Christchurch Earthquake bulletin edition 55
new-zealand-labour-party
Wed Jun 08 2011 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Christchurch Earthquake bulletin edition 55
Wednesday, 8 June 2011, 12:54 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party
Christchurch
LABOUR MPs
8 June 2011
Christchurch Earthquake bulletin edition 55
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: Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee told Canterbury MPs last night that he is not yet in a position to give us a timeframe for announcements on land mapping. Mr Brownlee originally told us he expected to be able to make announcements by mid-June, but it seems likely now that this date will not be met. He indicated, however, that he may have some general comments to make in the near future. Labour MPs at the meeting reiterated two positions. The first is that any technical information that is available now, in the lead-up to the major announcement, should be provided swiftly to affected people so that all the bad news is not dumped at once. The second position, which we hold strongly, is that preparation should be happening now to develop a process for communicating personally with affected people. Mr Brownlee was not able to make any commitment last night that this would happen. I have also written on our behalf to Mr Brownlee today requesting an invitation to attend, where practical, the weekly briefing the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) holds with city councillors and community board members. MPs used to attend the weekly Civil Defence briefings, and found these most useful. We can never get too much information. Tonight I will be attending the Kaiapoi Residents’ Association meeting at which the association is going to be briefed by a specialist insurance lawyer. This is the association’s own initiative, and I am keenly interested in listening to that briefing.
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RUTH DYSON: We have had a small but significant breakthrough in getting some wrongly red-stickered homes cleared. But it has been a frustrating battle for people already very stretched by the quakes. There are still many others who are becoming increasingly frustrated by the delays in work to make their homes safe. I raised this at our briefing with Gerry Brownlee last night and he agreed the action was needed. I will be pushing for continued progress on getting the work done to make these homes safe. The situation now seems to be about who is going to pay for the work and this is a fundamental issue that needs resolution - and fast!
LIANNE DALZIEL: Building our nation’s disaster preparedness is extremely important. I have talked a lot recently about the importance of owning our own recovery and our own future, and a part of this is passing on the lessons we have learnt in the past nine months to other communities and businesses in New Zealand. I am going to ask these questions at every meeting I address from now on. How many of you know the risks that you are faced with depending on the nature of the disaster and where you are when it occurs – at work – at play – at home? Have you talked to your family about how you will communicate or where you will meet up given a range of possible scenarios – mobile network down, roads closed and transport unavailable? Have you got enough food and the means of both storing and heating water to get you through at least three days – (personally I would say longer)? Have you got enough coffee to see you through the same three days? Have you got a transistor radio and a torch (including one not requiring batteries)? These are all vital questions, but there is an even more important set of questions and they are these – who are your neighbours; what are their needs or skills; what can you and they offer to meet the needs of your neighbourhood and what resources are in your community to support your neighbourhood in a time of disaster? How does civil defence operate in your community and are you involved? Where do you go locally if you need information or want to volunteer to help? I can tell you from first-hand experience that all of the solutions lie within the community within which you live and it is not governments that deliver but governments that facilitate and when they don’t even do that, the community we live in is all we have. There is much that we can gain from having lived through this experience. If we can turn disaster to opportunity then Christchurch will symbolise a critical moment in our history that enabled New Zealand to become one of the most resilient countries in the world and one which spurred the further development of sustainable practices and technologies that made our world a safer and a better place to live.
BRENDON BURNS: Many people have received an email suggesting a dark conspiracy over the awarding of the Grand Chancellor Hotel demolition contract to Fletchers. I’ve publicly said the idea that the Government owns Fletchers, via the Reserve Bank, as suggested in the email, is hogwash. That said, I have met people associated with rival tenders for the demolition of the Grand Chancellor who raised serious questions about the tender process. At last night’s cross-party forum, CERA’s demolition boss Warwick Isaacs responded to some of those concerns. As a matter of record his responses to questions we raised are outlined.
• The tender process was started by the hotel’s owners while Civil Defence was still in charge and it put engineering/quantity surveying assessment behind it.
• Fletchers’ tender document was 25 pages long, not the 2 pages some are suggesting. (This was still much less paging than other tenderers but Isaacs says a lot of that was promotional material.)
• Despite claims to the contrary, Fletchers’ tender, like the three others, was subject to quizzing by an oral selection panel lasting 1.5 to hours.
• Fletchers does not have much demolition experience but that is provided by its tender partner Wards Demolition (Isaacs was unclear about how much high-rise demolition experience Wards has had.)
• Fletchers’ timeframe for demolition was 5-6 weeks slower than some other tenders but was doing more to protect surrounding buildings from damage.
• No tender provided a confirmed price. All were estimates.
I am pleased to see this information, but I still say that the timeframe is worrying. Many businesses in the Manchester St area were profoundly impacted by the months it took to remove the Manchester Courts building. We are talking a period three to four times as long for the Grand Chancellor.
ENDS
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