New Zealand First announced on Tuesday it was putting forward a member’s Bill to ban the public sale of fireworks.
This follows two incidents in Otago this week where fireworks were wrongly used before Guy Fawkes celebrations last night.
Fire Emergency Otago community risk manager James Knapp said behaviour around fireworks was not improving.
"I can definitely tell you it’s not getting any better. I would like to say, ‘Oh yeah, this year everybody’s been really well behaved and we haven’t had any incidents’, but we’ve had two fireworks-related incidents so far this week already," he said.
The incidents were at Castle St on Monday night and at Reservoir Rd in Oamaru, also on Monday, where scrub caught fire after fireworks were pointed at the bush.
The public sale of fireworks goes against what Fire Emergency New Zealand stood for, Mr Knapp said.
"Just all the data that we have is just completely at odds with our principal objective to protect people, property and environment and we see it every year.
"We’re not against pyrotechnics at all. We encourage people to go along to approved pyrotechnic displays because they’ve been through processes of planning and have mitigation measures in place and all that sort of stuff.
"Plus, it’s just a better display than what you can get from the local retailers."
The sale of fireworks was for the three days before November 5 but many fireworks were stockpiled and let off over summer.
"We would encourage people to not stockpile fireworks and use them over summer, because it’s just in New Zealand, it’s the middle of summer, it’s just not a safe time to be letting off fireworks, basically, anywhere."
He described the behaviour of people in Castle St last Monday night as reckless.
"Deliberately aiming them in the direction of people is stupid behaviour. We’re pleased with what police and the proctor are doing in relation to that. We don’t want our firefighters or any emergency response personnel to have a permanent injury because someone’s done something stupid.
"And to be fair, probably the people doing it, they don’t want that either. They just haven’t thought through the potential consequences."
He said the student area had closely built wooden housing and an errant spark in the wrong place could cause a major problem.
He said there appeared to be an increasing number of people expressing a desire to see a ban on the public use of fireworks.
"Some communities have written to us requesting that we work with them to eliminate fireworks from their community. So, yeah, it’s certainly ... there is a shift, I suppose."
