Before you read this, please note my disclaimer that I am an ex-firefighter, both volunteer and full time.

I have met a few firefighters in my time, and they have always seemed pretty decent folk. They genuinely seem dedicated to their role and the tasks that we, the public, have come to rely on them to carry out in our individual or collective times of need.

They used to run those “public confidence” and “what profession do you respect most” surveys in the old Reader’s Digest magazines (does anyone still read them?), and the firefighters always came out on top. It kind of makes sense too, because when you call them, you really need them and are real glad to see them appear at your door. It’s rather like Ambulance staff and maybe one or two other professions, like the plumber when your hot water cylinder has exploded and water is going everywhere.

Now having a high public confidence in a group of professionals (and I include both paid and volunteer staff in this as they all strive to do their job well and in an efficient and effective manner), does not necessarily translate to the organisation which these folk work for or represent.

In fact, it has become appallingly obvious, in the last few years and even more so in the last few days, that the organisation that keeps these much valued and admired firefighters under it’s wing, represents the polar opposite on the “confidence meter” spectrum.

Like me, you have probably been driving somewhere on a Wednesday or Friday lunchtime, and you pass a group of firefighters standing on traffic islands, waving flags and holding placards. Even as I sped past in my souped up Morris Minor, I still had time to read words on the placards such as “confidence”, “trust”, “contracts” and “faulty equipment”. So after the first couple of times, I started to wonder what was going on here? What is happening within an organisation that results in dedicated staff having to stand on the side of the road to raise public awareness about things that are not going well in their organisation?

The other really important thought that flicked across my grumpy old kiwi man mind, was why this was happening week after week after week? Wasn’t anyone from the organisation, known as Fire and Emergency NZ (FENZ), doing anything to sort this out?

As the weeks and months went past, we started to get reports in the media about a political investigation into FENZ’s “Fleet management and related issues”.

I guessed that the “related issues” bit might refer to all their staff standing on the side of the road twice a week waving bits of cardboard, but my query was answered several days ago when a 63 page report was released by a Parliamentary Select Committee. The document is titled “Inquiry into Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s fleet management and related issues”.

Now I have read a few real doozey reports in my time, but this takes the cake. I don’t think I have ever read anything that has been SO scathing of the performance of a Board and Senior Management group of a public entity.

Amongst the raft of recommendations, summaries and observations, the report refers to the issue of “confidence”. 

One of the early recommendations is that the Government’s responsible Minister “Review the membership of FENZ’s Board, given this committee’s lack of confidence in the current Board”.

Interestingly enough, several days after this report was released, the “Responsible Minister” spoke to reporters at Parliament and expressed “no confidence” in FENZ’s Chief Executive, accusing him of a separate issue of withholding information from her for over a year. This apparently concerned a “serious breach” within FENZ.

The common theme that seems to be running through all this is the issue of confidence.

• The public have high confidence in firefighters.
• The parliamentary committee have no confidence in the Board of FENZ
• The Minister has no confidence in the Chief Executive of FENZ
• I’m getting fairly confident that I have no confidence in the Board of FENZ, the Chief Executive and the senior leadership of that organisation.

All I am confident about is that if I ring 111 and need firefighters there in a hurry, they will get there. However, reading the Parliamentary report has me a bit worried about that too. 

It appears the state of the vehicles that are managed there are in a parlous state.

The report tells us that amongst their hundreds of fire trucks, over 380 have gone past their “target date” (I’m guessing for replacement). 

That the FENZ vehicle management strategy plan had been reduced down from a 25 year to a 10 year to a 5 year vision. I am thinking that the next stop is to run it on a week by week basis.

That in 2019 FENZ purchased 36 Trucks destined to become fire engines, but not one has made it that far 7 years later.

That when asked about fleet management and planning issues, the FENZ Board and senior management clearly gave conflicting information, so much so that the report noted “It became increasingly difficult to understand what is intentional misinformation and what are unintended errors due to FENZ representatives not fully knowing or understanding their own organisation”.

Holy cow, this is damning statement after damning statement, but other gems I unearthed included a pretty big swipe at the “Board” themselves. You can actually go to the FENZ website and see these folks for yourself. The link is here, but to save you time I will sum this bunch up for you. 

There are five of these people. Three appear to have a financial background and the other two are from law. We are all led to believe that these people are the “cream of the crop” and should have complete and thorough oversight of the organisation that pays them a reasonable stipend to oversee. I didn’t see any reference to having any previous involvement with emergency services.

However the report didn’t show the same confidence in this mob, and I guess, neither should we:

“The Board has much to answer to. The complete lack of attention to Tranche 2 between December 2023 and June 2026 is inexplicable. It is difficult to see how Board members who served during that time could continue to serve and give the Minister confidence that the Board has the skills, expertise and capabilities to fulfill its important function”

WOW !! So all those glossy and impressive Board CVs I read on the web page don’t actually tell me how completely useless these people have been at doing what we (as in the public who pay their fire levy) are paying them to do.

On the face of it, these people couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. 

So every month, or whenever they wend their funded way to Wellington, they meet up, scoff a fancy lunch, pat each other on the back, sign off a few documents that they consider they are too knowledgeable to read, then head off after lodging their expense claims.

I’m sure that they were made aware of the $250,000 bill racked up by lawyers and PR consultants brought in to help senior management prepare to answer questions in the parliamentary inquiry. One has to think that it was money well spent, because imagine how bad the senior management answers and performance would have been without them there.

The report concludes with these wise words:

“Leaders are given high levels of authority and remuneration because they shoulder significant levels of responsibility. The public expects leaders to own that responsibility, but we have not heard direct statements where leaders take accountability for the current state of FENZ”.

In fact, I understand that the Chief Executive is overseas attending a conference and then taking some annual leave.

Meanwhile the Board is “considering” a letter from the Minister expressing no confidence in the Chief Executive.

This really has to rank as one of the most damning and disgusting examples of a complete failure of Governance that I have ever heard of.

Next time you drive past those firefighters waving their placards, take the time to stop and go and tell them that you have confidence in them. Tell them that you appreciate their service, and you understand what it must be like working for a bunch of ratbags and scoundrels that run that organisation.

Shame on the incompetent FENZ senior management and the “worse than incompetent” governance Board.