21 May 2021

This is a special issue of eBulletin to share information about the Budget 2021 announcement. 

Budget News

New funding for a safer, more disaster-resilient Aotearoa

A significant funding boost from the Government is an investment in making Aotearoa’s communities safer and more resilient to natural disasters and other emergencies.

The Government yesterday announced an investment of $46.6 million in the National Emergency Management Agency, to be distributed over four years.

The funding will be used to strengthen and lift the performance of NEMA and the wider emergency management system, at the local and national levels. This will include:

• delivering a responsive and inclusive emergency management system to empower communities to increase their resilience to natural disasters and other emergencies
• recognising and enabling the valuable role Māori play in emergency management, for example, by facilitating meaningful partnerships with iwi Māori and the integration of te ao Māori in our emergency management system
• enabling a sharper focus on communities who are disproportionately affected in emergencies, such as Māori, Pacific peoples, the culturally and ethnically diverse, those for whom English is not their first language, seniors, children and those experiencing socio-economic deprivation, disability, ill health, or social or geographic isolation
• creating a stronger, more professional emergency management workforce
• enabling greater coordination and planning across agencies involved in emergencies
• introducing a new standards and monitoring regime
• bolstering the National Exercise Programme
• developing a new national lessons management system to enable continuous improvement
• improving hazard risk management expertise.

The funding continues the momentum of earlier Budget decisions, which led to the formation of the National Emergency Management Agency, the establishment of the deployable Emergency Management Assistance Team, and the DART Buoys network of marine tsunami sensors.

NEMA will work with key partners and stakeholders to ensure the implementation plan for the new investment is considered, manageable and designed to benefit the emergency management system and communities.