Speeches in the House and pleas from homeowners
A campaign to get government to buyout homeowners in West Auckland after the floods in 2021 highlights the need for urgent detail that’s so far been missing from our climate adaptation plans
Mōrena and welcome to The Bulletin for Wednesday, February 22, by Anna Rawhiti-Connell. Presented in partnership with Z Energy.
In today’s edition: government to announce forestry slash investigation this week; OCR rise may not mean home loan interest rate rise; the final days of Jami-Lee Ross’s political exile; but first, speeches in parliament yesterday were short on specifics as a campaign by West Aucklanders highlights the very real need for them
No sleep in West Auckland when it rains
Two stories today that are a microcosm of one of the biggest challenges facing the country. Newsroom’s Jonathan Milne and Stuff’s Kirsty Johnston have both spoken to homeowners in West Auckland who are asking authorities to step in and buy their flood-affected properties, so they can leave. The West Auckland Is Flooding campaign is backed by Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford and was mounted after flooding in the area in 2021. Milne speaks to a couple in Massey who say they can’t go back to their home “knowing they'd never be able to sleep with the sound of rain on the roof.” The couple spoken to by Johnston describe continually checking MetService forecasts over the last 18 months. Both stories are worth a read.
Clock ticking on providing specifics
In Toby Manhire’s assessment of parliament’s first day and the opening speeches, it’s his last line that will resonate most with the people spoken to by Johnston and Milne, and everyone who is currently sitting in a holding pattern after the Auckland floods and the cyclone. Manhire writes “For the most part the prime minister’s opening speech reiterated the steps outlined already in the response. There is only so long that he and his newly assigned cyclone response minister and taskforce will be able to avoid talking specifics.” The specifics on home buyouts and managed retreat require adding an enormous amount of missing detail to the National Adaptation Plan and acceleration of the Climate Change Adaptation Bill.
No clarity about who bears risk and cost
Politik’s Richard Harman writes that it was the minister trying to get that bill accelerated, James Shaw, who tethered the House of Representatives back to the homes of the constituents they represent yesterday. Shaw said “At the moment, there are many New Zealanders who are very worried about the extent to which they understand what their share of the cost or the risk is here…there is currently no clarity about the share of risk and cost that is borne by the householder, their insurance company, their bank, their local authority, or central government.” All this will sound very familiar to Cantabrians which is why, as Newsroom’s Jo Moir writes, the government is looking to the Queensland flood response, rather than the much-criticised model deployed after the Christchurch quakes.
At some point, “the dynamite is going to explode”
We aren’t the only country dealing with the issue of what to do with homes in harm’s way and this stunningly simple analogy from Jake Bittle in The Atlantic, about coastal homes in the US, precisely captures the problem. “When humans began to warm the Earth, we lit the fuse. Ever since then, a series of people have tossed the dynamite among them, each owner holding the stick for a while before passing the risk on to the next. Each of these owners knows that at some point, the dynamite is going to explode, but they can also see that there’s a lot of fuse left. As the fuse keeps burning, each new owner has a harder time finding someone to take the stick off their hands.”
The physical pursuit of a Matatini win
At west Auckland gym Te Yard, full functional fitness is the focus – but there’s one main difference between Te Yard and other gyms. Many of the clientele are kaihaka; kapa haka performers getting physically and mentally in the zone for their big performances at Te Matatini this week. Te Yard owner Jarrod Tua says kapa haka is like a high-performance sport. “During a performance they’re doing small, controlled sprints. They’re bobbing, they’re weaving, they’re moving their hips, they’re swaying.” Read more about how Tua is helping people get performance ready, on The Spinoff now (sponsored)
Investigation into how to deal with forestry slash on its way
If you didn’t know what slash was a couple of weeks ago, you probably do now. Refresher here. Newsroom’s Jo Moir reports that the government will launch an investigation this week into how best to deal with the waste product and debris from commercial forestry that has caused so much damage. Moir writes the review could include harsher penalties and prosecutions for forestry companies - although a range of solutions are expected to be considered. In the first episode of a new podcast from Mihingarangi Forbes, Forbes talks to Kiritapu Allen, who highlights just one of the complexities involved - as MP for East Coast, her constituents depend on forestry for pay packets.
OCR rise may not mean home loan interest rates rise
Today’s OCR announcement, which most economists expect will result in a 50 basis point increase to 4.75%, may not bring further home loan interest rate rises. As Stuff’s Susan Edmunds reports, ASB senior economist Chris Tennent-Brown says it would take a really strong statement from the Reserve Bank about the likelihood of future OCR increases to drive any increase. Kiwibank’s Jarrod Kerr is still calling for the Bank to postpone an OCR hike this time around until the next meeting in April in the wake of the cyclone. Tennent-Brown says it’s a case of “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” for the Reserve Bank.
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Elements of Truth - streaming now
The Jami-Lee Ross vs Simon Bridges saga is one of the most explosive in New Zealand political history. Elements of Truth, a new documentary directed by Tony Sutorius (Campaign), follows Ross in the final days of his political exile and as he vies to return to parliament after the election in late 2020. By this stage he’s no longer a National MP, and has joined forces with rising conspiracy theorist Billy Te Kahika Jr to found a new political party, Advance NZ. While Ross tries to maintain that Advance NZ is a serious political venture, his alliance with Te Kahika sees him become even more of a political outcast.
Click and collect
'Old lady pee' alerted town to impending flood risk - blessings on Sharron Solomon who describes getting up to “have a waz” and how she then went on to raise the alarm in Wairoa the night Gabrielle arrived
Rural support network bracing for cyclone’s mental health toll
Jacinda Ardern said she wouldn’t be in the House much before her valedictory speech in April when she resigned. True to her word, she was at a Hastings marae cutting up melons yesterday
Miniscule mercies - the amount of time it takes to save a house deposit has dropped from 11.8 years to 10.4 years
French publisher of Roald Dahl books has ‘no plans’ to follow English example of making changes to the texts (see below for Claire Mabey’s thought-provoking assessment of this topic)
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When Grant Robertson spoke to business leaders on Friday he said the same thing every finance minister says: "the government's books are in good shape". Duncan Greive wonders if it might be time to acknowledge the other side of that statement – our chronically underfunded infrastructure. Charlotte Muru-Lanning has everything you need to know about Te Matatini 2023 before it kicks off tomorrow morning. Chris Schulz talks to one of many Gisborne residents who’ve spent the last week cleaning their flooded, mud-caked home. Claire Mabey guides us through the latest literary furore over edits made to some of Roald Dahl’s most popular books.
The problem with forestry slash on the east coast, is not the "slash" it is the "forestry". Much of the land is not suited to forestry as it is too steep and unstable. The problem goes back to the aftermath of cyclone Bola. As a lot of the steep farming land eroded and caused problems downstream the government introduced a subsidy to plant it in trees. However much of the subsidy went on replacing scrubland which was not the problem. Now trees on steep hillsides are being cut down and the mess left behind ends up in the rivers. There is no cost effective way of running forestry there without leaving behind erosion and debris.