Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I am pleased to be leading this bill through its final stage in the House, and, in doing so, we are improving the new levy framework that will fund Fire and Emergency New Zealand. For our whānau and communities, it means far more than that. Today’s changes will ensure that firefighters can continue delivering much-needed services across the country.

As a nation, we have all seen the pivotal role of Fire and Emergency New Zealand in the response to Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland flooding. Firefighters worked tirelessly throughout these devastating weather events in fast-changing conditions. They did everything they could to safeguard people and to limit damage to property and whenua.

I acknowledge, again, that in Muriwai, the two firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice were performing their jobs. Again, I’d like to pay tribute to Dave van Zwanenberg and Craig Stevens, two heroic firefighters who lost their lives helping their community. Again, we thank them for their bravery and courage.

Fire and Emergency is a constant, ever-present support in challenging times. During the period of 2021 to 2022, they responded to over 85,000 call outs, ranging from natural disasters, motor vehicle accidents, medical emergencies, fire, and search and rescue calls. It’s clear that we couldn’t do it without them. As Fire and Emergency is funded by a 97 percent levy collection on insurance policies, it’s important that the system works well in order for them to deliver critical functions.

This bill amends the start date for the new levy to 1 July 2026. In doing so, it allows preparation time for insurers to implement the new levy, along with time for associated regulations to be complete. Property insured against physical loss or damage from fire will pay the levy, instead of property insured against physical loss or damage. This bill also means that the levy will be calculated on the sum insured rather than the amount insured in an insurance contract.

What these changes do is better align with insurance practice, avoiding the need for complex calculations or the risk of people being levied twice. We are committed to ensuring that the new Fire and Emergency levy is simple and efficient to implement. The bill will minimise disruption and compliance costs from the new levy, while remaining aligned to the levy principle that the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act sets out.

I want to take a moment to address the concerns about the Government continuing with the insurance-based levy model. We believe that a levy on insurance policies is still fit for purpose for the medium term. It will provide Fire and Emergency with the funding it needs and be the least costly to system administrators. Therefore, it stands as the best option.

The changes made in this bill will not impact how much revenue Fire and Emergency receives. It can spend the levy on whatever is required to deliver its functions. I want to assure our communities that Fire and Emergency New Zealand will have enough revenue to respond to all events under its mandate, including the floods and natural hazard events.

I’d also like to acknowledge those who have contributed to the success of this bill. I acknowledge the previous Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon Jan Tinetti, who introduced this bill to the House. I would like to thank those involved in the Fire and Emergency funding review which led to the changes in this bill. This also includes the 71 submitters to the funding review, and everyone that took part in the 13 public meetings and hui back in 2020.

I’d like to also thank those who are part of the insurance reference group and commercial property reference group that helped improve the insurance-based levy in the build-up to this bill—in particular, the Insurance Council of New Zealand, the Insurance Brokers Association of New Zealand, the Property Council New Zealand, and of course Fire and Emergency New Zealand.

Again, I’d like to thank the Governance and Administration Committee for their constructive consideration of this bill. I appreciate the time the committee took to understand this bill and the views of submitters.

💬 Hon Member: Worked very hard.

Avery hard-working committee, I understand. Before concluding, I’d like to extend my thanks again to those who submitted to the committee and for their suggestions which improved and strengthened these changes.

As Minister of Internal Affairs, I have been proud to lead this work through its last stages. This bill will benefit all New Zealanders and ensure that Fire and Emergency can continue their vital mahi of supporting whānau, communities, and whenua. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Look, I’m pleased to take what will be a relatively short call in this third and final reading. It’s been quite a journey to get here.

Can I echo many, if not all, of the thanks which the Minister of Internal Affairs made—so that I don’t have to repeat all of them. I think this side of the House is just grateful to those she thanked, but it would be remiss not to specifically once again thank our fire service. They do an incredible job at the best of times and certainly at the worst of times, which we’ve seen through these weather events. And as the Minister rightly pointed out, two of those crew—David and Craig—lost their lives and so we acknowledge them. And as I mentioned in earlier speeches, I think it behoves us as the House to support the service that they undertook in Fire and Emergency New Zealand as best we can.

Look, as I’ve said before, this is a good bill. I’m not going to run through all the particular changes. The best way for people at home to understand this is that it’s trying to align the levy more to insurance practice. So it’s trying to make things simpler. New Zealand’s in a somewhat unusual, not completely, but a somewhat unusual position in that we, as in the Crown, do not—sorry, not we; I’m not the Crown—the Government doesn’t fund the fire service in the same way it does, say, the police force. We instead use insurance levies and they, in particular, are targeted on property. So if you insure your house, your motor vehicle, your commercial property, you are paying a fire levy.

That does raise a wider question, and it’s a bigger challenge that multiple Governments have looked at, of: is there a better way of funding? I’m not going to opine on that beyond saying there is a little bit of a disconnect at the moment. Those in the fire service will tell you not only are they attending fires but, actually, they are doing multiple calls out now, particularly into the paramedic space, car crashes, and otherwise. So what is happening, in effect, is that a service is being provided very positively by the fire service, but not being paid for by those people. So it’s probably a conversation for the political parties over the coming years of how we better address this. I suppose there’s always a little bit of a habit to stick to what we know. But I want to just reiterate again, while I personally sense we could improve the system, I don’t have the answers. It’s probably just something that we need to think about.

So, with that—and I’m conscious the House has been sitting for a jolly long time—I’m happy to commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is my pleasure to stand and take a call on the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill. We’ve already heard that this bill is about making sure that it does what it says on the tin. This is a good bill because of the significant contributions brought to the process by experts, and that is a wonderful thing about the progress that we go through with progressing a bill through this House. The bill, we have heard, is going to make the levy process simpler, more efficient, and thus cheaper to administer—and that’s great news, because the levy needs to do what it needs to do, which is fund our firefighters.

I think it’s really interesting—every one of us will have a story in this House of one of those 85,000 call outs. We’ve all got a story, a grateful story, of where we have been impacted by the significant work that our fire service delivers to us. I can remember waking up in the middle of the night once—I live in the middle of nowhere—but hearing the roofing nails being fired out of the Tariki Tavern was very distressing. For a rural community, I think we feel the support from people like our firefighters even more acutely. So it is because of that that I am going to be saying that I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I too rise to take a very short call on the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill today. We’ve heard very great tributes to our Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) people, and I add my voice to those and also to the structure that we now have.

I recall working with Dame Margaret Bazley as she worked her way through the restructure, and for a rural council at the time, this was seen as a lifesaver for some of our rural fire parties. But when the original bill was enacted, Part 3, which we’re discussing today, was delayed until 1 July 2024, just to allow the time to understand how this was all going to fall, and, as a consequence, it has been identified that there will be some challenges and complexity with the structure as first proposed.

So this bill sets out to clarify that, make it simpler, and, hopefully, cheaper. But one of the things that the National Party would like to note is that FENZ’s budget has increased dramatically. In fact, their estimate was exceeded by $200 million for the current financial year. So we will be very focused on how FENZ manages their expenses and on making sure that front-line staff are not sacrificed in any of those considerations.

There is still a transitional phase. This is going to push the enacting of this particular part of the bill out to 2026, so, hopefully, there are no further fish-hooks recognised and, in the next few years, we will see this enacted and in place. I commend the bill to the House.

Fa‘afetai lava, Madam Speaker. It is a great privilege to rise as the MP for Takanini to take a brief call on the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill third reading. Again, I would like to say a huge fa‘afetai lava to the Minister Barbara Edmonds and also the hard-working Governance and Administration Committee for bringing this through the process of the bill.

I also want to acknowledge the work that Fire and Emergency NZ—especially our Counties Manukau team—do. We recently had a fire last week which affected five businesses. It was an overnight fire; I saw the video, and it was raging out of control. We had nine fire trucks come and two ladder trucks as well. The amount of work that they do—it’s dangerous and they put themselves on the line. I just want to acknowledge our Counties Manukau crew for helping out with our Takanini fire last week. I also want to say my thoughts and prayers for one of the staff members who got injured during the fire and who’s still recovering in hospital.

As you can see, we know what the bill will do, but, ultimately, it will bring an efficient levy regime that will benefit the back pockets of everyday New Zealanders, and it will also give assurance to our fire and emergency services. It also upholds the funding principles for the levy system—that is, to be, number one, stable; universal; equitable, which this new amendment will do; predictable; and also flexible. So that’s why I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I join with other colleagues around the House in acknowledging the important and amazing work that our first responders do, our firefighters do, and in particular in the context of the recent intensive weather events. Our position hasn’t changed from first reading to second reading to now, because there are still unanswered questions, larger questions. I do appreciate the sentiments from the Minister in terms of the narrow scope of this bill, but there are questions around how we’re going to fund Fire and Emergency services.

Last year, I remember, and the Greens remember, when we went to visit fire stations across the motu and looked at the state of the gear that they’ve got to work with, the pay and working conditions, the state of some of their fire stations as well, and the challenges within Fire and Emergency New Zealand itself, that there is not only the need to be better in terms of the administration—and my understanding is that this is what this bill will do as well—but you’ve got to be able to deal with all of those other issues as well, and making sure that there is sufficient funding.

So, yes, this bill will bring some efficiencies in trying to align it with best insurance practices and making sure that the administrative inefficiencies are taken out of the system—and I can see that being a good thing—but my concern is and continues to be that by narrowing it just down to fire damage, well, then what does that mean in terms of the possibility of all that other work that our first responders do—all that other work that our first responders do, all the other work that the Fire and Emergency services do?

When we introduced this bill in the House, all of the efficiency side of it did make sense, but we’ve had intensive weather events—intensive weather events—for our firefighters who were out there, they weren’t dealing with fires; they were dealing with floods. So, yes, this bill is narrow and it has to deal with bringing up and weeding out those administrative inefficiencies, but there are wider questions here at play that have not been answered about how do we actually properly fund so our firefighters have better working conditions, good gear, and making sure that there is enough funding, because there are more intensive weather events on the way. Climate change is here.

So, because of those unanswered questions from first reading, second reading, and today through the committee of the whole House, the Greens are unable to support this legislation.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the ACT Party for the third and final reading of the Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Levy) Amendment Bill. I’m happy to say that ACT will continue to support this legislation.

First up, I’d just like to offer my congratulations once again to the new Minister. I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot recently; I’ve got seven shadow portfolios and every single one of them has had a new Minister in recent times.

Secondly, a big shout-out—very important—to our fire service and front-line firefighters, especially, for the extraordinary work they do, whether it’s the response to the cyclone or it could range to things like all the car accidents they attend, the home emergencies they attend. Having visited fire stations around the country and spoken to firefighters, they tell a lot of very harrowing stories. And, obviously, they’ve had a lot of issues with pay and with conditions and with equipment and, you know, they definitely need more funding and the funding model sorted out, which I know is an ongoing discussion.

The fire service is funded by an insurance-based levy, and we’ve had a chat about that, around whether that’s the best way to fund the fire service. I note the Minister said it’s still fit for purpose, but I hope that we can keep an open mind about that.

So this bill—very technical, targeted changes to simplify the implementation of the original legislation to reduce costs and the complexity for insurance brokers and companies, and that all makes perfect sense. We’re happy with that. So a lot of technical changes—physical loss or damage from fire that will need to pay the levy, and that the levy will be calculated from the sum insured, and things around motor vehicles. This stuff is all totally fine, but I think we still do need to focus on the fire service and our fire firefighters because there is a lot there that they need. The scope of their work is just absolutely extraordinary. So they need clarity. This bill provides a little bit. I think the delay in the commencement was never really that well explained and kind of kicks the can down the road a little bit. But none the less, we’re happy to support this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Members, urgency has ended. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today, when we will resume for oral questions.

Just before members go, I would just like to acknowledge the Speaker’s Assistant, Roland, who has just had three days of birthdays, because, until the last moment, we were still on Tuesday, when his birthday was. So via an anomaly, he is presumably three years older.

[Members sing “Happy Birthday” to Roland Todd.]

The House adjourned at 11.09 a.m. (Thursday)