The Emergency Management Bill: SVA at Parliament

SVA made a submission to Parliament's select committee on the Emergency Management Bill (No 2), the Government's overhaul of New Zealand's emergency management legislation, and asked to speak to it in person. Drawing on fifteen years of disaster response, from the Christchurch earthquakes to the 2025 Nelson-Tasman floods, SVA argued that the Bill still treats volunteers as an input into the system rather than a core pillar of it. The submission set out seven key policy points and clause-by-clause wording changes, calling for volunteering to be formally recognised in the Bill's purpose, for legislated readiness funding and a national volunteer-expense reimbursement scheme, for funding of skilled volunteer coordinators, for pathways from student volunteering into paid emergency management careers, and for community- and marae-led responses to be supported as genuine partners rather than absorbed into Crown-led systems.

Link: Read the full bill here