Gerry Brownlee hopes to get to the bottom of claims our earthquake-monitoring service is under-funded.

The Acting Civil Defence Minister will meet with the head of GNS Science today, to address comments by GeoNet head Ken Gledhill.

Mr Brownlee said no approach has been made to the Government, nor has Geonet reported its view that it would like a better monitoring system.

He told Mike Hosking he's been blind-sided by the comments.

"You're sort of left feeling like, oh my god, if I'd only known. But you can't know, I'm not a scientist, almost nobody in politics is."

"We rely on these guys to be able to give us good information and pick up and fund this sort of thing appropriately, and we don't back away from that sort of thing."