Brownlee Gerry: Financial Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrownlee Gerry: Financial Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16270. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery): I think that was a deplorable speech. What I have to say is that in the 3½ years since those earthquakes Labour members who have repeatedly said that they were out there with the people—working with the people empathising with the people and dealing with the people—have made no more than five requests for assistance through the Earthquake Commission. Five requests—I have the record here. I am happy to table it. Repeatedly it is a—Hon Ruth Dyson: That’s a lie and you know it.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order!Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I am sorry Ms Dyson it is not a lie. It is an undeniable fact—Hon Ruth Dyson: No it’s a lie.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Members know that they must not use that term in connection with another member. Members know that.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It is an undeniable fact that only five cases have been put before the Earthquake Commission in the last 3½ years. Plenty of tub-thumping about people’s bad circumstances but five cases only.Hon Ruth Dyson: Liar liar liar.Hon Michael Woodhouse: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I do apologise to the Minister in the chair but I cannot sit here and listen to Ms Dyson continue to use those terms time and again after being implored by you not to.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I am sorry. I did not hear the member but I will now say that the member will desist. If she continues to use the words that I admonished her for she will leave the Chamber. Members know the rules.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: So not only have there been only five cases brought by Labour members of Parliament to the Earthquake Commission in the last 3 years but two of them have been brought to the commission byPoto Williams who has been in the place for only 6 months. So what we saw the other day was the most despicable political manipulation of a vulnerable person in Canterbury. Did they tell us when they found out that that poor woman was in that bad circumstance? No. They went and organised a photo opportunity for David Cunliffe and Clayton Cosgrove and Ms Dyson to turn up there and grandstand on the misery of that woman. That is utterly despicable and it is typical of the way Labour members have behaved in Christchurch for the last 3½ years—utterly utterly despicable behaviour.The comments about the size of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority I find quite amusing. Firstly it was never meant to be just a small policy shop. There wasa massive gap in the capability of the Christchurch City Council to deliver on any recovery plans. So I would simply ask Labour members this: tell us what work the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority should stop—tell us what work the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority should stop. And what do we get? Blank faces and more ranting—blank faces and more ranting. Just tell us one thing that the authority should not be doing.There has been a huge job done in Canterbury by the workers who are part of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. There are some 24 recovery plans in place. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority leads 14 of those. It sits alongside community organisations that lead others. There has been a massive effort to re-zone land and to make it safe for people to occupy. Yes I have to say it is disappointing—again that word—because things could have gone more quickly. But the courts have had far too much to say in my opinion and have in fact not understood what natural justice is for people who are waiting even now to find out what they are doing. [Interruption] Now you see the sort of reaction that is being exhibited over there—ranting screaming raging mock anger. That does not do anything for anyone who has got a difficult circumstance to deal with.I say again that I have got the evidence here and I am going to table it—only five complaints to the Earthquake Commission by Labour Party members. There were two from Ms Dyson one from Ms Dalziel and two fromPoto Williams who to her credit in only 6 months has managed to get those complaints up. It was a shocker the other day. To use that 85-year-old woman in the way the Labour Party did was simply outrageous. There was not a darned thing that the photo opportunity with David Cunliffe could achieve—nothing. And did they tell us how long they had known it? I understand they knew for 3 months. They knew before Christmas that that woman was living in those disastrous circumstances. Did they tell us? No they sat on it because this was an opportunity for David to come down and do some big grandstanding over this.I am going to seek another speaking slot [Bell rung]. Mr Chairman?The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The Hon Gerry Brownlee.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: There are over 55000 damaged homes that have now been completed through the Earthquake Commission’s earthquake recovery programme. I take the Committee back to just immediately after these disasters when there were three important things that were said to us. Those things were firstly that our population would fall and start to leave the city; secondly that real estate values would fall dramatically and perhaps take up to a decade and a half to recover; and thirdly that we would have widespread unemployment and other social deprivation that is typical of disasters around the world. Partly because of the Government’s response but mostly because of Cantabrians’ response to what the Government has done in this process we do not have any of those statistics facing us at the present time. We have got a growing population in Canterbury. We have in Canterbury the lowest unemployment of anywhere in New Zealand and we have real estate prices rising to a point where some would say it is now a problem.The one thing that is absolutely certain is that if people are to live good lives they need to have income. The Government moved very quickly after the earthquakes to put in place the wage subsidy—an amount that meant that any employer could claim up to $500 per worker per week while that business was reorganising itself to get back on its feet. That held employment in Canterbury. It gave time for businesses to move into new premises and to relocate in order to offer their services or their products or whatever it might have been. The consequence of that is that we have had record levels of exports out of Canterbury over the last four or five quarters and we have an economy that is now growing at close to 7 percent. All augurs well for the future of Canterbury. Theremaining Earthquake Commission properties that are still problematic are in fact mostly multiple units—there may be up to in one case 43 units on one title—with a range of insurers all trying to work out who pays for what. In the future we will have to look at land tenure we will have to look at conveyancing rules and we will have to look at the way in which bodies corporate are required to operate in order to ensure this disaster does not happen anywhere else in New Zealand.To suggest that there is total doom and gloom in Canterbury is quite wrong. There is despair at the inability—it would seem after 5 months—of the new council to get on top of its bureaucracy. I say again to Labour members that if there is anything they can definitely demonstrate that the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority should not be doing then I want to know about it because I cannot think of one thing it is doing that is a duplication of council efforts or a duplication of any other efforts. I can think of a lot of well-meaning NGOs that want to be doing more in this space but the reality is that there has to be the resource available. This Government has not been stinting in making money and resource available to move things forward.I would like to take time if it was available to talk about some of the Earthquake Commission cases that have made their way into the media in recent times. I would like to talk about some of the Southern Response cases that have made their way into the media in recent times. All I would say is that if people want to go to the media and complain that they are not being fairly treated they have an obligation to put all of the information on the table so that everyone can see exactly how they are being treated. I suggest there would be many throughout New Zealand who might struggle to understand that there was mistreatment involved in many of those cases. It is a big job and no one is resiling from that. It is a big job for the insurers. It is a big job for the Earthquake Commission.One thing that I must comment on is a Marsh report just recently saying that private insurers in Canterbury have performed worse than in many other disasters in the world. The subtle difference but the extremely important difference is that we had 21 months of shakes before we got a 3-month period when the insurers could start their work. Further to that we have got a penetration rate of insurance in New Zealand of over 98 percent. No other jurisdiction in the world has that level. So yes it might be easy to say: “Oh well the insurers have done their work somewhere else.” The fact is they had a lot fewer insured.Report noted.