'THE NATION'

GERRY BROWNLEE - Earthquake Recovery Minister
Interviewed by DUNCAN GARNER

REBUILDING CHRISTCHURCH

Duncan The Christchurch earthquake continues to dominate the news, but now it's time to turn to the future. The government has given itself extraordinary legal powers when it comes to running the Christchurch quake recovery operation, and those powers are starting to attract a great deal of concern and attention. Canterbury residents are pretty sensitive to this, because as you may remember their democratically elected regional organisation, Environment Canterbury, was abolished and replaced by government appointees. Now the Quake Recovery Minister can override existing law, and will basically be able to rule Canterbury unopposed until 2016. So what's Mr Brownlee's end game? To find out good morning Mr Brownlee.

Gerry Good morning.

Duncan I just want to look at your vision for Christchurch and what it will look like in the future, because it is a city so aware of its history isn't it?

Gerry Can I just say I think that was a little sensational saying that you know you could rule Canterbury or I could rule Canterbury unopposed etcetera. We have a lot of brakes on those powers and they're all tied back to the purpose of recovery, and I think you know you can get excited about these things but in the end our consideration interest he people whose lives are…

Duncan I'll get you to talk about those powers during the interview.

Gerry My vision? My vision is for the city to be back to better than it was on February 22nd, the safest city in the southern hemisphere to live in, and we want to get there as quickly as we possibly can.

Duncan And what does it look like? What does a future Christchurch look like to you because you do have as I said, these powers? You are in the hot seat.

Gerry That’s not for me to determine. What we will be prescribing in the legislation which hasn’t yet been through parliament, is for the Christchurch City Council to lead the redevelopment of the CBD, and over a very short time period, 9 months, I hope that they come up with a design brief type approach, but that’s for them to determine. CERA (Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority) as an organisation will work with them on that, along with other groups in the wider community, and you know then you let the creative minds come in who can determine exactly what that look is about. But what it will be is a series of buildings that are seismically very very sound and probably low rise. I think they're two almost givens.

Duncan But also perhaps another given is that it would look very very different to perhaps the English city that we have seen over the last 100 or so years. Do you accept that this is going to be a different CBD where there will be, as Peter Townsend said to me this week, sort of villages within the CBD, but no CBD recreated like it was?

Gerry Well that’s to be determined, but I do think that the historic precinct from the Cathedral down to the Museum is likely to be rebuilt and will look at least similar. It won’t be the same, you wouldn’t rebuild the same, it's not strong enough. So all that’s gotta be determined but it's gotta be determined by the community by and large.

Duncan You saw in that piece there from Natasha Smith, I mean New Orleans is looking at a 20 year rebuild and they're six years into it. I've spoken to you before about this where all sorts of numbers have been put on this, 10, 20 years. What is your best estimate to those Christchurch residents watching this, about when their city will get that new normal again, when it will be rebuilt?

Gerry Well we should come to the residential areas in a few minutes if we can, but in the CBD I think it will be nine months to get a plan for how it's going to look, and then the building process is likely to start. No one's really probably going to do much before that because the land's still settling, and an extraordinary amount of demolition has to take place.

Duncan So how long? How long are you thinking about it in the CBD being back to normal?

Gerry Well you just ask yourself how long does it take to build a building of any reasonable size, and it's in excess of 12 months. So you multiply that out number all happening at once, I would think five years before we see the CBD in a state that it means that there aren’t too many vacant lots around the place.

Duncan Is 20 years too extreme?

Gerry Well I think what will happen is, beyond that first five years or so, the economics of other buildings will start to come into question, and so for many buildings even pre 1980 buildings, then I think there will be a redevelopment going on, and yeah I think it's not unreasonable to think it will be a longer period of time. But I think there is a transition between the initial rapid rebuild which is still rapid five years, and then the regeneration that might normally take place anyway.

Duncan And you brought up the subject before, I want to talk about this briefly before we move on to your new organisation, some of the powers it may or may not have. Ten thousand homes was the figure put on that will have to be demolished. Is that still your thinking?

Gerry We think that that's not unrealistic. So far in the rapid assessment programme, 177 houses very quickly assess for any of the emergency needs that might be existing, are they water tight, are there heating needs etcetera, and as the formal assessments come through what we're looking at it so far is we think, at this point, this early point, round about 11,000 that are…

Duncan Eleven thousand homes that are heading for the scrap heap?

Gerry No let me finish. Over the cap, in other words they have more than 100,000 dollars worth of damage. We think in that round about six and a half are probably going to be uneconomic to repair, and that number will creep up as there is a better analysis of those properties.

Duncan I want to look at this legislation that you're about to pass in parliament to get this Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority under way. If you tell someone that their house is for the scrap heap and has to go, and they want to appeal that. Will they have all the legal rights that they currently have under law, or will you override that in the legislation?

Gerry There will be an appeal process, all of the decisions that are made will be subject to judicial review, and when it comes to Orders in Council there’ll be a review panel that looks at those. But that appeal process is likely to be shortened, and this is something we have to determine yet for the legislation.

Duncan So you'll have a time limit on when they can appeal?

Gerry Yeah but look I think you know all sense is gonna break out here. If there are decisions made about residential areas and their long term viability, then you know you go back to the point that New Zealand is a very heavily insured country. That’s why it's such a big event.

Duncan They’ve also been able to go through the courts.

Gerry But let me finish.

Duncan No, this is very important because if people down here want to go through the courts and try and appeal some of your decisions, will they be able to go as far as they currently are able to under law, I mean right to the top, to the Supreme Court, or will you have a ceiling, will you bring in a new law within the law to say no they can't go that far?

Gerry All of that is to be determined.

Duncan You know the answer to this.

Gerry Well I don’t know the answer entirely to that. What I do know is that we are going to have appeal to the High Court and that will have a limited time on it. It's a matter of what standing that decision will then have, that we've got to have some further discussion on. But look I've gotta go back to that point about us being heavily insured because it's a valid one. In the end if land is declared unusable in the future for residential building, then those properties will become insurable and it's in no one's interest to in fact fight that decision.

Duncan I just want to make this clear for people who want to take you on in the courts. Are you going to stop them going so far?

Gerry I think there will probably be as I've already said, a limited appeal process, but it will be to the High Court.

Duncan So the answer to that is yes.

Gerry Well the answer is that we're still developing the bill, and parliament will make a determination about that.

Duncan I just want to look at some of your handling of this to end this interview, and there is a bit of concern about you in Christchurch, and I want to read a letter to the editor that you may or may not have seen in the Christchurch Press. It says that you’ve proved that your ambitions outstrip your abilities, you’ve lacked any sense of strategic vision, except for promoting the share prices in building companies. You're described as Colonel Blimp and you're overseeing the winter of Christchurch's discontent. The name is Matthew Ensor Marshlands. Are you embarrassed. I mean there are other criticisms. Are you embarrassed by that sort of criticism?

Gerry Absolutely not, if you weren’t being criticised you wouldn’t be doing anything, and I think you know in the end my focus entirely is on the people in Christchurch who've got very disrupted lives. People who you know thought that they had their live very sorted, and on two events now have had significant damage to their properties and quite frankly could face the loss of equity. I've said consistently since September 4 that it's the equity that people have in their properties that we have an obligation to protect, and that’s what drives me.

Duncan And some of those people are in the CBD of course that have businesses they haven’t been able to get in. Are you looking at a temporary relocation for them around the city so the CBD will be effectively relocated like it was in Napier. I know it was a different time, but where the government will stump up and pay for a temporary relocation for these people, so the CBD can continue in a different form?

Gerry We're looking at a lot of things, but Napier there were 16,000 people living in Napier at the time of the earthquake and most of them didn’t have telephones, so a different time.

Duncan Are you looking at something like this?

Gerry Yes we are and you know you’ve got Ngai Tahu's proposals out at Wigram, which was out of the blocks very quickly, very helpful. A lot of business from the central city has relocated already, probably into temporary temporary. And I think the next point that we've gotta get to is reducing the cordon down, so that the area of the city that’s isolated is much much smaller, and as has been happening progressively over the last two weeks, people getting in there to get records where it's safe for them to do so, so they can make some of those choices.

Duncan And you will pay for some of this relocation, you know putting them in say big sheds or big malls, or recreating a CBD?

Gerry I don’t think we're going to see the recreation of a CBD, I think we're going to see CBD activity move to a number of places around the city, much as we've seen some of extraordinary innovation in education.

Duncan People have done that on an ad hoc basis since the earthquake. Will you oversee to recreate or not?

Gerry I think there's a range of things that we have to do. Firstly, we do have to assess what the need is, we have to make sure that where it's possible to get people back into the CBD we do so, and I think the point that came through strongly for me in that interview from New Orleans, was the guy who said we've gotta tell the rest of the world that the city is not gone, it still there, it's still viable, and there's still a lot of activity. And when it comes to trying to get retailing back in some facilities would be useful, and I've certainly got my team looking at that at the present time.

Duncan I want to finish off because Clayton Cosgrove is going to be on shortly. My understanding is the casino has laid off a lot of staff this morning. Cosgrove said to me yesterday that you're looking at 20,000 more people going on to the dole in Christchurch in seven weeks when your rescue package ends. Is he beating that up, or is that likely, and again we've seen evidence with the casino?

Gerry We don’t know, we don’t know.

Duncan It's a scary thought though.

Gerry It is, and I think one of the issues that we've got to discuss with the casino is whether or not they can reopen with their license in another location if it's possible, because casino licenses are actually geographically specific, and we're having to do that with a number of things at the present time. It's why you need the sort of flexibility that the legislation's going to give us.

Duncan And just finally Clayton Gosgrove and those Labour MPs you know they do hold a number of electorates down in Christchurch, he'll be on shortly with Sean. Has he been helpful? Have the Labour MPs been helpful to your cause down there?

Gerry Well I think they’ve done a good job in their communities, as all MPs have in fact, and they’ve certainly been out there on the ground and that’s very obvious.

Duncan Any criticisms?

Gerry Oh look I think you know I'm not going to get into criticism because I think it's very very counter productive. What we've all gotta focus on is those people who have got homes that are broken busted and looking like they're going to lose equity. We've got a lot of work to do. We've gotta keep that focus on those people, also the children by the way, you know in education. If you want to see innovation in action, go to the education sector, quite extraordinary.

Duncan And they’ve had a bit to say on that as well this week. Mr Brownlee thanks for joining us in the studio today.

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