Dyson Ruth: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Dyson Ruth: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to take a call on Vote Canterbury Earthquake Recovery but it was a bit of a tragedy to have to curtail my colleague the Hon Clayton Cosgrove who was just warming up to the subject. 
I will begin by acknowledging the three significant days of quakes we have had in Canterbury over the last 12 months in September February and June. I particularly acknowledge the tragic loss that so many of our citizens have endured: loss of lives loss of limbs loss of homes and loss of jobs and sometimes all four within one family. We have a strength and resilience in Canterbury that we are very proud of but I think that some people have had to endure a lot more than other people really understand. So I pay tribute to the people who have gone through that and who have started rebuilding their lives again. We have had horrendously hard times behind us and I think we will have hard times ahead of us as well. But our communities are strong our communities are passionate and they are certainly committed to a recovery. 
I think it is important to put on the record that the key to a successful recovery—and I suppose this could be taken as advice to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery or as general comment but I am sure he will understand it and not need reminding about it—is harnessing the strength and the passion of our communities and turning that into a genuine contribution to what our region our city and our suburbs will look and feel like and what we will do in them in the future. If people see the devastation but feel that they have had their voices heard during the recovery of our city particularly on what happens in our communities they will have had an opportunity to say “We might have lost that but actually it wasn’t as good as we would have liked it anyway. We want to do something better and here are the sparks that will set us alight again.” Those people will remain committed to our region. 
I am concerned that at the moment the only thing that is holding many people in our city is the lack of a payout from the Earthquake Commission or their insurance company. Once they get that payout they might just say “Thanks very much. I am out of here.” We do not want to lose our skilled people from our region. We need them now more than ever so ensuring they are part of the recovery is also a very important part of keeping them there. 
The critical part to harnessing that passion and strength and turning it into a contribution is to give people information. Sometimes it is really hard—I have heard the Minister explain the dilemma and I agree with him—to pick the right time for sharing information. Often we will feel and of course it may be true that as soon as we tell the people what information we know they will want to know the answer to a question for which we do not have the answer. Well it is my strongly held view that we should do that anyway. We should tell people what we know as we know it. If they ask a question that we do not have the answer to we should say that we do not know the answer to that yet. They may get a little frustrated but they will not feel as disempowered as many currently do. 
Many people do not have information about what happened to their land. They do not understand the process that caused the liquefaction and the silt to destroy their suburb. They do not understand the land movement. They do not understand the rockfall risk or what happened to our cliffs. There are a whole lot of questions that are unanswered for people. We could provide that information in my view in a much clearer way than we have to date. 
There will be questions that the Minister does not have answers for yet. I think that is entirely acceptable. We cannot tell people what we do not know. I really urge the Minister to share as much as possible with everyone in our shared community of Canterbury the information that he does have. People feel stronger for knowing what is happening in their area. Information is empowering but knowing that somebody else has information that is not shared with everyone is very frustrating and disempowering. We have the opportunity now to share that information with people to give them the power that information provides. We have the opportunity to harness that passion and that commitment to our communities which is so evident in things week in week out.