Wagner Nicky: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wagner Nicky: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 25 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:3910. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena tatou e te Whare. I am really interested in young people and at a recent motivation event I heard the principle of “Be. Do. Get.” The principle behind that is the idea that intrinsically you are worth value but unless you “do” you do not get the results that you deserve. The National Government understands that all too well. Contrary to what Mr Cosgrove said we are an intelligent Government we are working hard and we are action-packed. You will hear from my other colleagues the activities that we are involved in. But what we understand is that it is OK to be the Government but you have to “do” if you want to get the future that New Zealanders need want and deserve. 
As the MP for Christchurch Central to me the most important commitment this Government has made is to support the rebuild and the recovery of Christchurch and Canterbury and this Government is 100 percent behind that. Those of you who have visited Canterbury or Christchurch will know that we are totally focused on the earthquake recovery. In fact I do not know what we did or what we talked about before the earthquakes. We worked together really well to manage the disaster and we are working together well to manage the recovery. But things are still tough. There are still difficult challenging issues out there but we are making progress. We are focusing on fixing homes because we want everybody safe and warm. We have worked on resettling people who had totally damaged properties and 5000 of the 7000-ish who have been in the red zone have now signed their documents and are ready to move on. We have also repaired 20000 houses. That is a little bit bigger than the size of Timaru. There are still 30000 houses in that process but we have also put accommodation villages there so people can move out of their houses move into that accommodation and then move back into their houses when they are finished. The good news is that Fletcher EQR—that is the earthquake recovery people—are telling us that they are completing 100 a day. 
We are getting very good at demolition. We have demolished about 1200 commercial buildings in the centre city with another 200 to go. That might sound negative but in actual fact it is really positive. You cannot rebuild until those buildings are down. And we are rebuilding fast as well. The stadium was up in 100 days. The new out-patients department at Christchurch Hospital was up in 150 days. And our new library has just opened this week. So we are trying to fix communities. It is actually horrifying the number of public and community buildings that are being repaired or coming down. We are also fixing infrastructure: the roads the pipes the sewers—things that you cannot see too much but things that are incredibly important. I have some statistics here: 41000 square metres of roading 1500 kilometres of water network assessed and 45 kilometres repaired. Overall there are 200 projects going on in Christchurch worth over $920 million. So if you get the feeling that there are roadworks going on in every street in town you are probably right. 
But it is not just building infrastructure that is important; we also need to focus on the health and well-being of Cantabrians. I really want to congratulate the health professionals in Christchurch who under very difficult circumstances with really broken facilities have delivered first-class health. What is more they are now dealing with the normal winter ills in the city as well. In terms of well-being I think Cantabrians are amazing. They are resilient they are positive and they are working hard to rebuild our city. Our economy is growing new businesses are opening and old businesses reopening every day unemployment is down and there are people actually moving to Christchurch to be part of the rebuilding. We are very pleased with the local plans that are under way and we are looking forward to the central Christchurch blueprint which will be announced next Monday. I have absolutely no doubt that Cantabrians can and will rebuild a better stronger and more environmentally friendly and beautiful city. Thank you.