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Speaker 1: It's November the fifth, and we all know what that means.

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Speaker 1: We know it in New Zealand it's sky Fork's Day,

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Speaker 1: and it also means more debate about banning the things. Now,

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Speaker 1: Winston Peters has submitted a member's bill which would ban

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Speaker 1: the importing and sale of fireworks, and Fire and Emergency

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Speaker 1: had preemptively closed access to fourteen mountains around Auckland to

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Speaker 1: prevent wildfire. So we joined now with by the Fire

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Speaker 1: and Emergency. New Zealand Regulatory Compliance Manager Adrian Nacy has

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Speaker 1: got up early, but I guess you always get up early,

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Speaker 1: don't you.

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Speaker 2: Adrian, good morning.

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Speaker 1: What do you think should we ban them?

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Speaker 2: Well, Fire an Emergency, as you can imagine, would be

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Speaker 2: supportive of any changes to legislation that would reduce to

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Speaker 2: have from unwonted fire. That's what we're all about. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: we would be we'd be very pleased to see some

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Speaker 2: change to bring further restrictions just on the sale of

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Speaker 2: retail fireworks to the public.

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Speaker 1: So you don't mind with the big displays, but you

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Speaker 1: don't want, you know, Joe Blow having fireworks in their backyard.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great for us. The fireworks, we would just

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Speaker 2: prefer to be kept in the hands of the professionals.

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Speaker 1: All right, So if this happens, is there a worry

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Speaker 1: that we ban them? But people go, yikes, they're banning them,

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Speaker 1: so they stockpile and they end out using out of

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Speaker 1: date fireworks.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't really want people to stockpile fireworks for

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Speaker 2: a couple of reasons. We don't want them to be

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Speaker 2: set off over the summer when it gets even hotter,

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Speaker 2: warmer and dry than it is now. And it's also

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Speaker 2: not a good idea to have fireworks obviously stored in

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Speaker 2: your home and that can present a risk to our

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Speaker 2: firefighters if you had something go wrong in your property

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Speaker 2: and they weren't aware that there were fire fireworks stored there.

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Speaker 1: Now there's a number of people who say, I'm absolutely

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Speaker 1: responsible when it comes to fireworks, But that's not the problem.

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Speaker 1: The problem are the idiots. I mean, how bad are

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Speaker 1: the idiots?

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Speaker 2: Yes, we get between sort of one hundred and fifty

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Speaker 2: and two hundred fireworks related calls just that we go

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Speaker 2: to each year. It's not necessarily people being particularly reckless

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Speaker 2: all the time, as things like setting the fireworks off

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Speaker 2: when it's windy, auto close to things that can catch fire.

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Speaker 1: So they're still legal today. So what are the restrictions

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Speaker 1: on letting off fireworks around the country.

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Speaker 2: So the main thing for us around the restrictions is

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Speaker 2: you can only set them off in places we have

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Speaker 2: the landowners permission. So most councils around the country have

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Speaker 2: put restrictions on letting fireworks off in places like beaches

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Speaker 2: and parks. Obviously, Department of Conservation land is a no

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Speaker 2: go for setting off fireworks, and the main restrictions around

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Speaker 2: that is that you need the landowners permission. But the

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Speaker 2: main thing for us is obviously checking those weather conditions.

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Speaker 2: As you've seen around the last couple of weeks, it

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Speaker 2: has been hot, dry and windy around parts of the country.

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Speaker 2: This makes it really easy for fires to take control

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Speaker 2: and spread and get difficult for us to put out.

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Speaker 1: Adrian, I hope you have a really quiet night tonight,

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Speaker 1: and I thank you for joining us.

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Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live

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