Christchurch Earthquake bulletin edition 51

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Tue May 31 2011 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Christchurch Earthquake bulletin edition 51

Tuesday, 31 May 2011, 12:35 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party

The Labour Party's Christchurch electorate MPs, Clayton Cosgrove (Waimakariri), Ruth Dyson (Port Hills), Lianne Dalziel (Christchurch East) and Brendon Burns (Christchurch Central) have started a regular bulletin to keep people in their electorates and media informed about what is happening at grass roots level.

CLAYTON COSGROVE: Christchurch businesses and staff that have had their legs cut out from under them won't appreciate being given the news by a welfare minister that the business recovery package ends today. Although these businesses were told from the start that the package was scheduled to run till May 31, they had expected it to be replaced by something else. They had not expected to be forced to go on the dole. The news should have been delivered publicly and formally by Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee. These businesses aren't recipients of welfare. Neither are their staff members. They have been puckerood by the September and February quakes, and now many of them won't be able to restart for reasons beyond their control. That cuts across what Prime Minister John Key promised --- that no one would be left worse off after the quakes. No one is arguing that the support package should go on for ever, but it is still only little more than three months since the shattering February quake. There is no way many businesses could recover in that time, particularly those with equipment and records trapped in the red zone. Gerry Brownlee had been given wartime powers, his own government department and a bucketful of cash to deal with the aftermath of the quakes, and yet it was Social Development Minister Paula Bennett who was forced to announce yesterday that the package is heading to the scrapheap from tomorrow. Many hundreds of businesses and thousands of staff may be consigned to the scrapheap along with it. This decision has been slipped under the rug, and taxpayers will still have to pick up the tab --- this time to pay the dole to people who have never had to be on the dole before. The irony is that when the Christchurch recovery gets under way, most of these businesses will never be able to get started again and contribute to a brighter economic future for the region.

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RUTH DYSON: Today I am in Christchurch for a full day of community development work in Sydenham - one of two pilot areas (the other one is Lyttelton) working together towards a community recovery plan. The last round of these community meetings was on the 10 May. At that time I said that I was pleased with progress which enabled communities to actually walk the talk of recovery rather than just reviewing the rubble. I am eager to get back into it today. I will meet with a Lyttelton group this evening regarding outstanding issues around rockfall. I have had many calls of frustration in response to a lack of clear timetables in relation to rockfall work in my electorate. I am supporting a Port Hills geotech group who can work together to get answers to constituents' questions in a timely manner. I went to the Recover Canterbury Trust Fund launch last night along with Brendon Burns and Lianne Dalziel. The presentation was at the CBS arena and was called Survive Revive and Thrive and was directed primarily to business leaders and organised by the Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce. Last night's event was very well attended, but while I am pleased this initiative will free up funds for businesses I am disappointed at the Government's decision to discontinue the business support package. This decision will force the untimely and unnecessary closure of Canterbury businesses.

LIANNE DALZIEL: This morning I gave a speech at the Garden City Rotary Meeting at Addington raceway titled 'Turning disaster to opportunity'. Everything I have read about recovery says we need legacies for communities to leave future generations so that it isn't just the tragedy of these earthquakes that defines this moment in our history. We also need milestones that give us hope and encourage us along the road to recovery. Lessons from international disasters tell us that recovery is very complex and requires careful planning because it is not a "one-size-fits-all". Our communities must be fully engaged in our recovery if we are to be successful. Decisions now will impact on our communities for decades. It is still not too late for the Government to look at the recovery model put in place by the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority. While the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) has been set up here, lessons can still be learned from the way the Victorian Authority operated. Victoria's focus on community-led recovery emphasised capacity building, engagement and decision making at the local level, which in turn improves resilience, as well as the capacity to foresee and to adapt to future challenges. Even the other side of the Waimakariri River would offer a better model than what has been offered by the Christchurch City Council. It is time that the council and the government jointly placed all of the facts on the table and discussed with each of the affected communities what risks they face. We need to understand the impact of the new seismic risks, as well as flooding risks which have always existed and those posed by rising sea levels. Conclusions and pathways forward will be different in each community, but we need evidence based action, we must be allowed to move forward. There seems to be a belief that decision-making via community consensus can be too slow. However, what this experience shows is that participative models of recovery can lead to better results. In this case communities came up with innovative urban planning decisions that would not have happened if the government had immediately commenced the rebuilding.

BRENDON BURNS: It was great to attend last night's launch of the new trust to raise funds for Christchurch business. Roger Sutton, still two weeks away from taking on the role of leading CERA, showed why he is the right man for the job. He joked that he was going to put CERA on the 20th floor of the still abandoned PWC building as a symbol of rebuilding - and so nobody else would come up and hassle them! The fund will assist Christchurch businesses to get back on their feet. They can get funding to assist with restocking, moving premises and capital replenishment. Already there's $5m in the pot and the hope is that local and other donations will boost this to $10m or more. Information revealed in the news today which says that there is a 23% chance of a strength 6.0-7.0 quake in the wider Canterbury region over the next year will be distressing to a lot of people in Christchurch. That said, if such predictions exist people deserve to be informed. However, there are a number of concerns here. firstly, why was this material only released after a city councillor blogged on the topic? Councillor Sue Wells is adamant that she was told at a briefing last Wednesday held by Gerry Brownlee that it was alright to make the information public and I believe her. But surely this kind of information deserves to be conveyed in a more managed way. GNS scientists must be able to walk people through their calculations and what if anything Cantabrians can do to better prepare themselves for such a possibility. For this information to drop out of nowhere only heightens its impact on people already feeling vulnerable. Christchurch MPs were left with no briefing or other information to allow them to counsel worried constituents. That's simply not good enough and not fair on people.

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