O'Rourke Denis: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Rourke Denis: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 29 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7539. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 The Government has made the Christchurch rebuild a top priority and it says that the domestic construction boom will be centred on the $30 billion Christchurch rebuild. It will use it as a generator of economic activity while at the same time using the Canterbury earthquakes as a reason for the economic hole we are in. But it was only a few days ago 2 years after the earthquakes that the Government finally announced a new apprenticeship scheme. The $30 billion cost of the Christchurch rebuild will be a huge economic stimulus for employment in building and construction and it is no exaggeration that the success of the rebuild and New Zealand’s economic future will be closely aligned but we cannot afford for this opportunity to be squandered by political mismanagement. 
The Government has been slow off the mark on issues that were obvious soon after the earthquakes. It is a case I think of too little too late. After 2 years of policy stagnation growing unemployment and a mass exodus of workers overseas the Christchurch rebuild is set to accelerate only from mid-2013. The first lot of apprentices finishing the Government’s newly announced apprenticeship scheme will come on to the market 3 years too late—far too late. The opportunity has passed for the scale of employment benefits that might have been achieved. 
Why did the Government not act a lot sooner—in 2012 unemployment numbers escalated to 175000—especially in youth unemployment where the apprenticeship scheme could have soaked up some of those numbers? The mass exodus over the last 2 years includes 9000 Kiwi tradesmen mostly to better work opportunities in Australia. Over the same period 6000 migrant tradesmen have arrived leaving a shortfall still of 3000. Temporary migrant work visas present associated problems such as lax background checks recruitment agency scams overstayers guest workers with no commitment to New Zealand and their earnings going offshore. 
Kiwi workers should not have to compete with guest workers who undercut wages and downgrade work conditions and compete with workers from low-wage economies adding only to the exodus to Australia. Over 12000 temporary migrant work visas were granted for last year for the Christchurch rebuild mostly for workers from Britain Ireland and the Philippines. Recruitment packages included airfares financial services accommodation a buddy system monthly social events and so on. None of this was afforded to Kiwi workers. Only this week has the Government announced the Canterbury Skills and Employment Hub to strengthen labour market testing for guest workers; again too little far too late. 
Kiwi workers should always have been at the forefront of the queue. Why did it take 2 years for the Government to act? Given the Government’s poor record on visa control what confidence can there be that the Government’s new initiatives are robust enough to combat endless migration scams? Also what new structures and resources are being put in place to ensure that the $30 billion injection into the economy advances Kiwi employment and not migrant guest workers? Last year 138000 guest workers were granted visas to work in New Zealand with no labour market testing. The result was that many jobs were lost to Kiwi workers. 
I want to go on to make some comments about the red zone policy for Christchurch which I think has been a bit of a disaster. The Government can no longer sustain some of its shoddy policy-making over those decisions. In New Zealand it has always been accepted that if the Government compulsorily takes land especially residential land then it must pay the fair market price for that land. Secondly it is a matter of simple fairness that the Government will not take advantage of disaster situations to acquire land at unfair value. 
For practical reasons using the last rating value was acceptable but it should have been only a starting point. The Christchurch 2007 values and the Kaiapoi 2008 values were already out of date in 2010. Rating values are far too inaccurate to be fair so the Government’s first mistake was not to allow a challenge to rating values where they were not a fair assessment of property value. That was especially unfair where significant improvements had been made since the date of the valuations. 
If that was not bad enough then consider the plight of people who had bare sections or uninsured homes on red zoned flat land. The Government’s offer was only 50 percent of the rating value for the section. That is outrageous; effectively a legalised fraud because of the circumstances. These people could not sell their land except to the Government and could not build a house or live there. A red zoned bare-section owner would get only 50 percent for their section when a next door neighbour would get 100 percent. That is illogical inexplicable unfair and an abuse of power by this Government. 
Gerry Brownlee said that this was justified because there would have been land damage. That is poppycock. There was land damage for both bare sections and those with homes built on them. He also said that 50 percent was fair and that he would not reconsider. Well he should reconsider now that it has been revealed that Government officials had advised the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery to give bare-section owners and uninsured home owners the same treatment as insured home owners—that is 100 percent of the land value. The Minister dumped that advice and substituted his own guess of 50 percent of the land value. That in my view is a substantial abuse of power. Commercial land owners in the red zone have been similarly badly treated. 
Finally the performance of Government agencies involved in the recovery has been lacklustre. The Earthquake Commission is taking far too long to repair homes. Insurance companies are also taking far too long and the Minister has failed to do what he said he would do which was to get the insurers moving on with the repair and rebuilding of homes. The use by the Earthquake Commission of only one project manager Fletcher’s has been another bad mistake. It does not have any competition and can virtually do what it likes. The central city rebuilding is also taking far too long. Demolitions after 2 years are still incomplete. Over the whole city basic infrastructure repairs are far from finished. It seems that the lowest priorities in the west are getting first attention. Roads and other horizontal infrastructure are still left with only temporary repairs if that in the east of the city. 
The end result has been a litany of bad policy-making by the Government and substandard desperately slow and inadequate performance by agencies. The Government has already failed on the Christchurch rebuild as one of its top priorities. I give it barely three out of 10—not even a pass rate. It has made a mess of it. It needs to change gear and get the recovery going.