The rally was organised by WeCan, an emerging, activist community organisation. While there were speakers from Labour and the Greens (National and CERA were invited to speak, but declined), the heart and soul of the protest was the Reverend Mike Coleman. After speaking to the crowd in the square, he led the short march down to the CERA headquarters in Worcester Boulevard, where we read an open letter to the people of New Zealand. It touched on the number of sections available for displaced people, the inequity of paying out at rateable value, the numerous issues with insurance. Fairness – or the lack of it – was the theme that ran throughout. WeCan called for the establishment of an Independent Advocacy Commission, who could mediate and resolve disputes between property owners, insurance companies and the EQC.

The letter – which he symbolically hammered into a cross, evoking Martin Luther hammering his 95 theses to the church door – was addressed to all New Zealanders. It is a wake-up call, a reminder that just because Christchurch isn’t on the nightly news, that doesn’t mean the problem has gone away. Given the amount of attention the National Party have given to the problem, one might suspect they wish it just would go away. Though they have “Rebuilding Christchurch” on one of their hoardings, that is about as detailed as their policy gets. Would Brownlee continue in his current role? Would they intervene in the property market to ensure people didn’t lose equity? Would they be prepared to introduce an earthquake levy, or raise taxes, to fund the massive investment in infrastructure that is clearly needed?

If National does form a government on Sunday, then we can expect that they will continue with their largely hands-off management of the recovery. This will see the continuing migration from the city, and within the city – the ghettoisation of the eastern suburbs. The divide between those for whom the earthquakes were a curious inconvenience and those who have lost almost everything will only get wider. As Rev. Coleman says in his letter – there is an elephant in the room at this election, and it is Canterbury.

“The Government has been over generous with taxpayers’ money towards the householders of Christchurch, maintaining the myth that the state is there to protect the citizen from nature.”

He goes on to spout some deplorable neoliberal drivel that only someone who had undergone a complete empathy lobotomy could think. If C Newman of Strowan weren’t so clearly prejudiced, he might like to do some research before he puts his bucolic pen to paper. Confident that he* wont bother to do so, I’ll refute some of that crap here.

The second part of his statement above – “maintaining the myth that the state is there to protect the citizen from nature” – has he heard of EQC? It was not set up to literally protect the individual from the effects of nature, but it can do the next best thing. From the Earthquake Commission Act of 1993:

The functions of the Commission are—

(a) to administer the insurance against natural disaster damage provided under this Act

EQC, which is a body that is set up and run soley by the Government of New Zealand, for the people of New Zealand, lists it’s primary function as providing insurance against natural disaster damage. That’s not a myth. It’s in legislation. Publicly available legislation that people like C Newman of Strowan could investigate, if they had the innate curiosity that bigots of the far-right clearly lack. Though I do wonder whether C Newman of Strowan might not qualify as far-right - even those on the hard right would generally agree that if the state is to have any role in the lives of it’s citizens, it is to try and protect them.

David Weusten, of Upper Riccarton writes:

“I applaud the Government on its offer to purchase red-zoned preoperties, as it was under no obligation to do so and has helped minimise the equity destruction that those in the zone face.”

This letter, and that of C Newman of Strowan, imply that the Government has been overly generous, that they are just handing out money willy nilly, bundles of notes to all these undeserving, unhoused people. Again, this is about as far from reality as C Newman of Strowan is. I hate to be a bore, and keep citing the same source, but in this case, the legislation does seem like an appropriate thing to take the time to read. Clause 19, Residential Land:

Subject to any regulations made under this Act and to Schedule 3, where a residential building is deemed to be insured under this Act against natural disaster damage, the residential land on which that building is situated shall, while that insurance of the residential building is in force, be deemed to be insured under this Act against natural disaster damage to the amount (exclusive of goods and services tax) which is the sum of, in the case of any particular damage,—

(a) the value, at the site of the damage, of—

(i) if there is a district plan operative in respect of the residential land, an area of land equal to the minimum area allowable under the district plan for land used for the same purpose that the residential land was being used at the time of the damage; or

(ii) an area of land of 4 000 square metres; or

(iii) the area of land that is actually lost or damaged—

whichever is the smallest; and

(b) the indemnity value of any property referred to in paragraphs (d) and (e) of the definition of the term residential land in section 2(1) that is lost or damaged.

Now, I know there are quite a few words there, and that C Newman of Strowan and others of that persuasion might have trouble getting through them all, so I will summarise it: EQC covers the land under a house. You say “generous”, I say “obligation as defined by law”**. So all this shit about the government being generous, or too generous, is some of the most offensive crap I have ever heard. Ever since the 4th of September, we have been waiting for a land package. We knew that the EQC would pay for land. That’s why we were waiting for a land package. Then, somewhere around the time of the June 13th aftershocks, people seem to have forgotten about this. Then, Generous John Key strolls in to town, offers to buy people’s land, doesn’t bother to remind people that the government was always going to buy the land, and people think he’s the most charitable guy since Allan Hubbard. The Government – whether intentionally or not – has used the word “generous” with regards to their clearly flawed land package offer so frequently that it has now become attached. It’s either very smart, or very cynical, to successfully rebrand your obligations as generosity.

I’m not going to go into all the ways that the package is anything but generous right here – I’m getting angry enough to write another blog about that soon. Suffice it to say that contrary to what C Newman of Strowan thinks, this package will see a large number of people – people from some of our poorest and most vulnerable areas – struggling to re-house themselves in Christchurch. The sad fact of the government response is that the good, hardworking people of the East may end up having to move out of Christchurch, leaving us with a city over-represented by detestable cunts like C Newman of Strowan.

* Halfway through writing this, I realised that C Newman could actually be a woman. I guess I just assumed that someone with such misguided, hateful thoughts could only be an aging, spite-filled man who has little to look forward to in life but the thrill he gets from yelling at his neighbour’s yappy novelty dog. I guess that I have encountered fewer female hard-right nutters in my times. I could be wrong on this.

** I guess you could argue that the legislation doesn’t explicitly state that the EQC will “buy” the land, but it clearly states that the EQC will pay for the cost of it.

Discuss any questions you have with CERA. You can contact CERA by email demolitionenquiries@cera.govt.nz or phone on 941 8999 or 0800 800 169.

Not five minutes later, a reply. Not the sort I was looking for.

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

demolitionenquiries@cera.govt.nz

Technical details of permanent failure:

Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550-Invalid recipient <demolitionenquiries@cera.govt.nz>

It should be pretty simple to set up an email address, and to advertise that address to the people you serve. It doesn’t fill you with much confidence for the recovery when simple things like this are getting cocked up.

The Christchurch Town Hall, and the adjacent Convention Centre complex, are both assets to the city that will no doubt return to full use when the city gets back on its feet. AMI Stadium, however, may turn out to be a $60 million white elephant (central government put $15 million into the redevelopment, with Vbase taking on the remaining $45 million of debt, which the council has now inherited).

Even when its turf has been repaired, and the stands and surrounding roads returned to a fit state, it is hard to imagine the stadium paying its way. Before the upgrades to the stands began, the “sold out” sign only went up for high profile games such as All Blacks test matches. Anyone watching recent provincial rugby games will have noted the paucity of spectators in the stands. While the expansion was clearly designed with the Rugby World Cup in mind, once that competition was over we would have been left with over 40,000 seats, requiring the attendance of 1 in every 10 people from the wider Canterbury region to reach capacity.

The stadium upgrade never made financial sense, and the cost to ratepayers shouldn’t be attributed to the misfortune of the earthquake. Before the second quake, on February 18th, Council CEO Tony Marryat announced that the Council would bailout Vbase, and there would be an increase in council rates to pay the $45 million debt that the stadium had run up. The Vbase debacle is a man-made disaster – not a natural one – and the people behind it need to be held accountable for it.

Participants in these meetings – and in other community engagement projects like the “Share an Idea” website being run by the council – are all based around what people want. Wants are not always the same as needs. Many of these ideas are nice in concept, but will they work for the street, the suburb, the city? What if we zone Colombo St for mixed-use, 3 or 4 storey buildings – and nobody wants to tenant them?

Malls are another example. Many people have been saying that they don’t want any more suburban malls – and neither do I. However, we have malls because people use them. If people really want to stop the growth of the malls, they should stop using them now. We don’t need an earthquake – or a heavy-handed council plan – to stop them; we need a change in the way we interact with our urban environments. The long term city plan is part of that, and I applaud them for their attempts at community consultation on the plan. I worry that the community see the rebuild as an easy way for someone else – council, government – to fix problems that Christchurch has had for years.

Wants must be balanced with needs, otherwise Christchurch could end up as a city by committee that is even less functional than it was before the quake. Sydenham, the centre city – large parts of Christchurch were dead or dying before September 4th and February 22nd. Now we have an opportunity to rebuild the city we want – and the city we need.

I’ve just got back from a weekend in Wellington. Getting out of Christchurch reminds you (if you need any reminding) just how serious the challenge to rebuild Christchurch will be. The central city was bustling, filled with all sorts of shops and the colourful characters that make them vibrant places to be. 

However, it’s not all good. I went out for a friend’s birthday on Saturday, to a bar on Courtenay Place (it’s like the Strip, but longer.) I left around midnight, and the scene was quite alarming. Hundreds of mainly young, mainly drunk, people all through the centre of Wellington.

The scary thing is, a number of people seem to think that the economic salvation of Christchurch lies at the bottom of a pint glass. Prominent central-city property owner Anthony Gough has argued publicly that his bars on the Strip should be opened as fast as possible, complaining about delays he sees as caused by the authorities. Now I am by no means a prude, (though my favourite bar in town was the now-destroyed Christchurch Temperance Society) but I think that we should be having a discussion – at the city, suburb and  community level – about the role which alcohol plays in our rebuilt city. 

Christchurch – amongst other New Zealand towns – has a serious problem with young people and alcohol. As someone who lived right in the heart of town, it was apparent to me, multiple nights a week. Alcohol is a wider societal problem for the whole country, but as we look to rebuild a better urban environment, we should be thinking about how we can integrate pubs and bars into a framework that allows people to enjoy themselves, whilst also minimising the harm that drinking causes.

ALSO: on that note – council has just approved a temporary entertainment hub, in tents, in Hagley Park.

“Look at something like EQC, they’ve gone from having 29 people to something like 1500; that is a growth business.”

That is indeed exponential growth – EQC is now 50 times larger than it was a year ago. By my calculations, we would only need 118* more significant earthquakes until EQC employs the 177,000 people that Key predicted would be employed in the budget last week.

* however, if those 118 earthquakes caused as many deaths as the February quake, then those 21,476 deceased people would provide vacancies that could be filled by other people. Therefore, we’d probably only need around 100 quakes to full employment.