Minister Brooke van Velden has asked the Department of Internal Affairs to look at better ways to fund Fire and Emergency New Zealand. It's a formal review of how the organisation gets its money — something that has caused arguments throughout this term of Parliament.

Right now, Fire and Emergency gets about 95–97 percent of its funding from levies (small charges added to home and property insurance bills). The Government only puts in $10 million directly, according to a Beehive release from June 2026. That's always been a strange arrangement, because Fire and Emergency does way more than fight building fires — it runs the volunteer rural brigades, manages urban career firefighters, and responds to all sorts of emergencies.

This review is the latest move van Velden has made on Fire and Emergency funding since she took over the portfolio. In March 2023, the Government backed a 2.2 percent levy increase instead of the 5.1–5.2 percent the organisation had asked for. The following April, she wrote to Fire and Emergency asking for solutions that would keep services running, spread costs fairly, and manage levy income — language that signalled the minister was not convinced by their funding requests. By September 2024, the Government had agreed to a new levy structure starting from July 2026, with the basic rate dropping from $119.50 to $107.40 per qualifying policy.

That rate cut, announced while Fire and Emergency was still asking for more money, shows what this review is really about. Fire and Emergency's funding depends entirely on the insurance market. But insurance premiums are rising as companies reassess fire and weather risk — which means fewer people and small businesses can afford to insure their properties. At the same time, extreme weather is putting more pressure on fire and emergency services to do more. The catch is that the very events pushing up the demand on these services are also pushing people out of the insurance market that funds them.

Van Velden's instruction to the Department of Internal Affairs doesn't say which alternatives they should consider, and the Government announcement doesn't give a timeline or explain what the evaluation should cover. But it does signal something: the minister is no longer treating the insurance levy as the only option. She's opening the door to other ways of paying for the service.

There are a few practical alternatives that people in this area know about. The Government could put in more money directly from the tax system, but that would mean less funding for something else. Another option is a mixed model — keeping the levy but making it wider (say, charging it on all property, not just insured property) or combining it with another tax. A third option is to fund the whole thing through property rates or general taxes, which would mean changing the law that set up the current system — but it would completely separate Fire and Emergency's income from insurance.

The timing matters. The new levy rates come into effect in July 2026, meaning the Department of Internal Affairs will be running its evaluation while the new system is still getting started. That's a risky sequence — you're implementing one thing while at the same time evaluating whether it should be different — and it could mean policy changes if the review recommends something else.

Van Velden has been clear that she does not want levy increases to be the default answer to Fire and Emergency's money problems. What happens next depends on what the Department of Internal Affairs finds and whether the Government has spare cash in the 2027 Budget to make changes. The review has no deadline, and the full scope of what it should deliver hasn't been made public.