Fire and Emergency New Zealand Bill

It is a genuine pleasure to speak to Part 2 of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Bill. I would like to offer, in my contribution to Part 2, a bouquet, a brickbat, and an offer of help via a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). In the first reading speech that I gave to this bill I had two bees in my bonnet, and they were bees that were put there by some local volunteer fire brigades. I would like to acknowledge the Plimmerton Volunteer Fire Brigade, and Carl Mills, who is in the gallery tonight, and also the Porirua Volunteer Fire Brigade.

The bouquet comes around clause 45 in this bill—and I would like to acknowledge the Minister of Internal Affairs and the officials for seeing fit to put this within the bill—and that is around the use of water for emergency and training purposes. Essentially, this issue around clause 45 came to me because Dave Anderson, who served the Plimmerton Volunteer Fire Brigade for over 35 years, found himself and that particular fire brigade in what would be called a ridiculous situation around trying to access waterways and other bodies of water in their realm for training purposes for their brigade. To give you a bread-and-butter example of that, if there was a pond or lake that they may be called to use during an emergency, they wanted to be able to train to get the water out of that pond or lake so they knew the vagaries of that particular body of water.

They found themselves again fighting against sizable red tape, even in the instance when they would be pumping the water out of the body of water—so they could test their pumps to make sure that everything worked and so that the volunteer fire brigade personnel could use the pump and knew how that worked—and pumping it straight back into the body of water. So we are talking a circle here. It is not going anywhere else. It is not being used to hose anything down. The water would be pumped, via the same piece of hose—I guess that is the technical term—straight back into the body of water. The rigmarole and the red tape that they had to go through with some of the local bodies—the local council and, I understand, the Wellington Regional Council—was very onerous and, going back to my Part 1 speech, was becoming a bit of a pain. If it was too onerous, why would people turn up to do the job?

Within the realm of clause 45(1): “FENZ personnel may, free of charge,—(a) use all hydrants and control valves installed in any water mains and any water in the water mains for—” performing their duties, and for “(ii) training for the purposes of performing or exercising FENZ’s functions, duties, or powers;”. They may also “(b) use water from any water supply or any source of water for—… (ii) training for the purposes of performing or exercising FENZ’s functions,”. In legalese that is saying that my volunteer fire brigades and other the volunteer fire brigades around the country will not have to go through the process that they have had to in the past. I know that they will be responsible. I think they will communicate with any relevant bodies, like the local councils or the regional councils in their area, if they are going to do that because they want to be responsible organisations within their communities.

I think this is a good clause within the legislation, to make sure our volunteer fire brigades can do what they are there to do, to make sure they are not held up by onerous red tape or paperwork, and to make sure that if something does go wrong and they do need to access a stream, a river, or a body of water within their catchment area, they can do that. I would like to acknowledge the Minister, the Government, and the officials for putting that in this piece of legislation.

Here comes the brickbat, and that is clause 48. The other bee in my bonnet was around traffic management plans for fire brigades. As I said in my Part 1 speech, fire brigades around the country are mandated by legislation to check every fire hydrant to make sure that they are operational and working so that in the event of something going wrong, when they rock up to a fire hydrant they know it is going to work. They do not have any option; that is their job and they must do it. I think we all rely on fire brigades to make sure that those things work. The problem is that if they do that and they are on roads and they are going to disrupt traffic, or potentially disrupt traffic, they need a traffic management plan.

In plain English: for every hydrant, for every place they check, they will have to put a plan together, map it out, work out where they are going to put the fluorescent cones and where they are going to put their personnel, when they are going to be there—all those kinds of things—to make sure they can do that job. In plain English, I think that is silly. They do not have to do that if there is an emergency, because they simply do not have time. I think that the type of person who is either a professional firefighter or a volunteer firefighter is going to be pretty safety conscious as it is. They would take steps to make sure that what they are doing is safe, and if they are going to—I guess, for want of a better term—get in the way of other people who are using roads, they will limit the time that they are going to be there and they will take steps to make sure that they do put out cones to make sure that everything is safe.

Because that bee in my bonnet was not taken up by the Government within the Government Administration Committee or at the Committee stage, I have put forward SOP 263, to Part 2, in order to do that. There have to be some guidelines. Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) will have to set out a policy in consultation with the Transport Agency and local bodies as to how things will be done, and I will leave it in their hands to put the policy in place. But I think we need to take some measures to let our volunteer fire brigades get on with their work.

I did say in Part 1 that one in five volunteer fire brigades is at only about 80 percent of their full muster of staff on their brigades. So we do have an issue of fully staffing our volunteer fire brigades. So let us just give them a hand, because I think this is the kind of thing that, kind of, gets on their nerves, especially for those who are there at the moment, who want to be able to encourage other people to join a volunteer fire brigade. Why would you do it if a lot of your time—I am not saying it is the majority of your time, but it is a hell of a lot of time—is taken up with paperwork? That is not what volunteer fire brigade volunteers sign up for. It certainly would not look good on a poster: “Join the volunteer fire brigade and sit down for hours and hours doing traffic management plans”. That is not what it should be about.

So I think the Government should consider supporting this SOP. I know it will probably vote it down. But, in the long term, it may be able to use regulatory powers to be able to put this into practice, because I think it is the right thing to do to make sure it is practical for volunteer fire brigades when they are going around and checking the fire hydrants. It is going to save them a hell of a lot of time, and I think it will solve a lot of the problems that volunteer fire brigades are having up and down the country with regard to making people enthusiastic about joining volunteer fire brigades.

This legislation has been decades in the making and, as I said to the officials and in my first reading speech, it could be a long time before another train like this goes past and we can amend the legislation. So I am taking this opportunity to say that if it is going to be another period of time before we review this legislation, let us do this now and put it in here so that there is an onus on FENZ to make sure it works towards making sure volunteer fire brigades do not have to put up with this nonsense any more.

I would like to know whether the Minister in the chair, the Hon Nathan Guy, or someone on behalf of the Government might make an argument as to why it should not do this, and if it will not support my Supplementary Order Paper 263—I do not imagine it would—to say what steps it might take in the future to make this a practical reality, without having to go through this process, because I think it would put a lot of volunteer fire brigade volunteers and chiefs at ease if they knew this particular bee in their bonnet could be dealt with. It is not just my volunteer fire brigade; it is an issue that came up many, many times, I think, for the submitters who came through the select committee.

So there is my bouquet—thank you for the water training access issue. My brickbat is around the traffic management plans, but there is hope if the Government decided to say: “Hey, give Kris Faafoi’s SOP on this issue a chance.” We will see how it goes.

I would like to speak to clauses 35 through to 42, which deal with some of the functions, duties, and powers—particularly powers that an authorised person has in responding to an emergency. They cover what an authorised person may or must do if the alarm of a fire is reported in a hazardous substance emergency and in other emergencies; the duty of the authorised person to control and direct people, both operational service personnel and other people; the powers of the authorised person in relation to land, buildings, or structures; the powers of the authorised person in relation to vegetation; other powers that the authorised person has; and the power to destroy or dispose of any by-product, rendering them safe in a hazardous substance emergency.

I want to raise with the Minister—and I note that the Minister in the chair, Nathan Guy, is a former Minister of Internal Affairs, so he may have some knowledge about this, and if he does, it would be helpful to the Committee if he were able to respond—some of the concerns that were raised by submitters to the Government Administration Committee. I note that the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 262 does not deal with these two concerns that I want to raise, and I would be interested to hear from the Minister how he is satisfied that those concerns are adequately dealt with in the legislation as it stands.

The New Zealand Institute of Forestry expressed concern that only authorised personnel can control Fire and Emergency New Zealand personnel responding to emergencies, and it questioned how this will affect multi-agency responses. It recommended that a lead agency be identified and an incident controller be appointed in the response to any emergency incident. I would appreciate hearing the Minister’s view on that. He may want to look over his shoulder to his officials—I am sure they have a view on this—and give the Committee some assurance that he is satisfied that the roles and responsibilities and, I suppose, the hierarchy of roles and responsibilities are clear in an emergency incident where there are multiple agencies involved.

I can think of the recent events with the fires in the Port Hills and statements that were made by the Minister of Defence, who is also the Minister of Civil Defence, around decision-making protocols and hierarchies, and his concern about the length of time around decisions that were made. Not entirely justified, I think—some of the comments that were made by that Minister.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Totally inappropriate, to my mind.

Totally inappropriate, Ruth Dyson describes them as. That is probably a fair description of the comments made by the Minister. But, given his concerns about the decision-making process in a multi-agency response, it seems strange to me that we have not had a response either from the Minister through an SOP or from the Government in response to that. Maybe if the Minister in the chair cannot respond to that, perhaps some Government members who were on the select committee—I see that Mark Mitchell, the Minister who was previously in the chair, is now sitting in his seat opposite. Maybe he would be able to take a call. I understand he used to be on the select committee. Maybe he would be able to take a call and assure the Committee that this legislation adequately provides for those situations where there is a multi-agency response.

The other concern that was raised by submitters—which I would also appreciate a response from the Minister on, or, as I say, perhaps from Government members who were on the select committee—is the concern raised by the Law Society that clauses 35 through to 37 are, to use its terms, “not specifically constrained to being exercised in a manner that is reasonable or necessary.”, as other clauses in the bill are. The Law Society raised the concern that there are different thresholds. Different clauses have different thresholds for response and for powers, and these may add unnecessary complexity or confusion in the bill.

Further, the Law Society submitted that the relationship between clauses 35 through to 37 and clauses 39 through to 42 is unclear in relation to which clauses an action may be taken under. The Law Society did give an example, and if the Committee will indulge me, I would like to quote from its submission: “For example, if an authorised person breaks into a house that is on fire in order to control the fire, would that person be acting under s 35(a)(ii) or clause 39(2)(b) or both?”.

The Law Society also questioned the need for clause 43. I must admit, as a layperson who was not on the Government Administration Committee and who has not examined this closely, that clause 43 did read strangely to me, and I also question the need for that clause. Clause 43 is somewhat circular, in that it says that “The performance or exercise by any person of any function, duty, or power under sections 35 to 42 is conclusive evidence of his or her authority to perform or exercise that function, duty, or power.”—i.e., by performing the function, that is evidence that they were authorised to perform that function. Maybe there is something more to this. I look back at the definition of “authorised person”, and it seems clear that the definition of “authorised person” covers that off. I am wondering what exactly the purpose of clause 43 is. It seems odd and rather circular in its wording, and I would again appreciate some clarification from the Minister.

Again, I think the Minister can give the Committee confidence with his explanation, that the concerns raised by the Law Society about clauses 35 through to 37 and their relationship with clauses 39 through to 42—that the Minister is satisfied that those concerns are not warranted—and also, perhaps, explain exactly what the purpose is of clause 43, which seems strange at first reading. I have not seen anywhere in the report—I may have just missed where it is in the report—that explains what the purpose of clause 43 is and why we need it in the bill.

There are a few questions there for the Minister. If the Minister, because he is in fact a former Minister of Internal Affairs and not the current Minister of Internal Affairs, is not able to answer those questions, then perhaps members opposite who were on the select committee might be able to provide some insight as well. Certainly, for those of us who were not on the committee, just by reading the bill and by reading the concerns that were raised, there do seem to be some issues there that warrant some explanation from the Government.

I too want to speak about the powers of authorised persons. I think it is important that within this Part 2 there are very clear rules around what the service is able to do and what it is not allowed to do. I remember one of the concerns of submitters around the powers of authorised persons was to do with shutting down the power to whole blocks, within a city block, or shutting down the water supply and the effects that that might have on people, say, who might be at home, on dialysis.

So that was raised as a potential issue. I think the Government Administration Committee was satisfied that before the authorised person would take such action—they would not take that action directly; that is the information that was given to the select committee—they would do that through the companies responsible for the power supply and through the local council. But it does raise for consideration the very serious issues of the very real powers of an authorised person and just how extensive they actually are.

I go back to my comments on the first part around service. These people, these men and women who perform these services, take pride in the responsibility that they have, and I am certain that the very real and strong powers that exist within Part 2 will be exercised in a way that is appropriate. I think that goes to the trust that New Zealanders have in the fire and emergency services. I just wanted to highlight that as one of the issues that was raised at select committee.

I also stand in support of my colleague Kris Faafoi’s Supplementary Order Paper 263. I live in a very small community with a volunteer fire brigade, and they seem to have practices and do other community services when called upon. I am told directly by that service that it is cumbersome having to do a traffic management plan. When you consider we have a community of around only 400 people, access to roads for non-emergency activities is something that I think Mr Faafoi’s Supplementary Order Paper will be great for, not only for the city folk but also in small, rural towns, although this particular instance that I am talking about is deemed to be an urban service because of the geographical location and the coverage that this service actually has.

I think it is really important that we recognise the great work that these volunteer services have, and that we do everything that makes their job easier. We were told on a number of instances during the select committee process that this was an enabling bill. I think that if this truly is an—

I move, That the question be now put.

Thank you, Mr Chair, I appreciate that. I will just take a call on Part 2, moving forward from clauses 45 through to 58, including Kris Faafoi’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) adding clause 48A. I want to start with clause 58. When I read through this, it does not make any sort of positive sense. It says here, in deleted clause 58(1): “Firebreaks on forestry land—(1) FENZ may, if it considers it necessary for the purpose of fire control, require the landholder of forestry land—(a) to make and clear any firebreak on—(i) the forestry land: (ii) any other land (with the consent of the occupier of the land or of the owner if the land is unoccupied):”. It goes on to say, in deleted clause 58(1)(b), Fire and Emergency New Zealand may require the landholder “to remove from any firebreak, or from any other part of the land on which no trees are standing, any vegetation or other material of any kind.” We have some serious problems with that, for the simple fact that it has been completely removed. It is no longer in the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Bill.

What that means, and, in fact, we are seeing it right now with the likes of the Department of Conservation, which has had a 93 percent reduction in fire management, and with no ability for the fire department—for Fire and Emergency New Zealand under this bill—to actually involve themselves and actually intervene on this matter to ensure the safety of our scrublands and our rural fire service. It goes on with an amendment—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for me to report progress.

Debate interrupted.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2016-17, Closely Held Companies, and Remedial Matters) Bill with amendment, progress on the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Bill, and no progress on Māori Purposes Bill.

Report adopted.

Sitting suspended from 9.56 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)