Dalziel Lianne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Sitting date: 30 January 2013. Volume:687;Page:7630. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 In following on from a Minister who stood in the House and said that this was a Government that does could I just confirm that Christchurch feels that it has been done by this Government and particularly by that Minister the Minister of Education. We have schools in Christchurch now that are still recovering coming up to the second anniversary of the devastating February earthquake and wondering whether their school will remain open as a result of a decision that she will make. 
There was no prior consultation with communities or with schools about the decisions the Minister announced. I think that she has to think very carefully about how she performed in that role and the impact that it had on people who have suffered the consequences of hundreds and hundreds of aftershocks on top of the original devastating earthquakes which have certainly shaken up our city in a way that she has added to by shaking up our education system. 
Mr Key described as the final of the Government’s priorities the rebuild of Christchurch. With over 900 central city buildings already demolished it is absolutely the case that this is one of the largest economic undertakings in New Zealand’s history. But it is not just an economic undertaking. People are part of the equation and that seems to be missing from anything that has come from the Minister of Education that has come from the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery and that has come now from the Prime Minister himself. He did not mention people in his statement. 
In response to the devastation in the central business district the Government has announced its own blueprint which it has imposed on the city with no consultation and no engagement and which has anchor projects that we were never ever asked about with no business plan for any of them. This is a national Government not a business plan for these anchor projects with no costing attached to them. Most important there has been no decision made as to how they are going to be paid for. Who is paying for what? 
It is quite clear that the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery made promises to the Christchurch City Council that he has been unable to deliver on. The word is that the Minister promised that the Government would pay the difference between the council’s plan and the Government’s plans for things like the covered stadium and the convention centre which is four times the size of the one it replaces but then Cabinet said: “No we are not going to pay that difference. We are not handing that over to the Christchurch City Council.” That is what we have heard. 
I want someone from the Government to stand up and answer the question of how the difference is being paid for—the difference between what the Christchurch City Council budgeted for and the National Government’s blueprint for the Christchurch Central Development Unit. That is what I want to know. Who is paying the difference? How is it being paid? I just want to make the point that if the council pays for it they are the same people—a ratepayer in Christchurch is a taxpayer in New Zealand. So when you are divvying it up between the ratepayer and the taxpayer all you are doing when you choose the taxpayer to pay a significant proportion is dumping more of it on Christchurch and not spreading the burden across that wider catchment. 
This was not mentioned in the Prime Minister’s speech because it does not fit the narrative. The Government has not done the proper business planning that ought to be done in these circumstances and there is a lot of smoke and mirrors on many of the things that are going on in Christchurch at the moment with decisions being taken behind closed doors. 
There is a view that the Government is determined to get the council to sell our assets to pay for the blueprint. Certainly that is the methodology for the wider country. So let us sell Orion our revenue-generating asset without which we would not have recovered in the way that we did recover in terms of our electricity supply. We would not have recovered. If it had been a private company it would not have invested the $6 million that it invested prior to the earthquakes—many years ago—as a result of a Lifelines study that was done. That investment of $6 million on the small unreinforced masonry substations saved damage to $64 million worth of equipment. 
 The ratio of return on that investment is 10:1 and I believe that a private sector company would not have made that investment. But no the Government will for sure be trying to get our council to sell our revenue-generating assets so it can have the “Gerry Brownlee Park”. We are going to have the “Gerry Brownlee Stadium” in Christchurch. That might be called a cake tin although it will have a cover over it so it might actually be called something else. The mayor has exposed this in his book. I have read his book and I think people should read his book because there are elements in it that have never really been brought to public light and need to be questioned. The Minister and the Prime Minister need to be challenged on many of the things that that book contains. 
The Prime Minister’s statement included his oft-repeated commitment to standing beside the people of Christchurch. Well can I just say that when he says “standing beside” he actually means that metaphorically because Mr Key has not come to Christchurch to stand beside the people who live in Christchurch since the initial weeks after the February earthquake. He comes only to launch plans or open buildings or anything like that. He will not come and talk to the people. In fact he even passes correspondence that people in Christchurch write to him on to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery. If the Prime Minister knew anything about recovery as a process he would know how important it is to engage the community in the process itself. 
For the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery community engagement means asking the chief executive to tell the people what the Government has decided after it has decided everything. The key performance indicator for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority is the number of meetings held and the number of people who attend. It is not genuine community engagement. In fact the international groups that are looking at community resilience have stopped using the words “community engagement” because the phrase has been co-opted by so many Governments and they have replaced it with the language of “meaningful exchange”. 
There is no meaningful exchange in Christchurch. Government spin substitutes for genuine input into the redesign of our central business district. Government spin substitutes for effective communication with affected residents struggling with years of knowing or not knowing when they can get back into their houses and get on with their lives. Government spin substitutes for the truth for those whom the Government says it is helping to move on in the residential red zone. We are told that the offer is generous and that it is extremely fair but privately the Government admits that there are winners and losers. Well you cannot have it both ways. There are either winners and losers or it is fair. If it is fair there are not winners or losers. 
The Prime Minister goes through the offers that have gone out and those who have signed up in his statement as if that is the be-all and end-all and for the Prime Minister it is the statistics that are much more important than the people who are affected. He knows that there are many people who are out of pocket by over $100000. How is that generous and how is that fair? There are plenty of examples but these are actually the lucky ones. These are the ones who have been offered the 2007 or 2008 rating valuation. 
The Government used the schools debacle to hide the offer to the people with empty sections or who own commercial premises in the residential red zone. They thought that they would be offered the rating valuation. People who were part-way through building their houses were paid out even though they did not have fire insurance which is the route to Earthquake Commission cover which includes insurance for the land. 
The Government has been told by its own advisers that there is no insurance for land other than through this means. They had builders insurance to cover the completion of the house but the house was not completed so they did not have fire cover. The Government offered them 100 percent of their land value so those in the other categories—those with the bare sections and those with the commercial properties—thought: “Well that’s good. The Government has done that for those people. It will do that for us.” But under the cover of darkness under the cover of the announcement of the schools shake-up the Government offered those owners half the most recent rating valuations for the land. 
Why did it do that—why only half? Well the only answer that I can find is that it can. There is no transparency. There are no guiding principles. These simply go out the window when we are talking about a voluntary offer. But is it a voluntary offer? Is it a voluntary offer? Is it voluntary when the Government says to somebody: “You take this amount of money by this date and if you don’t accept it by this date then we will withdraw the offer and then at some stage in the future we will enter into a compulsory buy-back campaign and we will”—[ 
Interruption 
] I have not had a bell. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I am sorry. When I came in the clock was at 1 minute 30 seconds to go and my presumption was that a bell had been rung. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: No. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Whether it was or not that is not something I can now attend to. I will give the member 15 seconds to wind up. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The truth is that the Government says it is voluntary but it is not voluntary. The truth has been hidden in this matter and I believe that it is time that this Government took responsibility for telling the truth to the people of Christchurch and telling the truth to the people of New Zealand.