Wellington President NZP Firefighters Union Clark Townsley on FENZ enquiry

Firefighters, currently on strike, are getting support to upgrade their fleet from a new inquiry into FENZ.

Parliament’s Governance and Administration Select Committee, fronted by Deputy Chair and National MP Tim Costley, has launched an enquiry into FENZ specifically on the state of their fire truck fleet. 

Nick speaks to Wellington Local President of the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU) and Senior Station Officer Clark Townsley to find out what the union think of the inquiry. 

Townsley says they would like a general inquiry into FENZ, and Costley says their answer have been "confusing and contradictory".

The board of FENZ received a pay increase yesterday - some members getting a 79% rise, while pay disputes for frontline firefighters have gone on for 16 months. 

Townsley called this a "bombshell".

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talk Said b.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Wellington, Local president of the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union
and senior station officer is Clark Townsley Clark, good morning,
Good morning, Nick, Okay, tell us what's really going on?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Nick?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Tim Costley is launching an inquiry into your fire truck fleet.
Does this have to go completely over the whole thing?

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I think personally, I mean, I'm not going to downplay
what he's actually done and what the select commit he's
actually uncovered they're questioning over the last two sessions that
they've had. It's like watching an an episode of the Office.
It's just crimsworthy with the amount of sort of the
way that it's been handled. But I mean for me
watching it and for the other firefighters watching it, the

(00:57):
misinformation that's been sort of like spread from what I've
seen and what everybody else has seen, we're kind of
I mean, we're really happy that this is happening. I mean,
this is I know personally though I've had nearly a
decade of dealing with this kind of thing. But like
you've said, does this need to go further? I believe
it does I think this is just a symptom and
an indicator of the overall management principles of FENSA just

(01:21):
failing us.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Excuse my ignorance a little bit, but wasn't this FENDS
organization supposed to sort everything out and make it right
for you guys?

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
I mean when we got sold this prior to twenty seventeen,
we were told that it was going to be a
green fields approach and that there was a big magic
one that was going to go over and it was
going to sort out all the problems between urban and rural.
It's turned out not to be the case. What's ended
up happening is that we're mandated to do a whole
lot more work. You know, I don't really want to

(01:52):
go into the boring details of what you know in
the legislations of all the different sections, but I can
say that there was a significant amount of work put
onto us, and obviously the integration between the rural and
the urban side of things. You know, this is a
massive piece of work, and it just never nothing's materialized
that of it. There's been over a decade now of

(02:14):
absolutely nothing happening. And if you look at the fleet.
How it's basically an exercise and deferred maintenance. Again, we're
way were years behind where we need to be with
the fleet, just as an indicator in this one alone,
but if you look across everything that we do, that's
specialist response, that's like, you know, the swift Water thing

(02:36):
that's only really sort of taken off in the last
couple of years. Has METT is a huge one for us,
and that's had no investment for over well over a decade.
So you know, these are all significant events. And again,
you know, it's good that we're getting this inquiry because
finally somebody's seeing it. But we do need to actually,
I think personally, and I think the mzpf used position

(02:58):
on this as well, is that we want to see
a general inquiry into the entire organization.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Isn't that obvious. I mean, you've been trying to get
a pay rise for sixteen months. Who the hell tries
to get a pay rise for sixteen months?

Speaker 3 (03:11):
Well yeah, well, I mean just ask anybody in the
public service right now. I mean that's what it kind
of feels like. I Mean, we knew that this was
probably you know, there was going to be this way,
you know, all the indicators between the sort of the teachers' unions,
the you know, everything that was happening in the health sector.
You know Itune was going to come in, and it

(03:33):
certainly is in space. We've just got so many Yeah,
I mean, I sixteen months, it's ridiculous. And then yesterday's
sort of like bombshell of the board getting seventy nine percent.
I mean, we're actually all thought it was an April
four shoke, but you know, it turns out it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
I did do. I've laughing at myself because I thought
that when my producer gave it to me, I said,
come on, man, no one's getting a seventy nine over.
I mean, come on, I mean, and then I start
keep reading. I don't know whether you heard Colin on before,
but Colin almost had me in tears with all the
you know, trucks getting fixed here, sent to England, brought
back from England. I mean, it sounds like a comedy,

(04:11):
a Monty Python comedy, not some people that save our lives.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah, and that's that's the big thing about this, And
I mean we shouldn't, you know, That's that's how a
sad indictment of the entire thing, because when you look
at it, and from this perspective, our job's already hard enough.
You're tuning up that somebody's worst day ever. You expect
to sort of plug the hose and away you go,
you know, but we can't even get to those emergencies
at the moment through the lack of staffing. Through the

(04:38):
trucks breaking down. I mean, you know, we've had the
upper napier of the Hawk's bay. They've had trucks and
you know they've broken down at the incidence. I remember
when I've had plenty of incidents myself where I've had
to sort of have backup trucks to replace ones that
break down at jobs. So, you know, it is it
shouldn't be laughable, but it kind of. You know, you
get to the point you just throw your hands in
there and go, you know what's next. Nothing surprises me anymore,

(05:00):
but you do have to plan around it. And you know,
it's public money we're talking about, you know this is
that's the really disappointing thing for me, is that we're
talking about million, tens of millions of dollars paying into
the levy and getting nothing.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Clark, thanks for talking to us this morning. As far
as I'm concerned, and I'm sure every listener is concerned.
Thank you, thank you your organization.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
But can I just say just one thing, just really quickly,
just before we go, If the public want to help
us out, if they can whip onto the dire Emergency
dot nz site and fill in the online position, they
could actually directly help us, So that'd be awesome.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
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