In the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle, the Government has declared a National State of Emergency.
Minister for Emergency Management, Kieran McAnulty, says this will help coordinate resources for hard hit parts of the country.
It's the third time a National State of Emergency has been declared in New Zealand. The previous two were in March 2020 at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and in February 2011 after the Christchurch earthquake.
McAnulty's full statement is below.
State of National Emergency Declared
The New Zealand Government has this morning declared a National State of Emergency, to assist in the response to Cyclone Gabrielle.
The Minister for Emergency Management, Kieran McAnulty, signed the declaration at 8.43am.
Prior to signing the declaration he advised the Prime Minister, and the Opposition spokesperson for emergency management, who were both supportive of the declaration.
The declaration will apply to the six regions that have already declared a local State of Emergency: Northland, Auckland, Tairāwhiti, Bay of Plenty, Waikato, and Hawkes Bay.
This is only the third time in New Zealand history that a National State of Emergency has been declared.
“This is an unprecedented weather event that is having major impacts across much of the North Island,” Kieran McAnulty said.
“Since Sunday, NEMA have been in close contact with local civil defence emergency management (CDEM) teams of affected areas to assess the need of a declaration of a state of National Emergency.
“NEMA has been giving advice to myself and the Prime Minister on the need of a national State of Emergency based on the assessments of the local teams, and until now the advice has been that it was not necessary.
“NEMA met with the affected CDEM groups. Based on feedback from the groups and NEMA
I consider that the criteria have now been met and a National State of Emergency would be beneficial.
“The local leadership, CDEM groups, and emergency responders in all of the affected areas have been doing an outstanding job, but the widespread damage caused by this cyclone means we need a National declaration to support them.
“This declaration will enable the Government to support the affected regions, provide additional resources as they are needed, and help set the priorities across the country for the response.
“A National State of Emergency gives the National Controller legal authority to apply resources across the country in support of a national level response.
“This declaration gives us the ability to coordination further resources for affected regions. I want to emphasise that the Government has already been surging support and resources to the regions for some days.”
There was a second statement from McAnulty on Tuesday afternoon.
State of National Emergency Declared extended to cover Tararua
The New Zealand Government has this morning declared a State of National Emergency, to assist in the response to Cyclone Gabrielle.
Since the Minister for Emergency Management, Kieran McAnulty signed the declaration this morning at 8.43am Tararua District has declared a state of local emergency.
The Minister has signed a further declaration at 1.17pm to include Tararua District in the area that the State of National Emergency exists over.
The declaration now applies to Northland, Auckland, Tairāwhiti, Bay of Plenty, Waikato, and Hawke’s Bay CDEM Group areas, and the Tararua District.
75 Comments
Appreciate the state of emergency elsewhere, seems like the East Coast has been hammered. But in the Naki we seem relatively unscathed, so a day off work and no school for kids seems kind of idiotic. Wind and rain were strong but nothing we haven't had in previous years, no trees down/damage in our suburb.
Seems more of the usual infrastructure failings (i.e. redundancy and maintenance) rather than anything wider.
Best wishes to those who are impacted. Stay safe!
Then count yourself lucky. Gisborne has apparently been silent for a number of hours: https://i.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellington/131220400/gisborne-…
Napier and Hastings have no power (stuff report).
I have made this point several times before. Eventuality there are going to be significant areas of NZ that the government is going to have to abandon access/infrastructure to/for because the costs of constantly having to repair recurrent damage becomes too onerous.
The inability of the average Joe to extrapolate a line on a graph is perhaps almost forgivable (since the teaching of critical thinking seems almost absent in most schoolrooms/households). The inability of the leaders of political parties (and their 'advisors') to also fail in this regard, is criminal.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/weather-gods-force-auckland-mayor-wayne-b…
Still not convinced Brown will be up to Auckland's long term infrastructure needs.
I'll take someone with an accountancy background who spends more time working with stakeholders and the public over the city's long-term needs over someone who offers little actual leadership other than letter-writing and expects the port to pay out a quintillion dollar dividend or else he'll have no choice but to write them another letter.
Remember, Brown's platform wasn't actually building anything. It was not building things he didn't like, and until last Friday, he didn't seem to see much value in stormwater, which wasn't apparently actually the case, but now apparently that's been reversed (despite apparently not being correct).
Yea, I can't keep up either.
Good luck finding an accountant who works with stakeholders and the public for better outcomes. They'll spend all their time counting beans and strangling expenditure to make the books look good.
Was there a problem with his letter? How much of a return on the $65m "automation" investment has AKL ratepayers received from PoA? Maybe in this instance they needed an accountant, although maybe someone with an engineering background could have seen it for what it is and canned it before a dollar was spent.
You would think someone with an engineering background could see the enormous issue presenting itself on Friday night of Anniversary Weekend and appreciate the need for a visible presence. But that didn't seem to count for much then.
Oh, and I see I made a mistake his letter didn't include is insane demand for a $400m rate/dividend return to the Council. Maybe an accountant had a word with him about how stupid that was. Or maybe he's just a blow-hard who was found wanting when the time came.
His engineering ideas are crap as well. One day he says “we need to make as much use of the existing road network as possible”, next he says “we can’t take away parks in front of businesses”. He thinks peak direction variable lanes are the fix to everything, but most main roads already have an extra peak lane (T3 or bus lane).
In this mornings press conference. When Kieran McAnulty was questioned on why he hadn't called a National State of Emergency earlier. He said words to the effect. It is not a political decision. As soon as experts recommended it, he signed the order. Collective media in attendance in their heads "seems fair enough". Contrast that with how they treated Wayne Brown for saying pretty much exactly the same thing.
Wayne Brown is the Muhammad Ali of poor communication skills but you make a good point, not that any of the so-could journalists in this country would be capable of picking up on the double standard. Same deal with Chippy's policy bonfire being classified as a legitimate process of 'recalibration' 'reprioritisation' etc whereas if Nats/Act dumped any policies (if National could actually develop some) it would be wall-to-wall reporting on flip-flop this, U-turn that.
I think the difference is that the Minister was visible and communicating with media and the public about being ready to call a National State of Emergency if required. Wayne Brown was nowhere to be seen or heard until 9 30pm that Friday night a couple of weeks ago, and that was rumours only at that point. When I went to bed last night I knew that we weren't in a national SOE, but could wake up being in a one - communication is so important. Wayne Brown needed to communicate - he may have been doing other things right but he needed to communicate. Even he admits that now. I would add that he did himself no favours with his flippant responses such as "We just need the rain to stop". The media must be a nightmare but he wasn't a leader that night and needed to get beyond himself and use them for the public good as much as he doesn't like it. We all have unpleasant aspects to our jobs after all. He did want this job.
A once in a generation rainfall event. No media warnings. The Auckland council comms army deathly silent. Unfortunately the people we pay so well to deal with messaging in times like those were well on their way to their holiday weekend destinations by 3pm on the Friday before a long weekend. Hardly the newly elected Mayors fault.
His inability to communicate and use the media is his fault. The holiday weekend aspect of it didn't help in general. But he's old enough and wise enough to pick up a phone and call someone I would hope. People that day (councillors, media and MP's) were begging for him to say something by 6 30pm. Don't use the distraction of all that to excuse his lack of communication. If he didn't know, by 6 30pm, how to respond to an unpredictable situation at his age and with his experience as Mayor in Northland then he needed to admit that. There had been warnings by the metservice for a few days about the rainfall, no-one expected it to get that bad, but it wasn't news big rain was coming. No-one expected perfection, just like the the terrorist attack (our first ever) or a pandemic (once in a generation). His lack of leadership and ability to read the situation and ACT was evident to all of us. Stop making excuses for him.
Which is a big part of why government exists really, to provide leadership and support for communities around substantial natural disasters.
It's a pity that after the Christchurch earthquakes, Gerry Brownlee refused to put the minimum building standards for rebuilds up to Homestar 6 rating, which would have ensured that Christchurch had some of the healthiest and most energy efficient real estate in the country, to help us be more resilient to climate change.
But he didn't, because it would "add more money to the cost of the rebuild" - the rebuild being almost entirely paid for by insurance companies. Yes, Gerry Brownlee and National protected the interests of insurance companies against the interests of Christchurch residents.
The main insurer AMI went instantly broke due to over exposure to the Christchurch market and inadequate reinsurance provision. A failure of oversight by the reserve bank and successive governments. So Southern Response was set up with 10's of billions of government borrowing to pay out policy holders.
Yip, so either:
1. The National government could have stared down the insurers and said "yes, we don't care that homestar 6 ratings will put up the cost of rebuilds by an estimated $10-15k per house, this is necessary in this country that will be affected by climate change. It will be a net saving for the country as a whole in the long-run, and you insurers will benefit too.", or
2. Said the same to the public, that they would borrow extra money to help top up EQC / whatever to help offset the effects of climate change in this country through ensuring a higher standard of rebuild, which would role out to the rest of the country in time, with economies of scale and upskilling of tradies bringing the price premium down substantially.
National, of course, did neither, because they have no policies for the future, only policies to protect their rich mates.
It is the people of Christchurch who suffer.
Scientists and 'experts' have made all kinds of eccentric predictions over the years. In the 1980's many thought the world was on the brink of running out of oil, so they vandalised gas guzzling cars. Kiwis would be the biggest sheeple ever, look at the riots over apartheid, and now we've got it here, where one race has precedence over all others.
Auckland would probably have the best water assets in the country, we have paid big money into 2 of the 3 waters via Watercare for decades. That flood was an extreme event (hopefully), a hell of a lot of water in 4 hours.
Compared to say Napier which I think has had less rain in 24 hours than Auckland did in 4. Second big flood there in 3 years. There is no way their council can pay to fix it.
TOP's 3 waters policy is built on the Watercare model: https://www.top.org.nz/three_waters
I note that National doesn't have a 3 Waters policy, despite promising to "repeal and replace" it. Reminds me of Trump.
And ACT are no better: "Auckland floods: Region needs to stop building houses in the wrong places - David Seymour".
I don't pay to read that tripe, but how would ACT fix that? Surely they believe in personal responsibility and buyer / builder beware? They aren't advocating for regulation are they? I imagine they are just pointing out the problem without having a viable solution.
Napier has rivers that have headwaters up near the central plateau.huge catchment, but not so bad in the prevailing westerlies, but pounded in a easterly. Same with us here , woke up to very little water around the house. Then got the phone call that work is underwater because of the river coming through from the east.
1. It's putting in competent people to manage the water system instead of councils.
2. It's getting the management of the water system away from the incompetent councils, which will allow these new entities to borrow more money than councils could have off the same asset base - because the financiers who do this infrastructure lending don't trust incompetent councils (and nor should they).
Because nobody in favour of the co-governance aspect of three waters has made any attempt to explain why that particular aspect of the reforms will benefit the average Kiwi. Nobody seizing on these recent crises as an example of why 3 Waters is necessary has been able to articulate how co-governance would have made a jot of difference in terms of stopping flooding in Auckland or Napier.
Telling people they've got nothing to fear, or they just don't get it, or it just needs to be done or whatever the latest spin-line is will not make people's concerns go away.
FWIW, I do think that centralisation (at least to some extent) of how we manage water resources in NZ is something beneficial as ultimately the current system has too many players relative to the population size, and that must surely create some inefficiencies and problems.
From a political perspective, Labour could easily (if the political will were there) seal the deal on the upcoming election by using recent events as an opportunity to argue why 3W is important but in a modified form with the contentious go-governance aspect dropped, or at least very heavily scaled down.
So you think co-governance based on race is going to do what, exactly?
Iwi are going to charge Pakeha more for water and give it to themselves for free?
Be explicit about what you think the problem with co-governance is, rather than bringing up bogeymen like nazis.
One person one vote. Quite simple. Do I think Māori will charge non-Māori more, not sure. Do you think it’s fair for 50% plus share of the vote to 20% of the population…I don’t. And bearing in mind the other 50% do not have to be non-Māori it’s complete insanity. The treaty never said anything about co-governance either for that matter, that was a labour invented “principle”. I’m heading to Australia in the next couple years anyway, sadly the treaty is what really ruins NZ.
To a point I agree. How is a City Council collecting surplus water from a river, treating it, storing it, pumping it etc any different to someone going down to the river with a bucket, taking it home to boil it?
Will a minority group have a 50% say in how you collect rainwater from your roof, because "water is Taonga" to them?
But "one race" is not having the only say, but perhaps Maori would argue that without co-governance, but it'd be wrong too. Politically all voices need to be heard, but the problem is not race, it is money. Too often resources have been allocated on the basis of wealth and money, meaning that many people and communities have missed out, or have had access made extremely difficult and costly.
I must add I am against co-governance and believe it is in breach of article three of the Treaty. Maori claim they need to be represented, I agree, but co-governance is not the answer. Roughly 20% of the MPs in parliament are Maori, with only just over 16% of the population being Maori. So I would argue that Maori have a voice. So the question is why is change not occurring? Follow the money!
It is a dumb idea. SOME councils have it all under control, others are complacently negligent. 3 Waters will make the people from the areas where their councils have it under control, pay for the areas where they don't.
What should happen is that there be regulation that REQUIRES local government to properly manage basic infrastructure to a national standard BEFORE they start spending money on the 'pretties'. To assume that councils understand that is is common sense and that they will do it is just asinine.
I'm amazed at the news references I've been hearing about 'online', 'websites'' and 'TV'.
I've just got power back on - there's been no power, no TV, no internet, no phones, and no mobile. I've had to rely on an old fashioned radio for news...so much for the new technological age. Lucky no one around here needed an ambulance.
I'm glad you have the power back on. I think this is a real problem, which only these events seem to fix. Transistor radio, battery powered, is a necessary piece of kit for emergencies. I think, like everything, experience becomes the best teacher. So many people rely on the internet, but once the power is off and, like today, cell phone coverage is knocked out, it is the trusty small transistor radio that runs on batteries that will keep you informed. Hope things are settling for you.
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