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by Scott Stevens - Queenstown Media Group

The New Year’s Honours List is always full of notable and inspirational New Zealanders. We are lucky to live in a district with our fair share of celebrated heroes of sport, business, philanthropy, medicine and academia. It’s a good feeling being surrounded by greatness. Much better to look up to Tall Poppies than cut them down.

Rather than put their names up in lights again, I want to focus on the unsung heroes in our community. Let me start 2026 by acknowledging the men and women who pull on a uniform over the holiday period whilst the rest of us sip Lemonade Spritzers.

We see them every day. Contractors in high-vis jackets fixing stuff, ambulance and hospital workers there in a time of need fixing people, police officers trying to stop people needing to be fixed, then there are our volunteer firefighters who, for the most part, are unseen and unpaid.

They are unseen because they only come out when the siren wails, often in the middle of the night, to attend car accidents or be first responders in medical emergencies. The occasional fire too. I do not want us as a community to take them for granted, because it seems the powers that be, living in the Beehive, are definitely taking this community service for granted.

It was with extreme disappointment that a locally instigated and championed cause was recently denied by our lawmakers in Wellington. That petition, signed by tens of thousands of New Zealanders, was an attempt to have our volunteer fire brigades recognised under ACC work cover. If the government does not consider our volunteer fire crews worthy of work status and cover by ACC for work-related injuries (both physical and mental), then why should these people continue to do this work on behalf of us all? They are risking, amongst other things, their own financial security.

They do it because they are nothing short of marvellous individuals. Selfless and committed. However, it must leave a sour taste in the mouth of even the most dedicated volunteer firefighter to know that they are filling a void left by government underfunding in the fastest-growing district in this country, with no back up when things go wrong. The classic you scratch my back, but no returns.

These are everyday men and woman like you and me. They need to be fit and able to do their day jobs to feed their families. There are no professional fire crews around here and that’s the way it’s always been. Which was ok when we really were a cluster of small towns with a low population. Things have changed, and the government is fuelling the growth in this district, of both resident and visitor population. To then say, yeah naaa, to workplace cover for volunteer fire crews dealing with more and more is completely unfair and unacceptable in my eyes. Don’t give up the fight, 2026 has only just begun.