A petition launched by brigade secretary Katherine Lamont was yesterday presented to the education and workforce select committee, which was told volunteer firefighters across the country were being put in a "pretty unreasonable" position.
Ms Lamont launched the parliamentary petition in March, calling for the 12,000-odd volunteer firefighters across the country to get the same ACC coverage as their 1800 paid counterparts. It has attracted 36,500 signatures.
In Wellington yesterday, Ms Lamont became emotional when she told the committee the reason she was lobbying for change was having witnessed the "devastating impact that PTSD had on a local fireman".
Kingston’s chief fire officer, Peter Ottley, stepped down from his volunteer role, and had taken time off his paid employment, after being diagnosed with PTSD, triggered by a fatal crash between a bus and a car in December.
"He was left without financial support and without the ability to work because of his PTSD diagnosis, and he did not qualify under our current ACC coverage," she told the committee.
"It is about fairness, recognition and doing the right thing.
"If we continue to ask our volunteer firefighters to bear an unfair personal cost, we risk losing them - and without them, the cornerstone of our emergency response system.
"They are carrying the workload for Fenz [Fire and Emergency New Zealand].
"Despite carrying the same risks, [holding] the same responsibilities and completing the same core training as their paid counterparts, they are excluded from full ACC protections, and it is not a sustainable way forward."
The issue was becoming more widely acknowledged by volunteers, who made up 86% of the Fenz workforce, Ms Lamont said.
They covered 93% of the country’s land mass and attended the majority of serious incidents.
Volunteer firefighters were not a "nice-to-have", given they provided an estimated $800million of unpaid service, a contribution that would be "impossible to replace with a fully-paid workforce", Ms Lamont told the committee.
As they were formally recognised under the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Act, which came into force on July 1, 2017, as personnel, alongside employees and contractors, the ACC Act should be in alignment, Ms Lamont said.
There was "overwhelming" public and political support for the change, she said.
United Fire Brigades’ Association chief executive Bill Butzbach said under the Act, Fenz was required, as a Crown entity, to apply the principles of being a good employer to the volunteers "as if they were employees".
"That speaks to the intention of the government of the day - there was cross-party support for that, too."
The "big threat" for Fenz was that volunteers were starting to feel "undervalued given the tremendous increase of work" that had occurred, he said.
"That goodwill needs to be maintained, otherwise we’re going to have to find another $800m."
Southland MP Joseph Mooney, a former volunteer firefighter himself in Raglan, praised Ms Lamont for raising the issue for discussion.
"If you work away on these things ... you’ll be surprised where you can get to - just don’t expect it to happen immediately," he said.
The next step was for the committee to make a decision on what to do next.
It can hear other evidence on the petition, or close it out and prepare a report to Parliament, although there is no clear timeframe on either option.
