New Zealand’s career firefighters have voted to walk off the job for 10 hours at a time in the weeks leading into summer, raising questions about fire response capability during what forecasters say could be one of the country’s highest-risk wildfire seasons on record.
Members of the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU) backed the escalation after rejecting a 2.2% pay offer from Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ). The first of four planned 10-hour strikes is scheduled for November 27, with all four to take place between November 25 and December 25, 2026.
The vote, announced by the NZPFU, showed 88% of members agreed to the extended stoppages. Approximately 70% of eligible members attended 25 meetings held from Whangārei to Invercargill over three weeks. The ballot also returned 99% rejection of the FENZ pay offer and 99% no confidence in the FENZ board and executive leadership team.
Read more: Firefighter strikes delay NZ fire response as property risk questions mount
The timing matters for brokers and underwriters. Earth Sciences New Zealand reported in October 2026 that a very strong El Niño is present in the tropical Pacific and is expected to peak in November or December. FENZ national manager for community readiness Tom Ronaldson told RNZ that the eastern North and South Islands, the central North Island, and the far north face the highest fire risk this summer. He said no part of the country is safe.
During the 72 one-hour strikes the NZPFU has conducted since October 2025, volunteer crews have responded from the next-nearest station when career firefighters leave their posts.
FENZ’s annual report for 2024/25 showed career crews met the eight-minute urban structure fire response target 76.9% of the time, against a benchmark of 80%. Volunteer crews met the 11-minute standard 78% of the time, against a target of 85%. Fires were contained to the room of origin just 61.6% of the time, well below the 80% target.
When a house fire broke out on Thomson Street, Caversham, Dunedin, on August 7, 2026, during a one-hour stoppage, volunteer crews took approximately eight minutes to arrive. FENZ deputy national commander Megan Stiffler told the Otago Daily Times that the nearest career station, Lookout Point, was about one minute away. The house was fully engulfed by the time crews arrived.
A 10-hour stoppage would extend that gap considerably.
Stiffler said the organisation is preparing contingency plans but cannot eliminate the risks.
“These strikes could have fatal consequences. We will do everything practically possible to protect the public, but there are significant gaps in the emergency response we can provide that simply cannot be filled,” Stiffler said.
“We can use available volunteers to respond to incidents, but we cannot replicate the specialist skills, equipment and coverage normally provided by paid firefighters,” she added.
Stiffler called on the NZPFU to engage with the Employment Relations Authority (ERA), noting that FENZ had agreed to submit its best offer through facilitation but the union had not. FENZ also offered independent arbitration, which the NZPFU declined, according to Stiffler.
FENZ described its offers as comparable with other public sector agreements and said the NZPFU’s most recent claim of 18.5% over two years was “unrealistic in the current environment.”
Read more: FENZ pay dispute and leadership exit add to levy uncertainty for brokers
The NZPFU said its members have not had a pay increase since July 2023. The union also pointed to a gap between the 2.4% increase awarded to non-NZPFU staff in July 2026 and the 2.2% offered to union members doing comparable work in October.
The dispute sits against a backdrop of leadership turnover at FENZ. Chief executive Kerry Gregory resigned under pressure in October 2026 after the Minister of Internal Affairs declared she had no confidence in him. Former board chair Rebecca Keoghan was replaced by Raveen Jaduram in June 2026.
A September 2026 report by Parliament’s Governance and Administration Committee found that 52% of FENZ’s Type 3 to Type 6 appliances were past their target replacement age as of May 2026, up from 23% in 2017. FENZ estimates it needs $510 million over 10 years for its fleet but projects only $356 million will be available. The committee said FENZ’s reported 99.72% fleet availability figure “appears intentionally misleading” because it excluded appliances that were unavailable before dispatch. The committee also said it was “shocked” to learn FENZ had spent more than $275,000 on lawyers and PR consultants in connection with the inquiry.
FENZ is funded almost entirely through levies on property and motor vehicle insurance policies, which brokers collect from clients. The organisation’s levy revenue fell $29.8 million below budget in 2024/25, and the government has asked FENZ for $60 million in savings over three years. A proposed levy increase was revised from 5.2% to 2.2% from July 2026, according to the Insurance Council of New Zealand (ICNZ).
ICNZ chief executive Kris Faafoi has questioned whether the insurance-based levy remains the right model. “ICNZ believes the simplest and fairest option would be to fund FENZ through general taxation,” Faafoi wrote.
Insurance Brokers Association of New Zealand (IBANZ) chief executive Katherine Wilson has also weighed in, saying “those who pay insurance premiums are unfairly burdened with funding them.”
The NZPFU is calling on the incoming government to intervene. The union said it needs others in the room to hold FENZ to account, as it did in 2022, when a settlement was reached only after government involvement.
“Fire and Emergency remains committed to achieving a fair and sustainable settlement that recognises our people and allows us to continue keeping communities safe,” Stiffler said.
