The minister in charge of fire services wants to know if there's a better way to pay for Fire and Emergency New Zealand. Right now, the service gets most of its money from insurance companies — but that's starting to cause problems.

Here's how it currently works. When you or a business owner get home or property insurance, a small charge (called a levy) gets added to the bill. This money goes to Fire and Emergency. About 95–97 percent of its funding comes from these insurance charges. The Government only gives it $10 million directly, according to the Beehive announcement from June 2026.

That's a problem because Fire and Emergency does a lot — it runs volunteer brigades in the countryside, paid firefighters in cities, and answers all kinds of emergencies, not just fires.

Minister Brooke van Velden has been pushing back against the idea of simply raising insurance levies every time Fire and Emergency needs more money. In 2023, she approved a smaller increase than the service asked for. Then in 2024, the Government actually lowered the base levy rate. But at the same time, Fire and Emergency keeps saying it needs more funding.

The reason for this squeeze is climate change and rising insurance costs. Insurance companies are charging more because weather events are getting more severe and harder to predict. That means more people and small businesses are dropping their insurance because they can't afford it. When fewer people are insured, there's less money coming in from levies — even though extreme weather is actually making fire and emergency services busier.

So the Government is opening a review to look at other ways to pay for the service. It could put in more tax money directly. It could broaden the insurance levy to charge on all property, not just insured property. Or it could fund the whole thing through property rates or general taxes, though that would require changing the law.

The review is being done by the Department of Internal Affairs, but the Government hasn't said exactly what it should look at or when it needs to be finished. The review will happen while a new levy structure is just starting to work — which could mean the Government ends up changing the system again soon after putting it in place.