Fire and Emergency New Zealand spent $90,000 on an external PR person and a lawyer to help prepare for a select committee inquiry into the state of its vehicle fleet, CEO Kerry Gregory confirmed at a hearing on 20 July 2026. RNZ

The hearing was part of a four-month inquiry by the Governance and Administration Committee, triggered by firetruck breakdowns and MPs' frustration over a seven-year procurement process that failed to put any of 30 new trucks on the road. The committee opened the inquiry in April 2026, with a select committee report on FENZ fleet issues delivered for presentation on 1 April 2026.

National MP Melissa Lee pressed Gregory on why he needed to hire external help to find answers about operations under his own charge. Gregory told the committee FENZ needed outside assistance to understand what the inquiry was asking for and to extract information from ageing IT systems. MPs reviewed an 80-page submission from FENZ that the PR consultant and lawyer had helped prepare.

The spending landed against a backdrop of leadership churn. Raveen Jaduram, formerly chief executive of Watercare, was installed as FENZ's new board chair three weeks before the hearing. National manager Mike Moran and deputy chief executive Sarah Sinclair had both just resigned. Green MP Mike Davidson asked about exit packages for the two departing fleet leaders; Gregory stated Sinclair did not receive one.

FENZ's submission to the committee admitted to a catalogue of systemic failures: inadequate truck-buying procurement systems, inadequate contract management, inadequate maintenance reporting using paper records, and inadequate IT and document systems. Gregory conceded under questioning from National MP Tim Costley that a new procurement system introduced in 2022 "didn't work." FENZ has since produced a procurement "roadmap" in 2025.

Costley was blunt about the board's grip on the situation. "The board appeared to be tracking nothing," he said of FENZ's oversight. Jaduram, in his first appearance before the committee as chair, warned management about accountability and said the years of problems dragging on were "not acceptable."

Acting Minister of Internal Affairs David Seymour told Parliament in November 2025 that FENZ had inherited a faulty logging and tracking system from 2017, pointing to legacy issues predating the current executive. Gregory repeatedly responded to MPs' questions about what went wrong by saying "We will do better" and describing the problems as having "a long tail" going back years.

The professional firefighters' union offered a sharper assessment. "FENZ's corporate structure is fracturing because they cannot answer for the crisis on the frontline," the union said in a statement.

The $90,000 spend on external communications and legal advice is likely to sharpen MPs' focus on what FENZ's in-house capability actually covers, and whether the board under Jaduram can impose the accountability he has already flagged as necessary. With a new procurement roadmap in place but the 2022 system already acknowledged as a failure, the committee's findings, when they land, will test whether the legislative scrutiny model can extract concrete remediation from an agency under sustained operational pressure.