'The Nation'

Gerry Brownlee
Interviewed by DUNCAN GARNER

Duncan The government has staked its reputation political reputation on managing the ten billion dollars insurance payout for the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery, and that sum is twice what our entire farming industry earns every year, and how that money is spent and managed is now a major political issue. This week the Prime Minister's refusal to say which suburbs might have to be demolished has certainly fired up the Opposition, and the man on the front line is Earthquake Recovery Minister, Gerry Brownlee, he joins me from Wellington. Good morning Minister.

Mr Brownlee you're well aware of the frustrations in Christchurch. When will you be able to tell people about their fate, and certainly in those suburbs.

Gerry Brownlee – Earthquake Recovery Minister
Well look I'm in Wellington at the moment because we're working right through the weekend trying to put a few things of concern and relative to this into the mix so that we're closer to that decision. I think there's a couple of things I'd like to pick up though if I might from previous comments. The first thing is, if you live in a city like Venice you know that it's possible to build anywhere. But then you ask the question is it fair, is it reasonable. What's gonna happen over the next five or six years, we see things settle down and generally said it'll be at least three, and what is then the economics for those particular areas. And then of course the mass of social cost and the hug disruption that you’ve got there at the moment. So it is a very very complex mix, that is EQC, which is insurers and reinsurers, insurers and reinsurers as well, and then the government as well. But if you look at the fact that we are still in a seismic event, trying to quantify exactly what we should be doing, it becomes a little more difficult.

Duncan But you also said it's blindingly obvious this week. I mean does that mean that you can take decisions within weeks or months, because I know when I spoke to you after the February earthquake, you said it will be three months, and I know even by everyone's admission you haven’t made that sort of deadline. But is it now weeks or are people gonna have to wait months and months till Christmas to get any certainty?

Gerry Well the problem is, every time you say something like that, people hang their hat on it. I wish I hadn’t made that blindingly obvious comment, but you know there are some people who are living in pretty dire circumstances, and one of the problems that we will face is that when a decision is made, there will be people on one side of the road potentially who have to leave their property, and people on the other side who have to go, if you look for a natural boundary or some other such, and those people who are staying have every right to expect that their equity will be looked after, as well as those who are leaving.

Duncan But Mr Brownlee you have made those comments about blindingly obvious, which is now up the sticks. Are you sitting on information that you could share with those residents in Christchurch?

Gerry I don’t believe so, but if you down to the east of Christchurch and come right into a fair way up the river, you'll see that there are temporary stopbanks there, for the event that there might be big flooding issues for example. So we put that sort of thing in place because we don’t know exactly where the land has moved to, we don’t know where the bottom of the river has moved to. We think one's gone off and one's come up, and most people can make those observations, as I did.

Duncan Now when we talk about weeks or months, I mean is it likely to be weeks or likely to be months. I mean people watching this at home I think deserve some kind of response from you about whether it's going to be much longer or shorter.

Gerry Well look I steadfastly refuse to put a time line on it, because there are so many other people who have to make decisions, and we want those decisions in favour of those who are most affected. And so I don’t want to start putting on deadlines that ultimately could cost those people. But let me tell you the pressure is well understood. We thought we had a plan for those suburbs after September 4, 47 days after we were able to say the land can be repaired and we were putting those plans in place. There had to be a review of those plans after February 22, and that has proved to be the right thing to do. The events of June 13 I think have simply cemented that we're on the right track, that we are very well down that track, and I just want to keep everybody focused toward a good result, as good a result as you can get for people in very difficult circumstances, as soon as possible.

Duncan But it's fair to say that large chunks of these suburbs if not suburbs indeed are going to be written off aren’t they?

Gerry There will most certainly be land retired. The extent of that is yet to be determined.

Duncan Just when you talked about retired though, you're talking about major suburbs. Now this week there's been this rumour going around in Christchurch that 13 suburbs may well have to be retired, which is your words.

Gerry No, no. You're the one who said that it may be suburbs and putting quantities on it. I've said that there’ll be land that is retired, and I say retired, because as the geology settles down over a long period of time, who knows what the future of that land will be. It may come out of retirement who knows. But for now there are parts that it does not look as though it would be a good proposition to rebuild on it.

Duncan And you talked also earlier in the year about 10,000 homes may have to be demolished. Are you any clearer in the sense that those 10,000 homes will be rebuilt on the same sites, or are they demolished and being moved?

Gerry Some will and some won’t. I think that’s all I can say. There are areas where the devastation to the property from not only the and movement but also the shaking movement, is very very considerable, and it was big after September 4, it got to a much bigger position after 22 February, and there will have been further damage, I think there's another 6,000 or so claims for property that came in after last week. But that will build over the three month period, we know that. So we would expect that the number of homes that will be written off will be around that 10,000 mark. Some of them, in fact a good number of them, will be rebuilt on the site they're currently on, because there's a difference between the shaking damage and the land damage.

Duncan I just want to quickly finish this interview by looking at what Mark Binns from Fletchers this morning said, and that is that the government and the industry in fact as well as looking offshore to bring in workers, whereabouts are you going to get them from?

Gerry Well that’s under discussion at the present time. There are a lot of places around the world that are suffering a little bit of economic decline. I think Mark was right to say that you know if people speak English it's going to be a lot more helpful to them establishing here, but that doesn’t restrict the need. Look one of the other things that really we can't lose sight of is that there will be 20 billion dollars plus spent in Christchurch in the next five years, and that will have a population effect that’s in the positive. Yes there’ll be people who leave and I fully understand why that would be the case, but equally there’ll be large numbers who come into the city and choose to make their life there. So the long term future is pretty good.

Duncan So has the government approached for instance the Irish economy if you like where you’ve seen a lot of jobs go over there. There can speak English, there’ll be a lot of people ready to move and work if you like. Have we approached the Irish?

Gerry Well the way the government works is to set up the conditions that somebody can comply with to get immigration status into New Zealand. The people who would go and get those people would be the individual contractors themselves, and there's a huge amount of contracting going on in Christchurch at the moment, and I know that – I don’t think I'm wrong to say that I'm sure there are some Irish people who've immigrated to New Zealand to be part of this effort already.

Duncan Are you aware that Fletchers and those associated with the rebuild have made those sort of attempts to bring to target the Irish?

Gerry Look not specifically, but if they have that’s great, because we do need to get people here. We can train tens of thousands of young people over the next five to ten years on the back of the construction industry in Christchurch, but we will need a lot of very qualified people to drive that process. So I think that bears out what I was saying earlier that the city's population is likely to grow over the next five to ten years, once we get out of this little dip. Can I finish by saying look, I don’t want anybody in those eastern suburbs that we aren’t giving this issue of the land full attention. We do get curved balls thrown at us, it's difficult. We have tried to meet the winter heating needs with six thousand heating appliances put in since February 22. There is alternative accommodation assistance available if people would like it, but we do want that decision and that certainty just as much as they do.

Duncan Alright, Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee, thanks for joining us in the Wellington studio this morning.

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