National MP Tim Costley questions why FENZ hired consultants to respond to his inquiry
Wednesday, 13 May 2026
National MP for Ōtaki Tim Costley is questioning why Fire and Emergency (FENZ) hired consultants to help it respond to his Parliamentary inquiry.
He’s also raised concerns FENZ appears to think the inquiry is “with them” ‒ not “about them” ‒ after these consultants approached several members on the Select Committee running this inquiry.
The Governance and Administration Select Committee is looking into FENZ fleet issues, after the organisation’s last two annual reviews ‒ and a special hearing ‒ left unanswered questions about the state of its kit.
FENZ’s top brass fronted Select Committee on Wednesday morning with a report it had compiled and sent to MPs on Tuesday night.
Read more:
FENZ board members get 79% pay rises as industrial dispute drags on
Inquiry launched into Fire and Emergency fleet failures amid long-running industrial action
Questioned by Costley, FENZ chief executive Kerry Gregory confirmed the agency had contracted independent consultants to help it “bring all the material together”.
Gregory wasn’t able to say how much this was costing on the spot but said it was necessary.
“Don’t underestimate the manual work that went into compiling this for you.”
Costley asked FENZ why the information MPs had asked for wasn’t readily available.
“The IT systems that we have to support that, that’s part of our improvement plan around it, but we don’t have that just to draw those reports, as you would expect for a big organisation like ours,” Gregory said.
Speaking to The Post after the hearing, Costley said the information MPs had asked for was basic.
“Its information I would have expected FENZ to have had on hand on any given day; that they would be able to look up and see exactly how many vehicles of each type they had, the age of them, the location of them and when they are due for replacement.
“I understand there may be some extra work to present that or format that in a way that they think is best presented to the select committee but all I had asked for was a really simple spreadsheet.”
Costely said the consultants had taken an “unusual” step of contacting his office and the offices of other MPs on the committee.
“My impression was they wanted help get the best possible outcome from the inquiry for FENZ. As I said to them, this is not an inquiry with FENZ, it's an inquiry into FENZ,” he said.
“There’s no gotcha. There’s no secret agenda here. We just want to get some clear answers and get some assurance following three successive hearings and two lots of written questions that all gave different answers, all of them conflicting, confusing and concerning.”
A FENZ spokesperson said the organisation had hired marketing agency Anthem in November 2025 to provide strategic communications advice, support workstreams due to capacity constraints and ‒ most recently ‒ help with FENZ’s response to the Parliamentary inquiry.
“As a part of supporting our response to the inquiry we were advised by Anthem that they may undertake research and engagement with members of Parliament.
“Upon receiving this advice we reaffirmed with Anthem that we did not ask or commission them to contact the offices of members of Parliament and in fact were explicit in reminding them of our political neutrality obligations.”
The spokesperson said the effort required to compile a report for the inquiry was down to substantial manual collation required due to antiquated IT systems.