A parliamentary select committee has told the Government to look at changing the board of Fire and Emergency New Zealand and to consider whether the organisation should be trusted to buy its own fire trucks, after a five-month inquiry into a fleet that MPs say has been let down for years.
The report from Parliament’s Governance and Administration Committee was released on Thursday 17 September, RNZ reported. National MP Tim Costley, the committee’s deputy chair, said it laid bare years of failings inside the organisation.
At the centre of the inquiry are 30 new fire trucks that Costley said Fire and Emergency bought in 2019 and still is not using. “The evidence shows they haven’t been able to deliver. They’ve consistently had delays, they’ve consistently had issues with trucks and it looks like they have a culture of changing the design halfway through the process regularly,” he told RNZ.
The problems are not limited to those trucks. Costley said new ladder trucks, the tall aerial appliances brigades use to reach upper floors of buildings, had also run into long delays. “Despite a final inspection in July 2025, they are still sitting with original manufacturers, not yet delivered to FENZ and far from being put into operational use,” he said.
The committee’s recommendations go to the heart of how Fire and Emergency is run. It asks the Government to “consider whether FENZ is best placed to conduct its own procurement, or if further support is required”. It also recommends “that the government direct FENZ to shift its focus from generating corporate documents to efforts that will deliver tangible improvements at frontline stations”.
Governance drew some of the sharpest criticism. “The board could not produce any evidence of asking about these new fire engines between December 2023 and the inquiry. Really concerning… not a lot of confidence in the board right now,” Costley said.
He was more positive about the organisation’s new chair, former Watercare chief executive Raveen Jaduram, who took the role in June. Costley said bringing Jaduram in had been the right move and that he had been “far more transparent”.
Jaduram did not dispute the findings. “The report identifies unacceptable delays and weaknesses in setting procurement requirements, contract management and governance oversight. Firefighters and communities are entitled to expect better,” he said in a statement also carried by the NZ Herald.
He said Fire and Emergency had already begun making changes since he arrived. “Fire and Emergency is introducing several initiatives to strengthen fleet procurement, reporting and management practices including clearer accountability, stronger oversight of delivery and risk.”
The inquiry began in April, after Costley and Green MP Mike Davidson pushed for it following what Costley described as confusing and contradictory messages from Fire and Emergency about whether any of the new trucks were in service. The inquiry was announced on 1 April and looked at the age, reliability and replacement of the fleet, along with breakdowns and faults in trucks already in service.
The 30 trucks are what Fire and Emergency calls Type 3 appliances, the standard pumping engines that make up much of the frontline fleet. According to The Spinoff’s report on the committee’s July hearing, the procurement process began in 2017, the year Fire and Emergency was formally set up, and has since been held up by fixes and testing requirements.
That hearing on 21 July was a tense three hours. NZ First MP Andy Foster pointed out that with fire trucks lasting 20 to 25 years, the organisation should be replacing about 10 of its Type 3 vehicles every year. “You’ve replaced 10 in the entire existence of Fenz operating,” Foster said. “That looks like you’re going backwards at a great rate of knots.”
The hearing also revealed that Fire and Emergency had spent $90,000 on a public relations consultant and a law firm to help answer the committee’s questions, as NEWS WIRE reported at the time. National MP Melissa Lee told chief executive Kerry Gregory the questions were operational in nature and that needing outside help to answer them showed the organisation needed to think about how it was operating. “I don’t disagree with you at all,” Gregory replied. “That is information we should have on hand, and that’s why we’re looking at the systems we have in place.”
Documents put before the committee in July showed only 1.8 percent of Fire and Emergency’s revenue over nine years had gone on its fleet, The Spinoff reported. The organisation told MPs it expected that share to reach 27 percent of spending by 2035. Most of its money comes from a levy on insurance premiums, which brought in about $800 million in 2024/25, with the Government contributing around $10 million a year.
At the end of that hearing Costley asked Jaduram what it would take for the remaining board members to resign. Jaduram said it was his job to make sure firefighters were backed by an organisation that “actually works”, and that Fire and Emergency had fallen short of that standard.
For volunteer and career firefighters the issue is practical rather than political. The inquiry was prompted in part by reports of ageing trucks breaking down, and Costley said in July that he received daily messages from firefighters about trucks breaking down or not being available when needed.
The report now goes to the Government, which has 60 working days to respond to a select committee report’s recommendations under Parliament’s standing orders. With the election due this year, that response may fall to whichever government is formed afterwards.
Fire and Emergency’s fleet is paid for mostly by anyone with an insurance policy, so the question of whether those levies are being spent well reaches well beyond the fire service itself.
Should Fire and Emergency keep buying its own trucks, or should someone else take over? Have you seen the state of the trucks at your local brigade? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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