Mitchell ClaytonCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Bill and I really want to start the contribution off by saying that New Zealand First will be supporting this bill through to a select committee but there are some reservations that we have and I want to be very clear about that. Whether or not we continue with our support after the select committee process will obviously come down to hearing from those submitters. We want to hear what they have got to say. Some of the issues that have already been raised with the work that we have been doing behind the scenes with regard to this bill I think have some validity and I think there will be some potential problems if they are not addressed. They may well be addressed as we delve into this bill and from reading through the bill so far I think there are some good points and some tidying-up that has occurred and I will talk to those in a moment. But I just want to reflect for a moment on the work that the Fire Service does and this is from last year's annual report. The Fire Service attended 72800 incidents around the country. It attended 5400 structure fires 10300 medical emergencies 5100 vegetation fires 4800 motor vehicle accidents and 3245 hazardous materials incidents. That is highlighted very very boldly on the first page but it does not go on to talk about the other things that the Fire Service is heavily involved in and we are talking about weather incidents. With global warming whether you are a believer or not certainly things are heating up and so too is the weather and because of that we are seeing higher winds we are seeing more rain and we are seeing a lot of unexpected weather conditions—floods etc. And every time we see a weather incident who do we see there in the middle of the night working in the wind and the rain and the floods? It is our Fire Service whether they be volunteers or full-time employees of the Fire Service chopping down those trees making our streets and our communities safe again. There is no mention on this first page of the report about the work that the urban search and rescue (USAR) team does. I had the great pleasure of being invited along to an exercise that the USAR team had when it was going for its certification which it passed with flying colours. I went through to Palmerston North for that exercise and what an incredible set-up it has got. Under this new regime of course urban search and rescue—although it is not heavily mentioned in the explanatory note to this bill—will now actually be officially recognised and it will have a home inside the overarching Fire and Emergency New Zealand service. But it was great to be there on that day and in fact it was a day when we had an earthquake that rattled the lower half of the North Island. So to actually be on an exercise with the urban search and rescue guys who obviously work in rough and ready and rumbling terrain—to actually have a real-life earthquake where they were digging through concrete and to just see how they execute their work was just fantastic. Something that people will not be aware of and many people in the House will not even be aware of it is that if 111 is called and an ambulance arrives at an incident where the ambulance officers need to lift somebody up on to their trestle to take them off to hospital and that person weighs over 150 kilograms—and there are a number of those big front-rowers whom we have playing in our teams around the country—they actually have to call the Fire Service. The Fire Service gets called out at all times of the day and night to lift those heavier people on to stretchers to put them inside the ambulance. So the Fire Service does a lot of work that you and I and the people of New Zealand do not really give it full credit for. Then of course we have seen incidents around this country where there is an incident involving the police—particularly in our rural communities where the number of police has been restricted—and who do they call? Not Batman not Superman; they call the Fire Service. They dial 111 and those volunteer fire services and those rural fire brigades come out and they have on a number of occasions assisted the police to help them arrest somebody and keep the community safe. How do you fund that model when you have got weather conditions you have got car accidents you have got rural fires you have got urban fires and you have got all sorts of issues and options? There has already been a number of concerns raised by the stakeholders who are actively involved in the Fire Service about the validity of having a fire levy and increasing it to third-party insurers to try to capture a wider audience to get more coppers in the bin. We know that there are a number of people who do not have third-party car insurance on their cars who are ultimately going to load up more of a levy on those people who do have third-party insurance on their cars for example. I think that if this Government wants to introduce something along those lines then maybe it needs to look at other ways to capture a wider audience. In the UK for example it is compulsory when you have a motor vehicle to have third-party insurance as a bare minimum to make sure. They are not worried about whether your car is insured; they are making sure that for the car of the people whom you might hit or the fire that you might cause or the accident that you might be involved in there is going to be some cover. This has not been addressed to date and I think these are the sorts of issues—and others—that are going to come out in our select committee process. So one of the ideas that has already been put forward from the submitters and the people we have been talking to is that rather than putting a third-party insurance levy on cars maybe it is a levy that goes on a registration—so that every car that is registered pays a levy. That has already been put forward and discussed and I think you are going to hear submitters coming through quite strongly about the fairness and equity when we are talking about the funding model for the new Fire Service regime. It goes on to more than that because of course you have got insurance and you have got places that are insured and you have got places that are not. I am not suggesting that there are a lot of those properties out there that are not insured but one thing for certain under this new regime is that you are going to see a step back from the rural insurance and it is going to be heavily subsidised by the levies that are going to be paid in the cities to subsidise the rural sector. So that could be a concern and again that could be something that could be captured in a rates levy across the board so that it is evenly spread. I think that as far as a funding model goes there are some serious concerns moving forward and that may have an impact on New Zealand First's position moving forward on this bill as to how this is going to be properly funded. It is also important to note the number of people we have got within our Fire Service. These figures do not include our USAR teams and I believe there are a few hundred of those people around the country but at the moment we have got around 1730 career firefighters full-time employed. Speaking to a number of those—and I have a number of friends of mine who are full-time employed in the Fire Service. They love their job by the way. They love the work that they do. In the public sector we have huge amounts of admiration for them. In fact as far as that goes I think they are considered to be at 97 percent in a trust and confidence rating that came out with this report which was also saying that we the people understand the importance of their role. There are some concerns with regard to those jobs and I know that Minister Dunne has addressed some of those saying Don't panic it's business as usual you know. Don't hurry don't worry—don't forget to stop and smell the flowers everybody. We're going to keep the model internally the same so just watch this space." but there are concerns and I think they need to be addressed as well. We have a total of 11150 volunteers plus 600 full-time employees working inside the sector as management and support staff. But there are 11150 people working in the Fire Service who are volunteers. They give up their days. They give up their nights. They are on call 24/7. A lot of them have jobs that they need to attend to. They have families they have husbands and they have wives who are on call. Another concern that has been raised through the volunteer sector is the potential marginalisation of volunteers within the Fire Service. There is in some areas some disregard if you like. A little bit of a culture shift needs to happen. That needs to be addressed as we bring all these entities together to be one with the amalgamation to make sure that we are not leaving the volunteer sector behind and left outside in the cold. To wrap things up I think the third point that needs to be raised and addressed—again speaking to stakeholders—is in regard to the potential bureaucracy that may manifest in the amalgamation. We have to make sure—and again I bring it back to a point that the Minister has already made in the bill which I do commend; I think it is a great one—that we are setting up local committees to make sure that there is input from local stakeholders who know their area better and the importance of the role that they play within the area to actually advise the board at the top end so as to make sure that they are not marginalised and forgotten. But we have to make sure when we are combining rural and urban that funding is shared adequately that we have got the right funding sources coming through that our volunteers are actually part of the big picture and that when we are dealing with rural and urban together we are not forgetting the big picture. We look forward to seeing this bill in the select committee. To finish off we would like to think that we can support this bill if we can tidy up a few of these areas moving forward. Thank you."