Dear Maritime New Zealand,

I am writing to request a summary of jobs and associated costs for land based jobs in 2024 and 2025, where RCCNZ has tasked a recuse helicopter from the Otago Southland Rescue Helicopter Trust.

I understand details of patients etc cannot be shared, but I am wanting a summary including the following information:
- Job date, start time and finish time
- Summary of events, including activation method (ie beacon, inReach,etc), job location (lat/long), number in party, extraction method (ie winch, landed, etc), reason for activation (ie broken ankle, bluffed, hypothermic, lost, etc)
- Result of tasking, i.e. patient flown to Dunstan Hospital, dropped back at vehicle, etc.
- Costs billed to RCCNZ from the Otago Southland Rescue Helicopter Trust for the job.

Yours faithfully,

Nate

Dear Ministerial Services,

Thank you for your reply to my request regarding helicopter taskings by the Otago Southland Rescue Helicopter Trust.

I acknowledge receipt of the summary of incidents and appreciate the time taken to compile this information.

However, I respectfully challenge the refusal to release the costs billed to RCCNZ for each job, which you have declined under section 9(2)(b)(ii) of the Act, citing commercial sensitivity and potential prejudice to the commercial position of the supplier.

I would like to submit the following points in support of my request:

The supplier is a registered charitable trust.
The Otago Southland Rescue Helicopter Trust is not a private commercial entity but a charitable organisation that receives substantial public funding and donations. As such, it operates for public benefit, not commercial gain. Its financial arrangements with publicly funded agencies like RCCNZ should therefore be subject to public scrutiny.

There is a strong public interest in transparency.
The use of public funds—whether directly or via government contracts—to pay for emergency services should be transparent. The public has a legitimate interest in understanding how much is spent on individual rescue operations, especially when these are life-saving services operated with public funding and charitable support.

No competitive prejudice would arise.
Disclosing the cost per job is unlikely to prejudice the Trust’s position in any competitive tendering process, if any exists. It is the sole contracted provider of rescue services in the region and operates under fixed agreements and service-level expectations. Furthermore, disclosing job-specific costs does not reveal the full terms of any contract or proprietary pricing models.

Precedents exist for disclosing such information.
There are examples in New Zealand and internationally where rescue or emergency services funded by government disclose cost breakdowns or summaries of operational expenditure. In New Zealand, other OIA responses by government agencies have included financial data where it aligns with accountability and public interest expectations.

Section 9(1) requires a public interest test
Even if some degree of commercial sensitivity were to be accepted, section 9(1) of the Act requires an assessment of whether the withholding is outweighed by public interest considerations. Given that the Trust operates using public funds and charitable donations to perform a public good, the threshold for withholding such information should be high. I believe the public interest in transparency clearly outweighs the reasons for withholding.

For these reasons, I request that Maritime New Zealand reconsider its position and release the cost information per job.

Yours sincerely,
Nate Calloway