I was taken aback by a recent Stuff story expressing hope that 2016 would see central Christchurch finally rise from its earthquake ruins.
It’s deeply disturbing to think that a full five years after the quakes vast swathes of the city centre remain in ruins.
Less than two years after the devastating 1931 Napier earthquake the city held a “New Napier” celebration of their rebuild but it’s impossible to see Christchurch being ready for anything like this for several more years.
Napier was left with just a single city building left unscathed (the Public Trust Office) but the city was rebuilt and most businesses were up and running within two years.
What’s gone wrong here?
I’ve seen some people blame the slow process of democracy as the holdup in Christchurch – if only!
The previous Christchurch City Council came up with a grand masterplan for the city reconstruction in November 2011 through an extraordinary process of democratic consultation (remember Share an Idea? – all traces now erased from the Council website).
The overall framework should have become the blueprint for a “New Christchurch” but it was scuppered by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) under pressure from the government and corporate business interests.
The government has made it clear it wants a private sector led recovery with government and Council as facilitators. There was to be minimal involvement from what the pedlars of power regard as meddling bureaucrats. We were told that unleashing the much-claimed efficiency of the private sector would see the city transformed more quickly than a central democratic plan could facilitate.
So why is so much of the area within the four avenues still a barren landscape? Why is the city hamstrung by private sector paralysis?
The answer we are now told is a lack of business confidence. We are not talking about small, local businesses here which rolled up their sleeves and got moving with energy and determination as soon as the shocks subsided. With big businesses (often foreign owned) it’s a different story. They and their foreign backers are afraid of the big open spaces and worried that if they start building too soon they won’t make decent returns early enough so each is waiting for the others to act.
Having rejected our democratic plans for the city these nervous nellies are now waiting for us to build their confidence before they will commit to the rebuild.
As a result the government and corporate business interests are putting pressure back on the Council to make decisions to reassure the hand-wringers.
In particular they want the Council and government to commit to building several extravagant anchor projects such as a metro sports facility, convention centre, stadium, cultural centre, performing arts centre etc.
These would be nice to have but they are not priorities for Christchurch citizens. In Napier similar grandiose plans for an entertainment hall, theatres and hotels were abandoned in favour of getting the basics right first.
It’s not surprising the government backs these corporate priorities. They have agreed to “help out” the city by paying for the convention centre but they have backed away from providing as much of the cost of horizontal infrastructure as originally promised. The money the government saves here will likely be transferred to the convention centre while we pick up the hundreds of millions in extra spending needed on sewers and tarseal.
Instead of standing up for Christchurch City priorities and insisting on a people-led recovery our Council simply stumbles on blindly. To pay for the big corporate-comforting projects our elected representatives have approved eye-watering rate increases over the next three years and have begun to sell our assets (euphemistically called “capital-raising” by the mayor) to help pay for them.
The city must also fund the $285 million shortfall from the refusal of private insurers to pay out the insured value of Council properties damaged in the earthquakes.
The corporate sector is taking us for a ride with the not-so-subtle implication that unless the people of Christchurch pay massive rate increases and sell our city assets they will continue to drag their heels on the rebuild.
It’s time for the mayor and Council to stand up for the people of Christchurch and rein in corporate expectations that we citizens will suffer huge financial pain while big businesses avoid the financial risks and get the gains.
Instead of a people-led recovery we are facing a slow, corporate-led stranglehold over the city’s future – bankrolled by the rest of us for many years to come.
Neither the huge rate increases nor the sale of assets are necessary if the Council sticks to working on the priorities for Christchurch citizens. The capital building programme in particular needs to be rescheduled so that rate increases remain at the rate of inflation and we retain our city assets in public hands.
We elected our mayor and Council to stand up for us rather than fall over to a National Party corporate agenda for Christchurch. We deserve much better.
(First printed in Christchurch Press 21/1/16)
+100 …Great Post..and I along with many other readers of The Press was extremely disappointed when The Press discontinued John Minto’s regular column. It was always clear concise and did not pull its punches.
+100
City and district council operate for the benefit of council officers and behind-the-scenes opportunists and rort-operators. The actual needs of ordinary people are always given a low priority or no priority.
Christchurch is a special case in that it should never have been built where it was (on a swamp), and rebuilding it at the same location is utterly ludicrous because increasingly fast sea level rise will put most of the rebuilt infrastructure under sea water in the not-too-distant-future.
If there had to be a rebuild of Christchurch it needed to be on much higher, much more stable ground, away from the present location.
However, that is not the way the rort system -which dominates most aspects of NZ life these days- operates.
When the earthquakes struck and the damage was caused, I calculated that it would take 40 years to get Christchurch fully back to what it was pre-earthquakes.
I can see now I was wrong.
It’s going to take even longer if ever.
Mayor Dalziel has never stood firm (nor up to) anything in her life. It is a very forlorn hope to expect some leadership from her and her council forever locked in the illusion that neo-liberalism still holds all the answers to our woes.
The grand Fire Sale (earthquakes sale?) of our revenue gathering assets simply cuts off earnings from us all and makes the rebuild even more laggardly.
The ‘efficiency’ of the private sector is a myth and a calumny; ask anyone who uses phone, power, public transport, public health et al.
I will be long dead and buried in the rubble of this city before it is anywhere near the city I arrived in in 1972.
Yet another albatross around Brownlee’s large red neck…
The inner city is an on going mess. We lost that battle long ago. Many of us too exhausted with the 5+ year battle to get our own lives, homes, finances back on track to care very much what they did to the city centre. They locked us out and demolished it years ago… let them have it but also let them pay for it.
I think, for me, the most telling point was when I was (taking a break from the mess of my post earthquake life) in Hamilton in 2012 and I watched the release of the “100 day plan” on TV. It was a typical miserable, sleety, CHCH winter night. Inside the great and good were chortling and smirking over their glorious plan all warm and safe. Outside were residents protesting in the cold and wet over the insurance, EQC debacle which was taking their lives apart…. and so it went on, and on, and still goes on.
But there is something that is more important to the future of the city and a battle we really can’t lose. The future of the Red Zone. Will it be the Avon Otakaro park? A city to sea green corridor along the river, restored wetlands, mahinga Kai, sports areas for ordinary people, river walks, urban fruit gardens, flood water storage areas etc, taking us all the way to the seaside suburb of Brighton.
This is my dream and the dream of so many others. To realise this I would accept some asset sales and I’d feel the burden of rates increase might well be justified.
http://www.avonotakaronetwork.co.nz/
Excellent piece John. Thanks for putting it up on TDB, keeping the issue out there. After all these years, it’s a total disgrace.
Seems the so called “rebuild” is more to suit the wallets of Brownlee, FJK and their corporate construction company cronies, including the obscenely overpaid CERA team, than the victims of the Christchurch earthquakes! In true NatzKEY style, it’s a game to be played for personal gain and the longer it can be stretched out the better for them all. More profit to be made that way!
The bottom line for these cretins, even after several disasters, is profit! No profit to be seen in the immediate future, then it’s a case of bugger the Cantabrians still waiting!
At the 2014 election, some 4 years after the first earthquake and with glacial progress on the rebuild the good people of Christchurch voted National in droves. That said to me they are more than happy with the malaise and the general lack of direction that is the rebuild and will tolerate it for however long National want to piss about!
Yes they did indeed Xray and I’m totally baffled by it. Considering how far up the backsides of banking the tories are and that the delays and stagnation are purely the result of international banks.
I guess it’s the same reason the nation returned the tories last time in a general election and most likely will next time.
Christchurch doesn’t have the monopoly on middle class idiocracy…
Yes, National was re-elected in 2014, but that was a lot to do with the demographic changes that happened very swiftly after the EQ.
Despite our media’s reports, the middle class and property owners were more likely to stay in Chch, and the poor and marginalised were more likely to leave. Our media of course ignored the plight of the marginalised and those likely to vote National were the ‘undeserving victims’ who remain in the news today.
Chch experienced politically what most larger cities have experienced over the past 20 years – a shift to the political right.
Also, those moving to the city often came in for higher paying work and were more than happy with the disaster-capitalist orgy led by Brownlee.
And let’s not forget Labour offered us nothing much. The Kiwi Insure was a dud and Labour gave power to Brownlee (Chch is like NZ and sees NZ politics as a two horse race, even though we have MMP).
Many Chch residents were broken and many even thought National’s 100 Day Plan would eventuate.
There are many factors the led to National taking most of Chch in 2014 – and like most cities Chch will remain right-wing for a while.
“What’s gone wrong here?”
– Initially – the Brownlee scorched Earth policy of leveling everything (as opposed to say demolishing to a safe height, then allowing things to grow organically from there.
– Then the corporatist approach to everything – starting with insurance companies and then our corporatised gubbamint (central and local) – complete with the cronyism and bullshit artists earning big money for doing sweat fuck all.
– Risk managed approach to all (Funny how the private sector are supposed to take risks and embrace change – their “change agents” supposedly – yet they’re amongst the most risk averse there is)
And for those above that claim it is disingenuous to compare ChCh with Napier – its also disingenuous not to recognise that we’re more than half a century on from Napier – with better technology, better tools and what should be a much faster means of reconstruction.
I’m still at a loss to understand why there could not have been the OPTION of simple land swaps in certain areas (i.e. whereby the insurance would cover the cost of ‘improvements’ only, and either local or central government did a straight swap of suitable land for fucked land) – NOTE – I say the OPTION.
Let’s face it, the insurance industry have proven themselves to be utterly incompetent – aided and abetted by the government they lobby
Oh Jesus! I just noticed the picture accompanying this piece!
Looking busy and looking concerned – albeit from a position of extreme comfort, and no doubt from a position from where there’s going to be an earn with this ‘rebuild’ (going forward).
Quite obviously, it’s in this gummint’s (it’s members) interests to milk it for all its worth (going forward)
I’m not sure an alternative gummint (presumably under a majority of Labour) will be up for investigating the various scams – they’ll have to get past the Mathew Hooten style chants of ‘witch hunt’ first of all.
I’d be up; for watching them squeal like stuffed pigs when an outcome showed cronyism, conflicts of interest, monetary gain, lobbying, an independent analysis of the various reports the Tzar Brownlee acted on (going forward); etc.
I’d worship the ground a government trod on if they had the balls to hold them to account, but that’ll be way past my getting death
Christchurch suffered from two disasters – one was the earthquakes and the other having this government in power when they happened.
The Greens had the best idea – a small tax on all New Zealanders for a limited period of time.
One of the big differences between Napier and Christchurch is that it would have been unthinkable in New Zealand in the 1930s to expect Hastings and Napier councils to pay for half of their rebuilds. It was automatically understood that government should pay.
After the earthquakes Civil Defence took over our infrastructure, including our public transport. They passed on control of our public transport to CERA… who 5 years later still have it and I believe profit from it. I heard in Chambers that our council have been asking for control back and that new bus routes are demanded by the people of the city but CERA are ‘too busy’ to address these issues… but yet they keep the public transport.
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