95bFM How a ban on private fireworks could positively impact animals
18 November, 2025
Interview by Joel Armstrong, adapted by Soeun Kim
The University of Auckland’s Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere says the new Fireworks Members’ Bill introduced by NZ First will help prevent fireworks from being weaponised against animals and causing intentional harm.
With many fireworks used during celebratory events such as Guy Fawkes and New Years, concerns have been raised about fireworks’ impacts on the ecosystem and wildlife, resulting in the New Zealand First party launching the Fireworks Prohibition Legislation Bill.
The member’s bill, if pulled out of the biscuit tin and passed, would stop all retail sales and the manufacturing and importation of fireworks for private use across the nation.
According to Companion Animals NZ, every year around Guy Fawkes, animals are put at risk of increased anxiety, fear, injuries, escape and various destructive behaviours.
This year, firefighters had to respond to 30 different firework-related callouts across the motu.
Marcelo Rodriguez-Ferrere, an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Auckland, told 95bFM’s The Wire that fireworks can have deadly impacts on animals.
“Either cats and dogs are running into traffic, running through windows.
“There was a relatively serious incident about a horse impaling itself on a fence as a result of being scared by fireworks.”
Rodriguez-Ferrere says that “fairly light regulation and pretty few restrictions” have resulted in high levels of distress for both domestic and companion animals.
He adds that unnecessary trauma and distress caused to animals falls under the offence of the Animal Welfare Act; however, due to lax regulations, few are penalised.
“The problem is that when you've got hundreds of people lighting off fireworks in all sorts of different directions, it's a pretty much unenforceable sort of offence in that regard.”
He believes that what the NZ First is proposing — only to allow approved public displays — is a “really good compromise”.
“… because you can restrict it to a specific time and a specific period that allows for the limitation of the effect that it might have on the local environment.”
The bill, put in the biscuit tin by NZ First MP Jenny Marcroft, joins a variety of different members’ bills put into the ballot by the party.
Of the 14 members’ bills NZ First has submitted in this government, 10 have since been removed.
In an opinion piece, Spinoff journalist, Joel MacManus, says the number of members’ bills NZ First has put through the biscuit tin is a “PR strategy” and that the party is “... using backbenchers as pawns for the party’s marketing arm”.
Despite this, Rodriguez-Ferrere believes the fireworks bill will be “different” due to its overwhelming public support on petitions in the past few years.
“Whether or not they deem it as a performative stunt, I've got a funny feeling that this actually has significantly more legs and sort of staying power than the other pieces of legislation.”
He says that if NZ First were to abandon this bill, it would come back to bite the party.
“I think you would find a significant level of public opposition, which would then counteract the whole point of putting the member's bill in the first place.
“I doubt that they would withdraw it without thinking those consequences through.”
