Faafoi KrisPart 2 Emergencies fire control industry brigades water supply and evacuation schemesKRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana): 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."