Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said he will not rule out a special review in the wake of the tragic fire at a Wellington hostel which has so far claimed at least six lives.
Speaking to media on his way into a Labour caucus meeting today, Hipkins said the fire at Loafer's Lodge in the Wellington suburb of Newtown was "an absolute tragedy".
"It is a horrific situation and in the fullness of time of course there will be a number of investigations about what has happened and why it happened, but for now the focus has to be on dealing with the situation."
Asked if the Government would consider its own review in light of the tragedy, he said the fire needed to be finally put out and a greater understanding of what had occurred was needed.
There would also be police and coroner investigations that needed to happen first.
"At this early stage I would never rule out doing something extra in terms of review."
He said Wellington City Council was responsible for building inspections and he understood one had been done recently.
"Questions around whether or not the building had up-to-date fire evacuation plans, that sits with the Wellington City Council."
Regarding confirmation the building - which was built in 1970s and had 94 rooms - did not have sprinklers, Hipkins said he understood this could be the case for "quite a large number of buildings".
"The building code does not require the retrofitting of sprinkler systems into existing older buildings so there'll be a number of buildings that fall into that category."
He said regulations around buildings of that type had significantly tightened over the past decade.
"I think tragedies like this reinforce the need for that, they reinforce why we have regulations in place, so when people are talking about cutting red tape or removing regulations in areas like this, it just underscores that those regulations are in place for a reason."
He said as the building was "short-term hostel-type accommodation", and he understood some residents were shift workers and MSD clients, it was likely some residents were "potentially... in quite a vulnerable situation".
He said if needed the temporary accommodation service would be available.
"We'll work very hard to make sure they have a roof over their head."
Hipkins said the building was "still too high risk" for the police to enter, and as such the number of dead could not be confirmed until it was safe for them to do so.
"I want to acknowledge that this would have been an incredibly traumatic event to respond to for our first responders. These are people who put themselves in harm's way on behalf of all of us on a regular basis and I just want to acknowledge whilst they train for these sorts of things, being confronted with the reality of it would have been incredibly difficult.
"I acknowledge that we've got work to do in terms of making sure that our first responders - Fire and Emergency - have the gear that they need in order to be able to respond to every situation that they might face.
Hipkins, who is visiting the scene briefly this morning, said he was doing so to "provide support to the people who are responding".
"Obviously it's a really difficult situation there.
"I do want to be able to offer support to those who have been dealing with a pretty tragic set of circumstances and let them know that the New Zealand community is behind them."
National leader Christopher Luxon said the situation was "incredibly devastating and horrific".
"Those images that we saw this morning were incredibly disturbing, they're images we're used to hearing from other parts of the world. When you started to hear from some of the residents talking about their stories... it's really quite shocking.
"I also want to say a big thank you to our first responders and our fire service because they've been in an incredibly difficult situation trying to rescue people and get people out of what is a difficult set of circumstances."
He said it had been a "sobering start to the day".
"New Zealand has historically - certainly in a workplace environment - had a poor health and safety record. I think there's been a big attempt over the last five years - or 10 years - to make sure we've got stronger regulations in place that actually are workable."
He said he was surprised to hear there were no sprinklers in the building.
"There's going to be time for us to actually do a comprehensive review of this incident and out of that will come a whole lot of recommendations that we should be thinking about as well but today is not that day."
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