As a person who run a Health and Safety consultancy out of AKL i have found a couple of things.
1 - safety people (good ones) are hard to come by and thus at a premuim driving up salery expectations
2 - we have yet to empoy someone for under 105k as a package

All safety consultants in NZ should now in my opinion be required to be at least LVL 6 qualed, NZISM and HASNZ registered to help ensure that we have professional bodies behind us holding poor performers in the industry to account.

But i do take your point that there is a wide spread of salaries accross NZ

agree with Amanda comments. treat them as you would any other visitor. if they find something, then great learn from it, move on. if they find something critical, be glad they saw it if you did not already know about it.
most WSNZ inspectors are great to talk to once you get to know them. treat them as you would like to be treated.

I would say it would depend on how often you enage that contractor.
good practice say (infromally) that we shoud refresh annually. i take a risk based approch, so the higher risk the contractor the more involved i become with them and the more involved i want them in my systems for consultation and feedback. low risk not as much

So many companies struggle with this. IMO it is a balance between making sure the reward is
1- inline with the company values and
2- is substantial enough to encourage people to want to do better without putting the reward before the expected HS outcome.
This is a difficult balance to achieve
An example of some good ones we have seen
HS champion shirts - these cost around $100 to have printed and are given to people who show excellence in HS
Gym Member ships for exceptional HS performance
A donation to a preferred or selection of charities.

A rewards Structure that has a significant direct money value attached to it IMO should be avoided.
For example
Gift cards
Food vouchers
or Money directly

Hope this helps I could go on and on about this :)

The operator should do a daily check that looks at the condition of things like the changs (visabale wear etc) and any of the lifting gear as well as the remote. as for the ganty itself, i have always erred on the side of not having an operator check the ganrtry itself rather implamenting a regular maintainence and complaiance regime to capture any fulats there.

By the 2 fold approch you are giving ownership to th operators for the equiment and ensuring that they check it (just make sure it is not a tickbox!) and then the wrap around of the maintainence by a competant and qualified professional to by service the equipment and certify the lifting equipment use.

Hope this helps!

I think this is about right for a mid level HS person
I have recently seen anything from applicants wanting anything from 100k to 250k (250 was an outier lol!) with most wanting somewhere between 100 to 130 (not including any package like a car etc) just a a raw base pay.

Late to reply to this, but it honestly depends on your budget and what you want to get out of it.
Beware is a good option for a good alrounder, but there are some other options out there, like some of the ones that have been suggested here.
but once again an undertsanding of scope and budget are imporant when loking at this sort of stuff