O'Rourke Denis: Budget Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Rourke Denis: Budget Debate 
[Sitting date: 30 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2698. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 The Government presents the Christchurch earthquakes as both a problem and a solution in the Budget. It is one of the three excuses given for its failure to manage the New Zealand economy adequately listed along with the global financial crisis and the New Zealand recession from 2008—both of which have been with us of course for some years. At the same time the Budget presents the earthquake recovery as a solution generating most of the projected growth that the Government has put in this Budget and also as the biggest factor in new job creation.  
The growth overall has struggled in recent years to reach 1 percent and this makes I think the Government’s projections in this Budget for 3 percent growth in the future years pretty unrealistic. However according to the Government’s own projections the earthquake recovery will make the major contribution through residential and infrastructure rebuilds in the coming 3 years to the growth projected in that Budget. That growth resulting from earthquake recovery does not arise from Government policy; it is consequential growth from disaster recovery and it is funded more from insurance and investment from the private sector than from Government investment as a result of its two Budgets—the previous one and this one.  
The earthquake recovery is stated to be one of the Government’s priorities. But when you look at this Budget little or nothing more is added by it over and above the allocation made in the previous Budget. The Government measures offer nothing new to Christchurch people suffering the effects of the earthquakes. All we get are statistics on the numbers who accepted the red zone offers and they are not very revealing in themselves. The fact is that too many people were losers from that process. Too many people cannot in fact afford to buy the new sections—those of them that are on offer and there are far too few of those. Homes are effectively confiscated by the Government under the red zone regime with inadequate compensation for far too many people. Yes there have been some winners but there have been far far too many losers. People are expected to move on without fair compensation and that is not the way New Zealanders do things.  
I suggested to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery concessionary bridging finance as a way of helping people move on: for example a facility up to $100000 repayable on the sale of the property or the death of the borrower with no interest or perhaps at most a modest concessionary interest rate. That would have been possible with very modest expense to the Government and it would have helped a lot of people to move on. There has been no reply to that no action on that or on any other provision of that kind that would actually make a difference to Christchurch people who are struggling to move out of the red zone and to buy another property. That is just not good enough. This Budget is silent about that.  
Another fact is that some insurers are getting away with blue murder: deliberate delays bullying of claimants and other problems. We see again absolutely no action by this Government whatsoever and that is not good enough either. 
Another fact is that the Earthquake Commission has been much much too slow in reinstating damaged land and homes in Christchurch. I believe that the reason for that is the Fletcher’s monopoly. It is a monopoly of inaction. Qualified Christchurch tradespeople are available who are not employed by Fletcher’s and they are available to assist in the rebuild. They are being shut out by the policies of this Government and that is poor use of available resources and contributes further to the very slow progress of reinstatement of damaged houses in Christchurch.  
Another fact is that there is a severe housing shortage in Christchurch. It is chronic and it is getting worse. No significant action has been taken by this Government on that nor on the rent increase explosions. No action has been taken on that either. People have asked for months for action on that and they get silence from this Government. So if the Christchurch earthquake is such a high priority for this Government why has there been so little action on these important issues?  
I believe that Christchurch people have gone through three stages in their reaction to what has happened since the earthquake. The first one was a reaction of gratefulness that the Government was in there and helping out. And we all felt that. That was fine and I suppose that it assisted the Government in the election. But since then what has happened is more and more protests—protests on top of protests about problems on top of problems. Now we have got over that to an extent because people are now just resigned to the situation that nothing better is going to be offered to them and of course that results in a lot of people simply leaving the city or giving up hope. In fact in a recent survey 68 percent of Christchurch people said that they were unhappy with the Government and the earthquake policy.  
So I simply do not understand how Nicky Wagner can get up in this House and tell us all how wonderful it all is in Christchurch when everybody who lives in the affected areas of that city knows that that is not true and it should never be projected as such. But there is more. The rebuilding of Christchurch central—and Nicky Wagner as she says lives there—needs funding. It needs funding so that the rebuild can happen with insurance money and with Government money and happen promptly and basic infrastructure gets attention with a combination of Government money council money and insurance money.  
But there is not enough money to fund the aspirations of Christchurch people for their city for these three things. First of all there is the new central city rebuild. There is a good plan that has been produced and the Christchurch Central Development Unit has been established and we hope that that will be effective in pursuing that plan. But what funding has been allocated to it? We do not see that in this Budget and we should. Secondly in respect of the repair of heritage buildings which are dear to so many people in Christchurch there has been nothing but a huge deafening silence from the Government. There should be a special provision in the Budget for the preservation of heritage buildings in Christchurch as required by the people who live there. And thirdly there needs to be direct support for economic recovery in Christchurch such as special economic zones to stimulate economic recovery and to ensure that it happens in a structured way. 
So what we get from this Government is yet another aspect of its dull lifeless Budget from “Asteroid National” for Christchurch. There is no provision for those needs that I have spoken of. So much for the Christchurch earthquake recovery commitment from this Government! Many are now saying that the earthquake disaster was one thing but it has been matched by Government policy as well. 
The Minister of Finance in his Budget speech said this: “The rebuilding of Christchurch will be a key driver of overall domestic activity and is expected to contribute around one percentage point to annual growth in each calendar year from 2012 to 2016.” So the rebuild will save the New Zealand economy to this very considerable extent but given the pathetic record of growth under the Government of only about 1 percent in recent times the Christchurch rebuild will apparently be a very big part—and perhaps all—of that future growth. And none of it is actually this National Government’s doing.  
The Government’s reliance on a natural disaster to produce the growth that it claims credit for is not—is not—a credit to it. Growth needs to be achieved well over and above that.