It’s no good handing out blank cheques

Opinion: I concluded last week’s column with the statement that none of the reviews that have been undertaken in relation to the severe weather events that hit the North Island last year even begin to address recovery. Every one of the myriad reviews has focused on response, and that is because formal government reviews almost never focus on recovery. I cannot fathom why that is the case, given that the lessons we could learn from those experiences are vital for how we prepare for the future.
It is still hard to believe all these years after the Canterbury earthquake sequence, there has not been an overarching review of the recovery, which is still ongoing. We had bespoke government agencies established to run the city’s recovery and redesign the central city. Surely there are lessons to be learned from the approach that was adopted. Not all of them would we want to repeat.