{"id":603552,"date":"2026-09-17T19:56:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/603552\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T19:56:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T19:56:13","slug":"fenz-was-breaching-their-own-law-in-regards-to-levy-collections-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/603552\/","title":{"rendered":"FENZ was ‘breaching their own law in regards to levy collections’, minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Minister for FENZ says the organisation was “breaching their own law in regards to levy collections” and thought she didn’t need to know about it.<\/p>\n

Brooke van Velden said she was also in the dark about Fire and Emergency spending nearly half a million dollars looking into the issue.<\/p>\n

“It’s completely unacceptable, and it points to a lack of accountability across the public service.”<\/p>\n

It comes after van Velden said she no longer had confidence in the chief executive<\/a> of the organisation, Kerry Gregory, following a “serious breach” of the no surprises clause.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Morning Report, she said her job as the minister responsible for Fire and Emergency was “to hold them accountable”.<\/p>\n

“How can I possibly do that if I’m being actively withheld information?”<\/p>\n

Van Velden said she became aware of the situation about two weeks ago – and only because the board chair said she needed to know.<\/p>\n

\"FENZ<\/p>\n

On Thursday, van Velden said she no longer had confidence in the chief executive of FENZ.<\/p>\n

RNZ \/ Mark Papalii<\/p>\n

She said that was doing a disservice to the public service.<\/p>\n

“It is important that every public agency that has taxpayer or levy payer money going into it is acting transparently and has accountability going to senior levels of officials.<\/p>\n

“It is a clear breach of trust when the public service is not allowing that information to flow.”<\/p>\n

Van Velden told Morning Report FENZ had been referred to the Serious Fraud Office, based on the board’s suggestions.<\/p>\n

She said Fire and Emergency were acting “in breach of their own law” but couldn’t go into further detail.<\/p>\n

But other concerns it raised for her were that it appeared the chief executive wasn’t aware of the issue for quite some time.<\/p>\n

“That’s concerning in terms of internal culture.”<\/p>\n

Secondly, once he was aware, he decided not to let minister responsible for FENZ know, Van Velden said.<\/p>\n

FENZ minister declares no confidence in CEO<\/p>\n

“That’s the thing that is, I think, despicable because there’s constantly been issues within Fire and Emergency,” she said.<\/p>\n

Issues included levy modelling, payroll, fleet procurement<\/a>, and making savings in the back office.<\/p>\n

“But at least I knew about those issues so that I could hold them accountable to the plans and processes to make them better going forward.<\/p>\n

“This was active withholding of information.”<\/p>\n

She said there were “clearly cultural issues at play” within the organisation, and it was for the board to make sure that they can restore her confidence.<\/p>\n

Van Velden also referenced asking DIA to do policy work on whether or not the cultural issues within Fire and Emergency was due to them being a crown entity “at arm’s length from ministers”, and whether or not there needed to be change to bring better government accountability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minister for FENZ says the organisation was “breaching their own law in regards to levy collections” and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-603552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}