Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee says there will be an announcement about the state of land in greater Christchurch at 1:30pm Thursday, (tomorrow) June 23.
See the release from Brownlee:
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee says the government will give an initial update on the state of land in greater Christchurch at a media briefing at 1:30pm tomorrow in Christchurch.
"As part of this announcement, the government will be presenting options for homeowners with insurance in some of the worst affected areas," Mr Brownlee said.
"This is the next step in the government's commitment to providing timely and accurate information to the people of greater Christchurch. While we will not be able to provide all the answers to all residents tomorrow, we will continue to provide regular updates to residents on progress over coming weeks.
"This announcement will provide some certainty for residents in the worst affected areas, and will give them options for their immediate future.
"We will be releasing the most up-to-date information we have about the state of the land in greater Christchurch."
A website and call centre will be activated tomorrow afternoon which residents will be able to visit or call to find out about the status of their land.
A series of community meetings will also be held over the next days and weeks for affected residents.
"The earthquakes are an ongoing major event but the government is committed to getting things right for the people of Canterbury," Mr Brownlee said
"We're moving as quickly as we can to give some certainty to those most affected."
27 Comments
Big announcement for the government here in terms of who is going to be 'blamed' for the decision.
Key has never liked being associated with bad news. IMO his nice-guy image among the general public is the biggest reason National will get re-elected in November (closely followed by Labour not being up to much).
In that case, Key doesn't want much of the 'blame' placed on him. If he's seen to be the primary antagonist then Nats polling will go down. Labour is in a position to up their ratings as they have 4 chch MPs (and Anderton) who could be seen to have a better plan.
Brownlee is seeking re-election in the area. I'm not that savvy on Ilam - will they vote him in regardless as it is a safe National seat?
Will Key load it on Brownlee? Does Brownlee have a (political) buffer to take the hit?
Then it comes down to how much Tonkin and Taylor are prepared to be hit. Will they claim expert opinion has been given to the authorities, who acted on that advice? Will they be brave enough to say 'it was our decision', therefore taking pressure off Key and Brownlee?
Or will Insurance companies be blamed? ie. By officials saying 'we are looking at these areas because the insurance companies tell us here they won't be paying out enough'?
Interesting questions Alex.
On the last one, who knows, given the apparent errors made in developing certain areas, maybe some insurers could be forgiven for not wanting to pay out at all. Even if they do, for the same reason, maybe they simply wouldn't want to renew insurance in said areas that were developed in error? Whatever, all speculation on my part, but one thing is for sure, if insurance cannot be obtained resale values are nil - and one would hope this is being taken into account as much as the more obvious problems.
Whether insurance can be obtained in future is a question those that don't get abandonment instructions need to ask, I would have thought?
Maybe something you could look into?
Cheers, Les.
I think you might be slightly simplistic there, it's not simply about blame.
Insurance companies and their reinsurance partners do have an actual contract and therefore a material opinion as to what happens next. Should they decree they will not insure something it ties the hands of all other parties.
Engineers are not politicians who play with words. Whilst there are degrees and some lack of certainty there is certainly merit in their training and research. If we are to ignore everything we know about engineering and have learned from this earthquake we'd be fools. So what they know isn't simply about 'taking a political hit'.
I hope people aren't so stupid as to start a 'burn the witch' campaign and would prefer if politicians and media refrained from stirring up anger, hate and a sense of injustice.
It is an earth quake and it's no bodies fault.
Anyone watching the Christchurch builders' websites will have noticed, on average, they've sold half their turnkey properties in the past week - after months of inactivity. Looks like the insiders have their inside information and it must be very good for property investors.
This way come a nice juicy susidy for multinational insurance companies and home owners.
Here is the response from Labour:
Prime Minister John Key has raised expectations that tomorrow’s earthquake announcements in Christchurch will enable people to start planning their futures with far greater certainty, says Labour’s Canterbury Earthquake Recovery spokesperson Clayton Cosgrove.
“Tomorrow’s announcement has been a badly-kept secret, but whatever the political manoeuvring that’s being going on behind the scenes, it’s still welcome that John Key is going to give people a far better idea what’s going to happen in terms of their own properties, their streets and their suburbs,” Clayton Cosgrove said.
“”Information is currency. People will be grateful to be told anything that allows them to start thinking positively about what their future holds.
“It is still not clear just what level of detail will be provided tomorrow --- whether there will be more grey than black and white --- but it can be presumed that John Key wouldn’t finally be fronting up without a plan to announce.
“People are expecting definitive information. They don’t want John Key just flying in and flying out before he goes off to India.”
Clayton Cosgrove said Labour was reserving its judgment until it learned details of tomorrow’s announcement.
“It is encouraging that some people who are most vulnerable are receiving telephone calls in advance, but we are worried that what will result is that one person gets a call and their neighbour doesn’t. That’s happened previously. This causes some people to feel left out and worried they might have dropped off the list somehow.
“John Key made the commitment after the September quake that no one in Canterbury would be left worse off. Tomorrow will be another acid test of that commitment.”
It will be more grey than anything else tomorrow.
Some of the worst movement has occurred in Central areas like Madras St (north of Bealey), Peterborough St (east end), Charles St and around AMI stadium. There won't be answers for these areas as it's not clear cut which sites have problems.
Out of Bexley, Avondale, Avonside, Dallington and Parklands probably only a few streets will get anything definitive the rest is too grey to go from another earthquake to a decision in a week and a half.
Apart from the obvious cliff top (and bottom) sites even the hill properties are too difficult to make definitive calls over.
So much for Bill English's claims last week that they weren't going to do this in a piecemeal way!
By the way Alex, Ilam is bluer than Remmers. Unfortunately for Gerry, splitting the vote is something Ilam voters won't be afaid to do if it means than can give him a boot up the pants. (NB we had a National Billboard on a prominent corner on one of our Fendalton properties (it's been there every election since '99), you might be right to think someone else will get the spot this time!)
"Full pauout at GV" means what? Given the areas being concidered, I'd suggest most have a mortgage. The first tranch of any payout is lilely to go the the mortgagor to discharge the debt.; then they may be told, "when you find another house, come and apply for another mortgage". How much will be left to use as the deposit on the new place, IF they decide to rebuy?
Hang on NA....many might look at a full payout regardless of insurance cover as a blessing especially at the bloated 07 valuations...and the banks are more likely to want to hang on to the client and the mort rates can be flipped back to floating and the punters get to pick destinations...so many might go south to Ashburton and get a better place for less mortgage....
I suspect those who miss out will demand to be included....
It's a bank bailout, Wolly, not matter how we choose to look at it ? Do you think the banks will allow people to have X$,000 debt with no asset to secure it? At best they'll quarantine the cash ( Isn't that a defacto 'repay the mortgage?), This scheme has less to do with Christchurch than it seems. What headline did we have last weekend ?" Lenders preparing for homowners to walk away from their properties". As I noted at then; what stops Aucklanders under mortgage stress joining in? That is what this is designed to do; head the jinglemail off at the pass, and contain any contagion.
Yes Nicholas...it certainly looks that way....while we all hope it will aid people to regain some kind of security and stability...ultimately the process will be to uphold the interests of commerce....and by default in the least J.K. will once again be working for the man.
Yeap and the lawyers are going to Love it, all those properties to release. So really Get Bailout at around GV - minus what you owe bank- minus Lawyers fees = equity you have left then presume you need to get new loan from bank to buy another property.
Demand goes up in other areas of CHC (thats presume they stick around) supply is not there as a number of these houses still need fixing themselves from the Earthquakes-?
Going to be tricky, I presume they will drip feed the buyout as to not create this pressure.
So if you get paid out at GV plus some, where do you go in CHC? If you get paid out in Bexley, at GV prior to Earthquake, you are'nt going to be able to go say to Halswell and pay at same price without borrowing more.
Also depending on how quickly these people get paid out (If it is anythign like EQC- damn slowly), the infrastructure on the other areas in town (i.e schools) would not cope with a huge influx of people, although I suppose the hosuing is just not there anyway.
I can see a classic supply- demand situation developing in some areas of CHC.......going to be really interesting indeed.
Do you really think that the people who get a pay out, and are therefore free to go, will want to stay in Chch? Reading the comments on Stuff re the large aftershock on Monday night, a lot of people seem to have had enough and want out.
There may be less damage in the west, but it doesn't mean that being there is easy on the nerves either. All the quakes on the Greendale fault and around are felt much more strongly there than in the east. So I can't really see stressed people who have the option to leave just moving suburb.
As for places cheaper than Bexley, there's always Dunedin, isn't there?
Buying 'like with like' is just unrealistic. NOW everyone starts to see the problem with ever increasing property values vs your insurance. Don't like the deal then don't accept it, wait for your insurer & EQC to come up with their own deal for you. Good luck with that senario
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