United Future Calls For Property Based Fire Service Funding System

United Future leader, Hon Peter Dunne, supports the call by the Insurance Council for a new system of funding the Fire Service.

"The current system is inequitable, inefficient, and cumbersome."

"It invites evasion by large corporates and in effect leaves residential property owners cross-subsidising them," Mr Dunne says.

Mr Dunne says that when he was Minister of Internal Affairs in 1996 he received a report from the Fire Service and the Insurance Council recommending a shift to a new funding regime based on life and property risk values consistent with the public and private sectors.

"I was ready to adopt the report and asked for work to be done to bring about its implementation, but the momentum was lost by the subsequent National/New Zealand First Government and the disastrous Estall Fire Commission which it appointed, which had no interest in a fairer and more efficient funding system."

"It is time to recapture the lost momentum of five years ago and move once and for all to a fairer and more efficient funding system," Mr Dunne says.

Mr Dunne says the Fire Service is facing crisis times.

"It is financially stretched; and equipment and buildings are in desperate need of upgrading and replacement."

"An early move towards a new funding system would help end this sense of drift," he says.

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