Dalziel Lianne: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 03 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1631. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 When the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority was established it was at a time when it was replacing the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission which the Government had set up after the September earthquake. After February the Government felt that a stronger body was required and that was true. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Commission simply did not have the powers that were needed under the circumstances of the February earthquake. It was insufficient. It was a coordinating body a recommendatory body and it simply did not have the powers. But it did have one thing that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority does not have and that is independence. So it was an independent body that did not have sufficient powers—a powerless independent body. The Government replaced it with a powerful body that has no independence—it is a Government department.  
Just prior to its establishment our then leader Phil Goff wrote to the Prime Minister John Key and suggested that if the Government really did want to do things well in Christchurch and to have a genuine bipartisan approach to rebuilding Christchurch which the Government had said it wanted to achieve for it to be meaningful there had to be full engagement before decisions were made and consulting on proposals when they are ready to go to Cabinet does not make the resulting decision bipartisan. I think that is a very good point for us to note.  
Then he went on to say that Christchurch requires a separate recovery model so that the Christchurch City Council can get on with business as usual with key personnel seconded to a separate authority which is given all the powers to implement the recovery component of the city council’s civil defence emergency management obligations. Unfortunately the Government did not listen to us and that is because it does not understand international best practice when it comes to recovery. I know that that is the case because I listened to the Minister when he responded to a contribution that I made to the panel on Radio New Zealand National’s  
Afternoons  
with Jim Mora on 10 February this year when he suggested that what I wanted in terms of community engagement when I was talking about international best practice was that I was suggesting we sit around and play guitars and sing “Kumbaya” over it which I thought was very funny. I mean he is a very clever speaker when it comes to making humorous points such as that but this is a serious matter. What he told us in that same public statement was that he can rewrite the evidence he can rewrite the experience of the past when he said: “I think we are actually rewriting international best practice down here on a day-by-day basis.”  
I just want to remind the Committee that international best practice comes from the experience of failure and success. When things work well we learn from those but when things fail we learn from them as well. If we do not learn from failure we condemn ourselves to repeat it over and over again. What the Minister was actually telling the people of New Zealand was not that they were rewriting international best practice on a day-by-day basis in Christchurch. What he was telling New Zealand was that they were making it up day by day and they are getting it so terribly wrong. The people of Christchurch are finally starting to cotton on to the fact that this Government has no idea what it is doing.  
I want to tell the Committee that the Office of the Prime Minister’s Science Advisory Committee headed by the exceptionally brilliant professor Sir Peter Gluckman has done an exceptionally brilliant briefing paper to the Prime Minister and I would like the Minister in the chair the Minister of Education to actually respond to this paper on the psychosocial consequences of the Canterbury earthquakes. He says this: “It would appear that key to minimising this phase of anger and frustration which becomes inevitable when people are treated the way they are treated by this Government is the promotion of local empowerment engagement by working closely in a collaborative way with the affected population in coordinating and co-leading the response effort. If the population do not sense this is happening then the phase may well be longer and the symptoms of anger and frustration more intense.”  
Sir Peter Gluckman knows exactly what he is talking about when he is talking about evidence and international best practice. Unfortunately the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority has not been set up to undertake that approach at all. I understand that tomorrow the Government is going to announce a new direction for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to take over that role from the council.