Last week was the deadline for feedback on New Zealand's work health and safety regulatory system and while it was rushed and feels messy, I thought it might be interesting to share my submission with you.

I've summarised David Eager's latest article that explains the concept of benefit-risk and the historical development of the new benefit-risk assessment standard. His article will be a pivotal resource to help New Zealand get back on track, balancing safety with the benefits of risk in play. Let’s embrace this approach and bring vitality back to our communities!

We can’t talk about health & safety and play, specifically the topic of children having independent outdoor adventures, based on international data. We need New Zealand data. But where is it? Not in one simple place, so I had to go digging. I’ve had an adventure of my own – an indoor digital-based adventure to find and crunch the numbers so you don’t have to. That’s not a real adventure though, so now it’s time for me to go outside and play, but before you do the same, and before you tell your kids to go on their own outdoor adventure, you need to read this.

Benefit-risk assessment (BRA) is the practice of including the benefits of an activity (whether it's for a product, facility/infrastructure, or activity delivery) as part of the health and safety (H&S) / risk management (RM) documentation and decision-making process. This is crucial for the play, active recreation, and sport sector in New Zealand.