MELISSA LEE: AT THE END OF HARDSHIP COMES HAPPINESS

The harrowing scenes of floods, slips, downed power lines, trapped families and disconnected communications infrastructure across the North Island that have seen lives lost and communities shattered are a melancholy start for 2023.

The clean-up just in Auckland and Northland alone will be immense with countless families losing much of their livelihoods and cherished memories amidst the natural disaster that bore down on New Zealand just a few days ago.

My thoughts go out to everyone who has been affected, whether here in Auckland where many communities out west in Waitakere remain severely cut off from the rest of our region and also those with friends and loved ones in communities like Coromandel, Hawkes Bay and the Tararua where incredible damage has taken place. The loss of life of two emergency service personnel, firefighters Dave van Zwanenberg and Craig Stevens, working to help people on the West Auckland Coast, was heart-breaking. Their service to others that led to sacrifice will be remembered.

The clean-up effort here in Auckland alone is a massive task. While I was out supporting our Emergency Shelters and Civil Defence Centres during the storm it was clear many people here in our city felt vulnerable and concerned that their homes could be next to be struck. My thanks go out to everyone who volunteered to support our community throughout the cyclone even when their own homes and businesses were in danger. The teams at ARK Collective, the Fickling Convention Centre and Mt Albert Senior Citizens Hall did an amazing job offering kindness and compassion to those struggling through the storm and its aftermath.

The rebuild may be bigger than that New Zealand endured in the aftermath of the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes and the effects of this disaster won’t be fully known for some weeks or months to come. Napier, Wairoa, Hastings, Taradale, Esk Valley, South Head, Gisborne, Karekare, Muriwai, Taupaki, Huia and Tairua are just some of our many communities across the nation that will need significant new infrastructure. Here in central Auckland we saw uprooted trees, flooding, burst pipes and damaged properties in suburbs like Grey Lynn, Mt Albert, Morningside, Parnell and Mt Eden. If you have had damage and need help from my parliamentary team, please reach out on MPLee@parliament.govt.nz or at 09 520 0538.

If you have not done so already, please make sure you and your household have prepared a civil defence box so that you can get through should we ever face something as terrible as this again. You can find planning tools here and supermarkets and big box stores have start kits to help: getready.govt.nz/en/prepared/

The next few weeks will be a recovery effort, to get connectivity back to all, to make plans to rebuild and to restore and to take time to reflect on what has happened. New Zealand is now going to have to strengthen our infrastructure and resolve to regard more serious and severe weather events adapting to a changing world. This will be a complex conversation and our Parliament and National are ready to address it in the coming weeks as we look ahead to the rest of the year and beyond. Despite the tragedy and the long road ahead, it is important we remain optimistic for the future of our country. Even in the darkest times, New Zealand with our no.8 wire spirit of innovation and opportunity is able to rise up and stand tall. In Korea, the country of my birth, there is a proverb that comes to mind. It reminds us to not give up and to look to brighter days ahead.

– Gonan Kkeut-e hengbok-i onda | At the end of hardship comes happiness.

Keep safe and let’s hope for a brighter month in March.

(MELISSA LEE MP)  PN

National Member of Parliament. National Spokesperson for Broadcasting & Media| Digital Economy and Communications | Ethnic Communities

E: mplee@parliament.govt.nz

Authorised by Melissa Lee, Parliament Buildings, Wellington

If you require any assistance I and my office are always happy and ready to provide advice and support.

Please get in touch on 09 520 0538 or at MPLee@parliament.govt.nz to make an appointment

Melissa Lee

National

List MP based in Auckland

MPLee@parliament.govt.nz melissalee.co.nz mpmelissalee

GAEL BALDOCK: NO LONGER ‘BUSINESS AS USUAL’

‘Mother Nature’ has given us a huge wake up call and left us reeling from these two cataclysmic weather events, revealing the true face of our country.

Drained swamps and cliff edges are not safe places to build. We must think in longer terms than election cycles when making decisions for our future.

Growing timber producing forests for carbon credit is just ‘Green Washing’ when the slash washed away in floods causes so much damage. Soil suitable for growing grass for dairy farms is not suitable for growing crops. We can’t eat pine plantations. We can protect mature trees, as the ‘Urban Ngahere’ helps to stabilise hillsides and affords wind protection while the trees drink the rain and evaporate it into the atmosphere, making a cooler city and more stable environment.

The country has lost our ‘food basket’ from the East Coast with many orchards, farmed for generations, being decimated by the cyclone. Government promised to legislate for protection of our ‘arable land’. Soil suitable for growing crops is only 4% of New Zealand. This includes Pukekohe where our most fertile soil is being built on. Profit of developers can’t overrule our social needs, including food independence. We can’t go on intensifying ‘willy nilly’.

Dominion Road goes down a hill and up a hill and at the bottom is aptly named ‘Valley Road’. During the February storm when half a year’s rainfall fell in three days, Auckland’s topography of hills and valleys became clear and streams flowed again. Queen Street was a river flowing to the harbour and the Viaduct land is reclaimed from the sea.

Our neighbourhood arterial roads, Karangahape, New North, Ponsonby and Richmond Roads are formed on ridges. Falling from Richmond Road where Cockburn Street changes its name to Hakanoa Street at Dryden Street is the valley. It extends from Grey Lynn Park to Hakanoa Reserve, to the wetland by the supermarket to Cox’s Bay Reserve. Creeks in the valleys that once flowed into streams to the sea, with wetlands and estuaries, were drained and replaced by a hidden network of culverts and drains beneath road catchpits.

The storm of 27 February revealed the original watercourse and overland flow paths, becoming a river forcing its way to the sea. Its impeded flow flooded homes and Westmoreland Street industrial buildings exacerbated by blocked catchpits. Change is necessary. Auckland Transport must concentrate on their core service, the maintenance of roads and footpaths, berms and street trees, including keeping kerbs and catchpits clear, instead of trying to socially engineer us out of cars before there is a public transport network.

Covering the land with asphalt and concrete, building on every skerrick of land caused this problem. In subdivision design the leftover, ‘unbuildable’ piece, usually the wetland, is required to be gifted to council as a ‘reserve’. CCO Panuku must stop selling our reserves. Golf courses must become ‘recreational reserves’. These natural ’sponges’ along with gardens on each property and tree lined street berms, allowed rain to soak into the water table beneath the ground. Residential extensions have gotten away with building on this impermeable area by the use of retention tanks, holding the water to dribble out later. Unfortunately the network is a ‘combined sewer/ stormwater main’, too small to cope with average storms, spilling sewage into the sea, let alone a deluge.

Infrastructure must be built before intensification, starting with withdrawal of the government’s ‘Housing Enabling Bill’ that allowed three storey, three houses per section everywhere. The ‘Unitary Plan’ allowed sufficient intensification in the right places. The only amendments required from this current flood knowledge, are increasing ‘flood sensitive areas’ where building restrictions, of open facade to a designated height allow the free flow of flood water through the basement, and inclusion of ‘notable trees’ to the ‘tree register’,with government ‘tree protection’ to stop the cutting down of about 1000 mature trees per week.

The February floods and Cyclone Gabrielle have shown us how vulnerable we are. We need long term future planning, putting our land and the environment first. Money, growing the GDP and developers’ profits can no longer rule decision making.