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Health and Safety at Work Act 2015

Health and safety at work - General provisions

28: No contracting out

You could also call this:

“You can't make agreements that avoid or change this law”

You can’t make an agreement or contract that tries to ignore or change this law. If you try to do this, that part of your agreement won’t work. This means you can’t:

  • Say this law doesn’t apply to you
  • Try to limit how this law works
  • Change how this law works
  • Try to make someone else responsible for what this law says you must do

Even though you can’t do these things, trying to do them doesn’t make your whole contract illegal. The law about illegal contracts (subpart 5 of Part 2 of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017) doesn’t apply here.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM5976892.

Topics:
Work and jobs > Worker rights
Work and jobs > Workplace safety
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Part 1 Health and safety at work
General provisions

28No contracting out

  1. A term of any agreement or contract that purports to exclude, limit, or modify the operation of this Act, or any duty owed under this Act, or to transfer to another person any duty owed under this Act—

  2. has no effect to the extent that it does so; but
    1. is not an illegal contract under subpart 5 of Part 2 of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017.

      Compare
        Notes
        • Section 28(b): amended, on , by section 347 of the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 (2017 No 5).