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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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