Goff Phil: Ministerial Statements — Earthquake—Canterbury 
Goff Phil: Ministerial Statements — Earthquake—Canterbury 
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Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I join with the Prime Minister and I am sure all other members of the House in expressing our concern and our sympathy to the people of Christchurch and the people of the wider region of Canterbury for the trauma the difficulties and the damage that has been done to their lives. 
I had the opportunity to move around Christchurch on Sunday talking to a number of the different communities observing the damage done to their homes and hearing their stories. I today pay tribute to the courage and the resilience I saw from so many people across Christchurch. We talked to people who were worried about their neighbours’ well-being not complaining about themselves and were concerned to help others wherever they could. 
I remember visiting an area of Christchurch that I had never been to before called The Pines or Pines Beach which is just out of Kaiapoi. A whole street of houses had slipped off their foundations and sunk into the ground—some had sunk in as much as a metre—and houses had been torn apart by the force of the earthquake. A young couple was emptying out the possessions from their house which would most certainly be condemned and loading them on to a trailer. I went across to them feeling really bad that they were facing that plight and I expressed my concern for them. They smiled and said it was quite OK. They said they were lucky to live in this country where assistance will be available. They asked me to imagine what it would be like to be those people in Pakistan whose homes and livelihoods have been devastated and who face a future of famine and disease. I was really impressed by that couple who were not worried about the fact that they had lost their home—they had carpeted their living room a week earlier—but were thinking about others. 
I was pleased again to see this morning that students are going out in work parties to help others in the neighbourhood. People are concerned about their neighbours. I think it makes us proud to be New Zealanders when we see that selflessness on the part of people who have already lost so much in their own lives. 
I pay tribute to the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management and the emergency services. What I saw of their work was incredibly impressive. The Fire Service the police and all sorts of people were out doing their job. The contractors were out working and people from the lines company Orion were working around the clock reconnecting homes. Workers were repairing water mains. There have been something like 400 or 500 breaks to the water mains. They were all trying to get essential services back to people as quickly as possible. I acknowledge the work and commitment of the mayor and the ministry in that regard. 
Members might notice that my Labour colleagues from Christchurch are not in the House today and that is because they are out in their neighbourhoods in their constituencies trying to offer the help they can. Brendon and Philippa Burns lost their home. They cannot go back to their home. Brendon spent most of Sunday out with me around his own constituents seeing what he could do to help. I spoke to Lianne Dalziel on the phone today. She said she had had her first hot shower in a number of days. I said: “Good you can come back to caucus now!”. She has been out working in the area of Bexley where whole areas have been affected by liquefaction and homes have been destroyed. Clayton Cosgrove cannot get into his office in Rangiora because the area is fenced off because of the damage. But he is out there with his mobile office business as usual trying to get information to his constituents about the assistance that he can give them. Likewise Ruth Dyson is out there helping the areas in her constituency that have been badly damaged. 
It is important that we offer sympathy but it is even more important that we offer the people of Christchurch and Canterbury all the help that they need at this time. I have to say that the situation on the ground was worse than I had imagined from what I had seen through the news media. In some cases whole streets have been condemned; there is huge structural damage in other cases. People are uncertain about their future and their livelihood. 
I went down Edgeware Road in St Albans and spoke to a lady who was doing work on a home that had been badly damaged. She pointed across the road to her business which has been totally devastated. She has to worry not simply about getting her home back together but about what she does now that she has no income coming in yet the bills keep coming in. I say to the Prime Minister that I hope that we can work with Peter Townsend and the Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce to provide assistance for people who have lost their livelihoods and their ability to pay wages to their workers. Surely if we can give a helping hand to investors we can give a helping hand to people who through no fault of their own have lost everything. 
I believe that the House will approach this crisis in a spirit of total cross-party support for the people of Christchurch. There is no room for party politics in this crisis. That is why the Opposition has offered not to hold question time today because our combativeness across the floor of the Chamber is not appropriate at a time when we need to show unity towards helping the people of Christchurch. 
I believe that all New Zealanders support the strongest possible assistance to the people of Christchurch. All of us will feel that there but for the grace of God our own communities could have gone. I think we need to err on the side of generosity. I think we need to provide people with certainty about their entitlements. People are stoical but they are also tired stressed and often traumatised. On behalf of the Labour Opposition I offer our support for any necessary initiatives to help people in that situation. 
I say finally that we should be grateful that things are not worse than they are. If that quake had occurred not at 4.35 a.m. but at 4.35 p.m. we would have seen scores of casualties and inevitably a large number of fatalities. Shops whose frontages have fallen on to the road would have crushed anybody trying to get out of those shops. The devastation would have been terrible. Another important thing is that we had proper property standards regulations and buildings codes so that in an earthquake the same size as Haiti’s we have not lost people in the way that that sad country has. 
To all Cantabrians I offer Labour’s support concern and commitment to help them through this adversity.