Burns Brendon: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading 
Burns Brendon: Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill — Procedure First Reading Second Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:13917] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 Ten days ago before dawn life changed for me my family my city my electorate my province and I think probably our country. Our story is not unfamiliar and is not unusual. We were thrown around in our beds we managed to get downstairs with our daughter to crouch under our dining table and waited for the aftershocks to subside. As light came through the scale of the damage became apparent. There was a slash a metre deep and half a metre wide across our backyard a chimney through our bathroom only metres away from where we had been sleeping and damage across the house. That is not unusual across Christchurch or Canterbury. Many people have been through it and many people are in much worse situations than we are. My first thought after we got out was for my poor sister in Wellington. I thought that if the earthquake was as big as this in Christchurch how big could it have been in Wellington? I called her and was reassured to know in fact that although they had felt it Wellington had not been damaged. 
The damage across my electorate of Christchurch Central has been well featured in the media and much of that has been on the central business district which of course has been hard hit. I will talk a little more about some other parts of the electorate. We have lost several community shopping centres in St Albans and a community centre has lost a wall and may be facing demolition. The Coptic Christian church on Edgeware Road has lost its entire façade both for the church and the community hall behind it. In Avonside which is probably the part of my electorate that has been hit hardest it is like a war zone. Many houses have been abandoned. When I wandered through on Monday talking to people a chap showed me his pristine house. It was as neat as a pin but basically its back had been broken by the quake. There was a huge jagged slash through his backyard and his heart was broken. He had lived in that house since 1963 when he was a boy. 
The good news was that out in the street a dozen or more students and other young people from Rolleston were moving the sand with spades and wheelbarrows and by the time I came back to Avonside a day or two later with more volunteers who had rung me begging for work all of the sand in Avonside had been moved out on to the street and carted away by the council. That is an indication of how rapidly some of the recovery efforts swung into action. 
It has been harrowing sometimes to hear the stories in Avonside and in other parts. Men of a certain age do not often burst into tears but that has happened more than once as I have taken my caravan out to try to provide a base to give advice to constituents who have been affected by the quake. Stories come through about houses broken in half and about people with no water and no power but I have to acknowledge the response of the emergency services. The restoration of water and power was truly remarkable. By the end of the first week just about everybody had their power and water back on and given the scale of the emergency that is a truly truly remarkable achievement. 
There was a poll quite recently that acknowledged that New Zealanders were amongst the most generous people on the planet. I think that the last 10 days in Christchurch and Canterbury have been absolutely underscoring of that. We just have to look at the students and at the turn-outs at the welfare centres as an example. The welfare centres are staffed by volunteers—generally local yes but I bumped into a Red Cross crew at the Linwood welfare centre that was from Whangarei. Others had come from Timaru from Nelson and from Blenheim. There were St John members from all over the city and beyond. Government departments had staff there providing advice on accommodation on welfare on trauma and on stress. They have all done an amazing job and we need to acknowledge just what a generous people we are. It has been truly impressive to see how quickly help swung into action the depth of it and the support that people have provided to other New Zealanders. 
I wanted to talk for a moment about liquefaction which is a new word that everybody now has discovered and probably 10 days ago most of us would not have known exactly what it meant— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Aaron would have. 
BRENDON BURNS 
: Yes. I acknowledge a very good summary on liquefaction by Environment Canterbury from a couple of years ago. One of the things the report from Environment Canterbury said was that liquefaction has the potential to strike just about anywhere across Christchurch. It is very dependent on the level of groundwater. We have had a very wet winter so we paid a heavier price than we might have because of the fact that it has been a very wet winter. Also we need to be careful when we start talking about suburbs and potentially not rebuilding them given the fact that much of the city is subject to potential liquefaction other than the good rock of Port Hills and of course so is much of New Zealand if we think about it. Many of our cities are built on the coast and on the river fringes which seem to be the most at risk from liquefaction. So I think that rather begins to dissipate any notion that we will not be rebuilding in most areas of Christchurch because liquefaction is nothing particularly new. It has been there and there are building techniques that can deal with the worst parts of it so there is certainly no case for abandoning suburbs. 
I think there is a message in all of this for every New Zealander. We are all at some risk from earthquakes. We all need to prepare. Every family needs to have a plan a civil defence kit some stored fresh water and food. I say that as somebody who grew up in Wellington and then moved to Marlborough which are rather more quake-prone areas one thought than Christchurch. I think we know now that a quake can strike anywhere at any time. I think we have also shown over the last 10 days that given the nature of our buildings our building codes and the regulation we have in place we can come through these things with absolutely minimal if any loss of life as we have shown because we are so much better prepared than many nations are for these things. 
In the central business district part of my electorate it is the heritage buildings that very much make our city. Extraordinarily not a lot has been done—and I am talking pre-quake—to protect them. Much of what has been badly damaged by last weekend’s quake and the aftershocks since have been those unreinforced double-storied—sometimes higher—brick buildings from the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Yet some of the more iconic buildings have come through extraordinarily well such as Christchurch Cathedral which seems to have come through without much damage. I thought until last night that our iconic Arts Centre had come through pretty lightly. But at a meeting last night Dr Ian Lochhead one of our eminent architectural lecturers said that he thought with a “suck of the thumb” figure that the damage might be $10 million on that one site alone. I think that rather illustrates some of the challenges we will face in the central business district of Christchurch Central. The Arts Centre chair Ken Franklin at another meeting last night identified 25 buildings—just 25 and many of those heritage buildings across the central business district were assessed quite recently—and the estimate was that there would be the thick end of $1 million each to earthquake-strengthen those buildings. That is of course not counting any repairs. 
So we will have to take stock of some our damaged infrastructure. We will have to decide what can be saved what needs to be saved and what must be saved and make some decisions on that. Obviously this legislation is assisting and facilitating with that. My big question is: if we replace buildings which we will do in many instances what will we do to ensure that those buildings that will replace those wonderful heritage buildings that cannot be saved will be built with some grace and with some sympathy to what has been lost? I think that is an important challenge ahead of us as a Parliament and as a region and city. 
This Canterbury Earthquake Response and Recovery Bill is about the rebuilding in infrastructure terms but there are many other issues we face. We have issues about jobs. There has been a commendable bipartisan effort by unions and employers in Canterbury that has been wonderful to see and I think we need to acknowledge how well they have been working together. It is an example to us in this House that they have worked so darn well. 
I finish by saying that my mother went through the Blitz in Liverpool and I now feel like I have some understanding of what she went through. Of course that city was rebuilt sometimes not in the best fashion I would have to acknowledge and certainly the scale of damage was much bigger than what Christchurch faces. But we now have the chance to rebuild our city. Let us get the support of New Zealanders. We will come through this. The best thing as my colleague Ruth Dyson said is that New Zealanders can now plan a holiday in Christchurch. The city is almost all operational apart from the occasional building sites. We would like people to come and visit and pay respects to our city enjoy themselves and know that Christchurch the “city that shines” will continue to shine throughout.