that following an approved code is likely to satisfy their legal duties. However, only a small number of formally approved codes currently exist, and developing new ones will depend on WorkSafe having sufficient resources to review, consult on, and approve them. As a result, the benefits of this reform may take several years to become widely available.

Overall, the amendments are unlikely to require major operational changes for businesses already managing serious workplace risks effectively. More broadly, the experience since the 2015 Act suggests that improvements in workplace safety have been driven as much by stronger governance and personal accountability for directors and senior leaders as by legislative wording. Ultimately, reducing workplace harm is likely to depend less on changes to the law itself than on leadership, resource allocation, and organisational culture.