Pakuranga fire, strike blame and a political cheap shot
Fire and Emergency New Zealand bosses have blamed ongoing strike action for delays responding to yesterdays blaze in Pakuranga, while the firefighters’ union has pushed back, saying FENZ was meant to have contingency plans in place. As always, when something goes wrong, fingers start pointing and responsibility gets blurred.
Volunteer firefighters stepped up, as they always do. They ran towards danger while most of us watched the smoke from a distance. Businesses were disrupted, workers were shaken, and a community was left dealing with the aftermath. No one disputes that part.
ACT MP Brooke van Velden took to X to thank the volunteers, acknowledge the impact on the community, then pivoted to a familiar political refrain. Enough is enough, she said. The Professional Firefighters Union needs to stop gambling with people’s lives and safety and stop these strikes.
And this is where it veers into nonsense.
I am an ACT voter. I make no secret of that. But this tweet was a bit whākn’ bullshit.
Firefighters are not striking for the hell of it. They are not doing it because they enjoy headlines or want to inconvenience communities. They are asking for fair pay for a job that quite literally involves running into burning buildings, attending fatal crashes, responding to medical emergencies and dealing with trauma most people would last about five minutes handling.
Calling that “gambling with lives” is a cheap shot.
If the government can find tens of millions of dollars, year after year, to send overseas to Ukraine, it can find the money to pay firefighters properly here at home. That is not an extreme position. That is not radical unionism. That is basic prioritisation.
The people saving lives in Pakuranga yesterday are not asking for luxury. They are not asking for outrageous salaries or gold-plated conditions. They are asking to be paid fairly for skilled, dangerous, essential work. The kind of work politicians love to praise in a crisis and forget about when it comes time to sign the cheque.
If FENZ failed to plan for strike contingencies, that is a management failure. If response times suffered, that is on the organisation responsible for ensuring cover, not on workers exercising the few levers they have left after years of underpayment and being ignored.
Thank the volunteers. Support the affected businesses and workers. Absolutely.
But spare us the moral grandstanding about firefighters “gambling with lives” when the real gamble is a system that underpays essential services while happily burning money elsewhere.
They are not asking for much. They are asking for fair pay. And in humble opinion, they deserve it.
I was one of those volunteer firefighters before I moved to Brisbane. Infact, had I still been one, I would have been responding to that very fire as I was based very close by. I used to frequent that very shop for the best pita breads.
The management of FENZ is well known for their bully tactics. It starts at the top. This pay dispute has been going on for 2 years. And it's not just about pay, it's about equipment as well or lack of equipment fit for purpose.
It was perfectly fine to spend millions of dollars researching the effect of whale song on Kauri trees, while a brand new firefighter starts on around $30000-40000 a year.
I, like Terry, would prefer to see the millions that is handed out to organisations and charities with little or no scrutiny or accountability our reasonable outcomes directed to our health and emergency systems. I'm sick of seeing so called charities making a few people very rich and helping even less than the so called administrators the enrich. It's government departments that let this happen. I'm grateful that you are putting the blow torch on them Matua.