The Star: October 19, 2017
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16<br />
Latest Christchurch news at www.star.kiwi<br />
News<br />
Thursday <strong>October</strong> <strong>19</strong> <strong>2017</strong><br />
Local<br />
News<br />
Now<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Star</strong><br />
Fire rages, homes at risk<br />
Residents lose out to quake investors<br />
• By Gabrielle Stuart<br />
CANTABRIANS became<br />
“collateral damage” postearthquake<br />
as the Government<br />
focused on telling positive stories<br />
to attract investors, an academic<br />
has said.<br />
Victoria University of Wellington<br />
architecture head of school<br />
Morten Gjerde wrote a research<br />
paper on Government<br />
communication<br />
after the<br />
earthquakes for<br />
an international<br />
conference in<br />
China last year.<br />
Morten<br />
Gjerde<br />
He said in the<br />
paper that the<br />
Government<br />
was “more eager to tell positive<br />
stories about recovery to national<br />
and international audiences than<br />
they have been to keep residents<br />
informed”.<br />
“It would be fair to say that<br />
local residents have been<br />
collateral damage so far during<br />
this recovery as leaders have<br />
sought to curry favour with local<br />
and international investors in<br />
order to help drive it,” the paper<br />
said.<br />
But former Canterbury Earthquake<br />
Recovery Authority chief<br />
executive Roger Sutton strongly<br />
disagreed. He said communicating<br />
with investors had only been<br />
a small part of CERA’s focus.<br />
“If I think about my time<br />
there, I spent 95 per cent with<br />
real Christchurch people and<br />
five per cent with that kind of<br />
person,” he said.<br />
He said CERA “fronted a lot”<br />
to Cantabrians, including at<br />
some hostile meetings.<br />
“We held a meeting with Port<br />
Hills residents over the zoning,<br />
and I think a lot of Government<br />
organisations would never have<br />
had the courage to front there,”<br />
he said.<br />
But he agreed that CERA<br />
could have communicated better<br />
about rebuild problems.<br />
“It’s difficult for the<br />
Government to give bad news,”<br />
he said.<br />
People in leadership roles<br />
naturally wanted to tell the<br />
positive stories of successes, he<br />
said.<br />
He said he had personally been<br />
told off for doing that by Mayor<br />
Lianne Dalziel when he was chief<br />
executive of Orion before he<br />
moved to CERA.<br />
He had been making a<br />
UNFAIR: A new research paper says Christchurch residents<br />
have become collateral damage during the earthquake<br />
recovery as leaders favour local and international investors.<br />
PHOTO: MARTIN HUNTER<br />
statement about power cuts<br />
after the February 22, 2011,<br />
earthquake, and had focused on<br />
the 92 per cent of Canterbury<br />
homes to which the company<br />
had returned power, he said.<br />
“I remember Lianne rang me<br />
up and said, Roger, don’t be such<br />
a moron. Don’t talk about the 92<br />
per cent, talk about the eight per<br />
cent and when they will get their<br />
power on,” he said.<br />
City councillor Deon Swiggs,<br />
who started the Rebuild<br />
Christchurch website after the<br />
earthquakes to help people<br />
access information, agreed with<br />
the research findings.<br />
He said CERA had not<br />
communicated enough<br />
information to residents and<br />
had tried to only tell the positive<br />
stories.<br />
“People lost trust very early<br />
on with Government in terms of<br />
what they were being told.” Dr<br />
Gjerde’s paper also criticised the<br />
slow pace of the rebuild, saying<br />
it had been skewed in favour of<br />
those who were wealthy.<br />
“Those living on the city’s<br />
more affluent western suburbs<br />
were affected initially by the<br />
quakes far less than those<br />
living to the east. Since then,<br />
money and other<br />
resources have<br />
flowed much<br />
more freely in the<br />
west which has<br />
seen these areas<br />
return quickly to<br />
pre-earthquake<br />
conditions,<br />
whereas those<br />
Roger<br />
Sutton<br />
living in the poorer central and<br />
eastern suburbs continue to<br />
battle toward recovery with far<br />
fewer resources to call upon,” he<br />
said.<br />
Dr Gjerde said his conclusions<br />
were based on Christchurch<br />
research findings and<br />
comparisons with disaster<br />
recovery processes in other<br />
countries. He hoped the paper,<br />
called Building Back Better,<br />
could be used to improve future<br />
disaster response processes.<br />
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