"It's well past its use-by date. The firefighter's role has changed dramatically from 40 years ago, from predominantly just fighting fires to doing all of the other emergencies and [activities] that are required."
The Western Bay's three busiest stations - Tauranga, Mount Maunganui and Greerton - attended 1356 real incidents in the 2016 financial year. Only 533 of these were for fires - 39.3 per cent - while 607 - 44.8 per cent - were for rescue, emergency, medical or hazardous emergencies.
There were also 1143 false alarms, which was almost half of all incidents attended.
Tauranga station attended the most incidents - 198 fires, 182 rescue, emergency or medical events, 74 hazardous emergencies, 70 special service calls and nine natural disasters. It also attended 498 false calls.
Mr Baxter said the act would give the new organisation the funding and legal authorisation to do what the Fire Service hadbeen tasked with previously.
"In a lot of respects, the changes to the legislation are catching up with the demands and needs of the community by providing an updated mandate."
Mr Baxter said the transition, which was progressing through Parliament, had been hailed by the majority of those in the affected organisations, but had a few kinks to be ironed out.
The transition was a big task, especially with the usual day-to-day incidents still to attend.
"It's a very important aspect of our organisation to make sure our 'business as usual' emergency responses continue uninterrupted. The truck keeps going down the road while we're trying to change the tyre basically."
Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne said the funding for the transition and the organisation's new responsibilities would come from an increase to the fire levy, which was paid on insurance for contents, property and motor vehicles.
The levy wouldbe extended to also include third-party motor vehicle insurance.