Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium - Sharing the lessons ... · Hon Lianne Dalziel . Mayor of...

Conference Report

For the Symposium held on 29-30 November 2018 at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch

December 2019

ISBN 978-0-947520-21-2

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. In essence, you are free to copy, distribute and adapt the work, as long as you attribute the work to the Crown and abide by the other licence terms. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/. Please note that no departmental or governmental emblem, logo or Coat of Arms may be used in any way which infringes any provision of the Flags, Emblems, and Names Protection Act 1981. Attribution to the Crown should be in written form and not by reproduction of any such emblem, logo or Coat of Arms.

Contents

Foreword – Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration ................................................................. 2

Foreword – Mayor of Christchurch ......................................................................................................... 3

Foreword – Kaiwhakahaere, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu ........................................................................... 4

Background .............................................................................................................................................. 5

The Canterbury earthquake sequence ........................................................................................................................ 5

The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Learning and Legacy Programme ..................................................... 5

The November 2018 Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium ................................................................................ 6

Intended Audience of this report .................................................................................................................................. 6

Methodological Approach ............................................................................................................................................... 6

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................................ 7

Snapshot of the key lessons drawn from the symposium presentations – Reduction and Readiness .......................................................................................................................................... 9

Snapshot of the key lessons drawn from the symposium presentations – Recovery .......................... 10

Day One – Thursday 29 November ....................................................................................................... 11

Morning plenary keynotes ____________________________________________________________________________ 11

Hon Lianne Dalziel (Mayor of Christchurch) .......................................................................................................... 11

Arihia Bennett (Chief Executive Officer, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu) ............................................................... 13

John Ryan (Auditor-General, Office of the Auditor-General) .......................................................................... 15

Breakout panel discussions—Day One ________________________________________________________________ 17

Building resilient communities .................................................................................................................................... 17

Construction and housing ............................................................................................................................................. 20

Organisational leadership and governance ........................................................................................................... 24

Mental health lessons ..................................................................................................................................................... 31

Business recovery lessons.............................................................................................................................................. 36

Youth in disaster recovery ............................................................................................................................................. 40

Plenary panel discussion – Communicating the recovery story ______________________________________ 43

Gerard Smyth (Film Maker, “Christchurch Dilemmas”/”When a City Falls”) .............................................. 43

Barnaby Bennett (Publisher/Designer, Freerange Press) .................................................................................. 44

Joanna Norris (Chief Executive, Christchurch NZ)................................................................................................ 46

Welcoming Address: Dr Rod Carr (Vice-Chancellor, University of Canterbury) ...................................... 49

Day Two – Friday 30 November ............................................................................................................ 50

Plenary keynotes ______________________________________________________________________________________ 50

Laurie Johnson (Disaster Consultant) ....................................................................................................................... 50

Dame Silvia Cartwright (Chair, Public Inquiry into the Earthquake Commission) ................................... 56

Breakout panel discussions – Day Two ________________________________________________________________ 58

Arts, culture and heritage .............................................................................................................................................. 58

Cross-community perspectives ................................................................................................................................... 62

Social recovery lessons ................................................................................................................................................... 67

Community leadership ................................................................................................................................................... 73

Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing ....................................................................................................................... 78

Infrastructure recovery ................................................................................................................................................... 80

Plenary panel discussion ______________________________________________________________________________ 84

Recovery governance arrangements ........................................................................................................................ 84

Hon Dr Megan Woods (Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration) ................................................ 89

Appendix 1: Full list of reduction and readiness lessons drawn from symposium presentations ........ 92

Appendix 2: Full list of recovery lessons drawn from symposium presentations ................................. 95

Appendix 3: Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium Programme .......................................................... 101

2

Foreword – Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration

“The Canterbury earthquakes sequences was an unprecedented event that changed our city forever. Many of us lost loved ones, buildings and treasured landmarks were lost, our sense of place was disrupted and all of us were faced with the long, steep climb of recovery.

What we all know though is that we will not be the last New Zealanders to face the difficult task of picking themselves up from a disaster, putting themselves back together and rebuilding. We don’t know where or when, but we know that future generations will face this challenge just as we have.

Our hope in holding the Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium was to provide a map, a marker of sorts. To record what happened to us, what it taught us, and to leave practical lessons for the future.

The Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium provided an opportunity for us to step back and critically examine our response, our recovery and our rebuild in Canterbury. It was a chance to reflect and to acknowledge we have come a long way from the devastating seismic events that rocked our communities in the past decade. While we still have work to do, there has been significant progress in addressing some key areas to ensure we are stronger and more resilient for the future.

Over two days, hundreds of people with first-hand experience of disaster recovery came together to chart out this roadmap – we heard from academics, community leaders, politicians, broadcasters and journalists. We heard expert testimony and first-hand accounts. We heard what gave people hope in the aftermath of the disaster, we heard what made recovery harder and we heard what can be done better in future.

At times the conversation was confronting, at times it was uplifting, but I was so impressed by the way it brought all parts of the community together.

The Symposium has left us with a rich collection of lessons and practical tools to draw on and there are a number of steps we must continue to take to build the on the foundation.

Of prime importance is ensuring our communities are as resilient as possible and are firmly at the centre of future recovery planning and implementation.

As emphasised by a number of speakers, let us not wait for another disaster to forge strong partnerships. If these are in place and strong in ‘normal’ times, then we will be more resilient for when the next disaster strikes. The role and contribution of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu has demonstrated the critical value of partnership in both recovery and in building for a stronger future.

I call on leaders from across New Zealand to consider the lessons in this report and take action to prepare us for future challenges that we will inevitably face. I hope that this report acts as our pouwhenua, our marker stones to guide future generations.”

Hon Dr Megan Woods Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration

3

Foreword – Mayor of Christchurch

What became known as the Canterbury Earthquake Sequence began at 4.35am on 4 September 2010.

Considerable work was undertaken in the aftermath to both understand the extent of the damage it caused, and the solutions that would allow the rebuilding of homes in areas prone to liquefaction and lateral spread.

The aftershock that occurred on 22 February 2011, when 185 people died and hundreds more were injured, was a game changer when it came to considering the future of these areas. It was central government that took the lead, establishing a government department to lead the city’s recovery, and setting in train a process for addressing the challenges the city would have to face.

As the Minister has said, this Symposium has provided an opportunity for us to critically examine this approach, and to examine all aspects of what happened, to understand what we did well and to acknowledge mistakes that were made.

It isn’t always easy to retrospectively examine choices that were made in the heat of the moment, which is why a high trust environment has been so important. And that is why it is so important that we look back, not to blame, but to understand. We often learn more from our mistakes than our successes, so it has been important to remain focused on the lessons learned. We owe this to everyone whose lives were changed by the events that occurred and the decisions that were made.

The most important lesson for me is the starting point when disaster strikes. In order to establish the right model for the recovery arrangements, it’s important to start with what you have. Community leaders will be vital conduits for information both to and from the communities they know best. We must make sure they are engaged from the outset. And look to the existing institutions and networks, in other words the ones that will endure beyond whatever intervention is required, so that they are strengthened in the process. This means that when the time comes to reduce the amount of central government or external intervention, the existing institutions and networks are in a better position than they were before disaster struck, and all the existing relationships remain intact.

As I said, the key to success is to understand that we must always keep the community at the heart of everything we do and fully engage communities in the recovery. It is vital that communities regain their own sense of agency as soon as possible.

Finally, I have come to understand that lessons are not learned until they have been embedded into practice. That means taking on board the lessons of our experience and making them part of our business as usual – both at the local and central government level. If we do that, then our experience will have created a meaningful and lasting legacy for the future. Thank you to everyone who has played a part in the process to date. There is more to be done, but we now have a platform for the future.

Hon Lianne Dalziel Mayor of Christchurch

4

Foreword – Kaiwhakahaere, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu

E rere nei taku manu whakamihi, hāro ana i ōna whenua pākarukaru i ngā hoepapatanga poautinitini a Rūaumoko ki Waitaha. Tērā te rū o te manawa kaikinikini nei ki ō tātou ika whakangaro atu ki a Pōhutukawa. Oi Manawa, kōhatu whakamaumahara ki aku mōtoi kahotea kua motu i te hoi. Haere, haere, haere. Oi kikokiko i te ao tūroa, aku manu whakatopa i te ata hāpara, ka ao, ka ao, ka awatea. Mauri ora, tēnā tātou katoa i a Matariki e tauhōkai nei i te hiku o te Mangōroa.

Very often it is in adversity and disaster that we come together as a people - as a community. Those things that may separate us, fall away, and the purity of ensuring the safety and very best outcomes for the collective, for those most in need, becomes the priority. The devastation of the Canterbury Earthquakes provided a profound example of this, in the incredible resilience and aroha shown by the people of Christchurch and how we came together as one. This has continued and has been the guiding principle through the re-emergence of a city being built guided in partnership by tangata whenua. This is an approach that brings mana to all in our wonderful city and rohe, which enhances the rebuild and provides a wonderful inspiration for all our tamariki and rangatahi now and into the future.

The benefits of partnership, of kotahitanga, in working together have been on show through what has been a difficult and traumatic experience for us all. In the immediate aftermath of the quakes, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu and Ngā Mātā Waka formed the Māori Recovery Network, which provided crucial services to those living in the worst affected areas. This was a powerful display of our core values of manaakitangi and kotahitanga in action for the benefit of everyone. We worked alongside the many who were supporting the people through the calamities of the disaster. Prior to the earthquakes, consultation with iwi had often seemed a cursory process, a reluctantly engaged box to be ticked to get the “cultural sign-off”. When Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu was recognised as a statutory partner following the Canterbury Earthquake, we were recognised and acknowledged as partners at the decision-making table. When the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority helped to establish and fund the Matapopore Charitable Trust in 2014, mana whenua Te Ngāi Tūāhuriri were recognised as providing unprecedented input and guidance in the recovery and rebuild process. This enabled, as an example, our renowned Ngāi Tahu artists to ensure that the values and stories of Te Ngāi Tūāhuriri and Ngāi Tahu are now woven into the fabric of this wonderful city.

The people of Waitaha have shown their unwavering resilience throughout this incredibly difficult period. Part of this resilience is inherent in our whakapapa, and part of it is drawn from our ability to learn from the past to ensure that we are as prepared as possible for whatever the future may bring. I’m extremely proud and humbled when I reflect on what we have collectively achieved and learned through coming together as one community, it is a powerful example of partnership, which brings mana and uplifts us all.

Mō tātou, ā, mō kā uri ā muri ake nei – for us and our children after us.

Lisa Tumahai Kaiwhakahaere Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu

Background 5

Background

The Canterbury earthquake sequence At 4.35 a.m. on 4 September 2010, a magnitude (Mw) 7.1 earthquake struck 40 kilometres west of Christchurch near the small town of Darfield in the Canterbury plains of the South Island, causing no fatalities but significant land damage. This marked the beginning of a series of earthquakes that caused loss of life and damage at a scale not seen since the Hawkes Bay earthquake in 1931. This included a Mw 6.3 earthquake on 22 February 2011 at a depth of 5 km beneath the city of Christchurch that killed 185 and injured more than 7,000 people. There was widespread damage to land (including liquefaction), housing, and infrastructure across the region.

The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Learning and Legacy Programme The recovery from these events has been a learning curve for all those involved, and there was limited precedent to fall back on, as each emergency requires a tailored response. There are, therefore, lessons that can and should be learned from the recovery efforts form the Canterbury earthquake sequence.

In August 2014, Cabinet directed the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority to undertake a programme of work that would draw on the recovery lessons from the Canterbury earthquake sequence in order to strengthen resilience for the benefit of all New Zealanders. This work programme transitioned to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in 2016 following the disestablishment of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. Cabinet noted that the Government needed to ensure that the many recovery lessons from Canterbury were captured so New Zealand can effectively respond to, and recover from, future emergencies. In September 2016, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s EQ Recovery Learning website went live (www.eqrecoverylearning.org). This website brings together the knowledge, insights, and real-life stories garnered from those directly involved in the Canterbury earthquake response.

In addition to the website, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet delivered a report in 2018, the “Whole of Government Report: Lessons from the Canterbury earthquake sequence”, that synthesised the recovery lessons captured from the published material related to the Government’s recovery efforts following the earthquakes. This report encompasses lessons focusing on five specific areas:

• Recovery Governance Arrangements • Recovery Legislation • Land Decisions • Insurance Response • Horizontal Infrastructure Rebuild Programme.

The “Whole of Government Report: Lessons from the Canterbury earthquake sequence” has since been cited in numerous research studies, and the lessons within the report have since been used by the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management to inform recovery planning.

http://www.eqrecoverylearning.org/

6 Background

While the above report has been a useful contribution to the body of international research on disaster recoveries, the scope was limited to central government’s actions with respect to the five specific areas listed above. There have been numerous other sector-specific studies undertaken, such as a report on the lessons from Recover Canterbury—an organisation that was pivotal in the survival and re-establishment of the Canterbury business community following the earthquakes. The purpose of the Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium was to bring together a broader range of lessons from the perspective of those who were directly involved in the earthquakes recovery.

The November 2018 Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium The Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium, jointly hosted by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Christchurch City Council, was held on 29 and 30 November 2018 at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. The purpose of the event was to share lessons from the Canterbury earthquakes so that New Zealand as a whole can be better prepared in future for any similar natural emergencies.

Speakers and presenters included: Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister Hon Dr Megan Woods; Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel; Ngāi Tahu chief executive officer Arihia Bennett; Chair of the Public Inquiry into Earthquake Commission (EQC) Dame Sylvia Cartwright; urban planner specialising in disaster recovery and catastrophe risk management Dr Laurie Johnson; ChristchurchNZ chief executive and former Press editor Joanna Norris; academic researcher and designer Barnaby Bennett, and filmmaker Gerard Smyth.

About 300 local and national participants from the public, private, and voluntary sectors and academia attended the Symposium. They represented those involved in the Canterbury recovery effort and also leaders of organisations that might be impacted by future disasters or involved in recovery efforts. The focus of the Symposium was on ensuring that we learn from the Canterbury experience and that we can apply those learnings.

All the videos and presentation slides from the event have been published online and can be accessed through the following link: https://www.eqrecoverylearning.org/connect/symposium/

Intended Audience of this report Looking ahead, it is anticipated that this report will be used as a basis for further work to help all sectors across New Zealand prepare for recovery from any future large-scale emergencies, as well as other highly complex challenges. The main audiences for this report are people from any sector, business or community who are likely to be directly carrying out reduction, readiness and recovery activities.

Methodological Approach The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Christchurch City Council undertook a thorough review of each of the video presentations by listening to then summarising each presentation and session. The summaries were peer reviewed to verify that the information speakers presented was accurately captured.

https://www.eqrecoverylearning.org/connect/symposium/

Background 7

The team then drew out the verbatim lessons from each session and developed them into lessons that could be put into practice. With the intended audiences in mind, the lessons were then analysed and categorised into these main themes:

• Communication and Engagement • Leadership and Governance • Policy, Strategy and Planning • Systems, Resourcing and Training.

Lessons are presented in this report in a number of ways:

1. At the beginning of the summary of each session or plenary keynote speaker from which they were derived

2. In Appendices 1 and 2 under the main themes – with the session it was derived from in brackets for easy reference

3. As a “snapshot” of key lessons in the front of this report.

The criteria used for identifying the key lessons in the snapshot were that the lesson:

• could be applied broadly across a range of topics, sectors, businesses and communities, • was repeated many times as a lesson which should be learned, or • has far reaching impact throughout New Zealand (in the case of sector specific lessons).

The practical lessons are derived from the perspectives of those who spoke at the Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium, and therefore do not necessarily reflect the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s or the Christchurch City Council’s view on the lessons from the Canterbury earthquake sequence. A copy of this report was provided to each of the speakers prior to publication to ensure that their words have not been misinterpreted.

Acknowledgements Organising a conference is a collaborative endeavour, and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Christchurch City Council would like to thank all those who were involved in the planning and management of the event.

We thank all those who volunteered to share their experiences at the Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium and those who moderated the panel discussions. We recognise that revisiting the events of 2010 and 2011 would have been a difficult experience for many and we want to thank all the participants and delegates for coming together for this event.

We would like to also pay special thanks to Dr Te Maire Tau (Ūpoko of Ngāi Tūāhuriri) and Dr Rod Carr (former Vice-Chancellor, University of Canterbury) for welcoming us to the University of Canterbury, and the Canterbury District Health Board and Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce for organising workshops that were held in the lead up to the Symposium.

8 Background

Finally, we would like to thank you, the reader. The Māori proverb “E kore te patiki e hoki ki tona puehu” – warns us not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Defining our pouwhenua, through the lessons that we share from the Canterbury events, is an important first step to help better prepare us for future disasters.

We now have a collective duty to critically consider each of the lessons and start implementing those that will help us better prepare for the next disaster. For our whānau, for our tamariki.

Snapshot of the key lessons 9

Snapshot of the key lessons drawn from the symposium presentations – Reduction and Readiness

Communication & Engagement Co-create recovery plans with communities, including with mana whenua and engage with them on key decisions

Leadership & Governance Maintain strong relationships between iwi, central and local government and different local government agencies at all times Have in place a shared vision and direction across the whole (e.g., health) sector to serve as a foundation for crises

Policy, Strategy & Planning Prepare funding models for recovery environments Prepare and plan legislative and institutional frameworks that can be established ahead of time Take opportunities to improve and strengthen resilience, including through legislation Develop building systems, engineering tools and guidelines to reduce non-structural damage and disruption, and build a new strategy for communicating performance and reparability Establish youth development models and frameworks such as the ones used in Canterbury Know your insurance policy - how it's activated and what is covered Organisations need to define what their stakeholder connectivity needs are in a recovery environment and start building those relationships now

Systems, Resourcing & Training

Critically examine the response, the rebuild and the recovery following an emergency. This includes drawing out the thoughts and actions of those involved at the time Develop systems to continuously identify, monitor, and take action on vulnerabilities Hold staff, client, and insurance records in multiple locations and in multiple formats in the event of the office being inaccessible. Know how to access the information Regularly review systems and controls (financial and risk management), and pressure test systems under disaster scenarios Address the gaps in response and recovery training for principals and teachers Map heritage places and identification plaques and make sure the information is accessible in a post-disaster situation

People at the centre of recovery

A repeating theme from the speakers was the importance of people being at the centre of recovery. Learning from experiences where people did or did not: feel listened to, included and/or valued, found services accessible, timely and coordinated or where priority was given to financial cost and speed, are some examples of how we could be more people centred in recovery.

Learning from Canterbury experiences and the ‘4 Rs’

The integrated approach to civil defence emergency management in New Zealand can be described by the four areas of activity, known as the ‘4 Rs’; reduction, readiness, response and recovery.

This symposium focused on learning from the recovery experience. As one of the 4 Rs, planning for recovery helps ensure measures are in place to minimise the consequences of emergencies on communities. Consider these for your recovery planning in:

• requirements for organisations in Civil Defence Emergency Management groups, other agencies and regions

• business continuity plans for businesses and organisations

Many speakers expressed a strong recommendation that others draw on the recovery lessons from the Canterbury experience in preparation for the inevitable next big disaster. While most of these were drawing on learning from recovery, many speakers made mention of things they recommend are done before an emergency. These fall into readiness and reduction activities.

10 Snapshot of the key lessons

Snapshot of the key lessons drawn from the symposium presentations – Recovery

Communication & Engagement Use simple language tailored to diverse audiences and cultures to communicate information Provide disaster messaging in a variety of languages and channels Build trust and a sense of ownership through listening, interacting and involving the community in recovery planning and decision making and implementation Balance positive messaging with the realities of the situation. Both are important, but one at the expense of the other is destructive Communicate with the rest of the country that the region is open for business to allow business as usual to occur where possible Establish processes for sharing information with stakeholders Facilitate the community to work on what is important to their own recovery, with local leaders driving those ideas forward so the community is working with people they know and trust Manage expectations through the recovery journey, and reset expectations after further events. Provide communities with regular updates on progress towards end goals

Leadership & Governance Review governance arrangements and organisational leadership regularly by asking the question is what we’re doing fit for purpose for the current phase of the recovery Establish a people-centred and community driven collaborative recovery governance model, rather than a directive model Listen to communities, and if something is not working, then change your approach Create a unified view of the end goal, while maintaining flexibility over time Create a culture that encourages leaders across all levels of government to try ideas, make mistakes and change course Provide local staff with a mandate to lead. Social recovery needs local leadership and regional and national support and funding Include mana whenua in recovery governance structures, and where appropriate with the same legal status as local authorities in response and recovery legislation Prioritise staff welfare and wellbeing ahead of other challenges facing organisations Build an understanding of secondary stressors and establish the systems (i.e. monitoring, governance and agency collaboration) to identify and alleviate them

Policy, Strategy & Planning Avoid permanent relocation of residents, except in extreme circumstances Provide mentors and added capacity to strengthen without supplanting local leadership and ownership for recovery policy Maximise and build on institutional knowledge and pre-existing networks by linking closely with local authorities Closely align recovery work streams, for example co-locating social and infrastructure services to increase understanding of each other's perspectives Establish advocacy services as soon as possible, that is somebody who can stand beside individuals and help them resolve issues Embed mana whenua values and aspirations within recovery plans, including a long term lens to decision making Review activities and policies adopted during previous disaster recoveries, and adapt (as appropriate) to the situation and local context Start recovery planning as soon as possible in the response period so the transition is seamless Use funding models that allow scope for risk, so the community can lead creative projects

Systems, Resourcing & Training Use and enhance existing systems and government structures to promote information flow and collaboration Upskill quickly and update staff frequently on policies, subsidies, processes and information due to the fast changing environment Develop skills in the local population and use local providers and resources, where possible

Day One – Morning plenary keynotes 11

Day One – Thursday 29 November

Morning plenary keynotes

Hon Lianne Dalziel (Mayor of Christchurch)

Our journey and objectives of the symposium

Hon Dalziel began by observing that this symposium is not the first and won’t be the last time we will come together to reflect, and over time we’ll understand more about what we’ve experienced and what we can offer in the future. In 2021 Christchurch is intending to host an international conference to focus on making a global contribution to disaster risk reduction, including climate change adaptation and sustainable development, through the dual concepts of risk and resilience. All of these connect and our journey has shown how important they are locally, nationally, and globally.

Many reviews have been undertaken and overall we did things well, but mistakes were made and we must not allow them to be repeated. We look back not to blame but to understand, and understand we must; that is our purpose. We all have valuable perspectives to share.

Highlights were:

• Bringing Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu to the table, which has now expanded into all regional governance arrangements beginning in Christchurch and embracing all of Canterbury. That took courage from the government of the day, and we are now looking to embed this into legislation. In particular, a true highlight of this involvement was when Ngāi Tahu partnered with Ara and Hawkins to establish an apprenticeship programme for young people

• Recover Canterbury—a public-private partnership led by the Canterbury Development Corporation and the Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce

• The employer subsidy, which really helped. It gave employers time to work things out and not worry about how they would pay their employees

• Gap Filler, creating life in vacant spaces

Lessons

• Establish a formal partnership with the local mana whenua, embedding them within the recovery governance structure

• Develop systems to continually identify, monitor, and take action on vulnerabilities • Take opportunities to improve and strengthen resilience, including through legislation • Co-create recovery plans with communities, and engage with them on key decisions

12 Day One – Morning plenary keynotes

• CanCERN (Canterbury Community Earthquake Recovery Network), which provided a voice to affected communities

• Project Lyttelton • Creative people telling stories.

Local people are key to what makes recovery work. A seminar held just three weeks after the September 2010 earthquake was instructive in that respect; it was put together quickly by local people. A key learning was the need to “secure the things that are good for the community and discard the ones that hold us back.”

It is important to look for the missing story – what was going on before the crisis occurred and what were the pre-existing vulnerabilities? Ignoring this entrenches vulnerabilities. A disaster offers the opportunity to put things right. Questions to bear in mind include:

• How have we addressed our pre-existing vulnerabilities? • Have we fully understood the possibilities the post-disaster environment offers? • What opportunities have we taken to ensure greater Christchurch and the whole of New Zealand

is more resilient to the challenges we will continue to face?

An example is liquefaction—we had a map of pre-existing vulnerabilities, and it happened where we knew it would. Silt forced its way through unreinforced concrete foundations. We also knew about the dangers of unreinforced masonry from the Hawkes Bay quake, and we didn’t ensure that the CTV building was properly assessed after the September quake.

Good changes have been made but there remains unfinished business. Our law distinguishes between dangerous buildings and earthquake-prone buildings and the potential to collapse in the event of an earthquake. But by February 2011, there was still no legal obligation created by any regulatory or statutory body, triggered by the major earthquake in September 2010, which required anyone to undertake a detailed examination, unless specifically directed to do so. Every local authority and government department has a threshold for checking before allowing people and public back in. If it’s important for public buildings, then surely it’s important for privately owned buildings. In the built environment there is still no mechanism to ensure a building is safe to reoccupy after an event. The Resource Management Act also continues to prioritise existing use rights even when there’s a marked increase in vulnerability to natural hazards.

Referencing Sir Peter Gluckman’s report on the psychosocial consequences of the Canterbury earthquakes1, a key issue for recovery is a sense of empowerment and the need to regain some sense of control. The earthquake was a disempowering event.

1 Office of the Prime Minister’s Science Advisory Committee, “The psychosocial consequences of the Canterbury

earthquakes: A briefing paper”, (Office of the Prime Minister’s Science Advisory Committee, 2011)


Resilience begins and ends with connected communities and knowing your neighbours. There is a need to reclaim the word ‘resilience.’ It doesn’t mean ‘stoic’ or ‘strong’ as mistakenly used to describe the people of Canterbury’s response to the quakes; it actually means having the flexibility, diversity, respect, and adaptability to join in and thrive while co-creating a new environment. That requires trust on both sides and communities to take back responsibility for their own future.

Hon Dalziel closed with her adaptation of the motto adopted by Canterbury Community Earthquake Recovery Network: “The wisdom of the community when combined with the knowledge of the experts always exceeds what one can offer without the other.”

Arihia Bennett (Chief Executive Officer, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu)

Lessons from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu

Ms Bennett introduced her address with a video history of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu (TRoNT), from its establishment by an Act of Parliament in 1996 and its Treaty settlement with the Crown in 1997 to the present day. Over this time, the number of affiliated members has grown from 4,000 to 62,000 in 2018, and the commercial portfolio in 2017/18 was valued at $1.6 billion. TRoNT provides a wide range of support to its members through 18 Rūnanga located at marae around the South Island, six of which are located in the greater Christchurch area.

There were two key leadership and governance lessons for Ngāi Tahu following the Canterbury and Kaikōura earthquakes:

Lesson 1—the value of being recognised as the statutory partner in the recovery governance

Legislation for the Canterbury recovery ensured that Ngāi Tahu is around the table and consulted on an equal footing with the Government and local authorities involved in the recovery. From then on their involvement touched all aspects of the recovery, enabling a close relationship to be built with the other authorities, which continues today. This is the best example of a Treaty relationship being recognised, enabling mana whenua values and aspirations to be realised in the rebuild. Ngāi Tahu could contribute effectively, for example in the close relationship formed with Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, seconding staff, and as part of governance and steering groups. A further example is the establishment of ‘navigators’ to meet the needs of vulnerable whānau in a culturally appropriate manner. This four-year recovery phase helped people get back on their feet, getting alongside families to enable and empower them.

Lessons

• Include mana whenua in recovery governance structures and where appropriate with the same legal status as local authorities in response and recovery legislation

• Embed mana whenua values and aspirations in recovery plans • Seek advice from mana whenua on the long-term issues affecting people and bring that

lens to decision-making


The relationship between Ngāi Tahu and Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority through the Matapopore Trust is thought to be a world first, where local indigenous people are involved in the redesign and reconstruction of a city from the governance level to the physical reconstruction. A physical example of this is in the artwork embedded in the wall of the new Justice and Emergency Precinct building, designed by a Ngāi Tahu artist; the city is ‘alive’ with examples of what can be achieved when mana whenua voices are heard around the table.

In contrast, Ngāi Tahu were not recognised in the same way in the Kaikōura/Hurunui recovery effort. Here they have had to continually argue that they can provide more than just the social point of view. They are now at the table, but this has taken some time and they don’t have the same legal recognition and expression of mana as was the case in Canterbury. Also, the current Civil Defence Emergency Management Act is silent on iwi involvement, and Ms Bennett stressed that this cannot continue to be the case. The lesson here is that mana whenua need to be recognised, and have the same legal status as local authorities in response and recovery legislation. Partnership is a key concept in the Treaty of Waitangi and Ngāi Tahu has worked hard to achieve its rightful role as the kaitiaki across the region. Ngāi Tahu expect to be involved in the review of this legislation.

Lesson 2—it is important to recognise the unique ability of Ngāi Tahu to understand the long-term issues affecting people at a local, regional, and South Island level

To illustrate this point, Ms Bennett referenced the example given by Lianne Dalziel in her address on the risks of building in vulnerable areas, noting that before European settlement, Ngāi Tahu did not build any marae in the swampy area of eastern Christchurch. Ngāi Tahu has good knowledge of the South Island, its people, and culture that we can leverage. Tapping into this will enable all our communities to grow and prosper. Not many organisations can see things with that long-term lens, particularly at a political level, and leaders were urged to use the capability and expertise of Ngāi Tahu in this area.

In concluding, Ms Bennett acknowledged all the leaders, past and present, who had worked so hard in the response and recovery phases. All would agree that response and recovery is difficult following a disaster and requires leaders to make difficult decisions in periods of uncertainty. We need to commit to identifying better ways of working together at the leadership and governance levels, forging and maintaining effective strategic alliances at local, regional, and national levels. If they are in place and strong in ‘normal’ times, then this will be pivotal in ‘not-so-normal’ times. Doing this now needs to be a priority. Ngāi Tahu has recently finalised its new emergency response framework, but can’t do this alone.


John Ryan (Auditor-General, Office of the Auditor-General)

Lessons drawn from the Office of the Auditor-General’s Canterbury work programme

Newly appointed to the role of Auditor-General, Mr Ryan acknowledged the work of his predecessor, Lyn Provost, in leading his Office’s reviews of the Government’s response to the earthquakes, and everyone’s contribution to the recovery. He noted that the size and scale of the recovery, lives lost, and the impact on people’s lives is unprecedented, and the recovery is still underway. In terms of lessons learned, he also wanted to acknowledge that a lot had been achieved extremely well to get us to this point.

The Auditor-General’s interest in the recovery is in the quality and value of the public spend—approximately $20 billion of an estimated $40 billion recovery cost. The work of the Office covers all public entities, so the brief is wide. Several reviews by the Office of the Auditor-General covered the work of Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, Earthquake Commission (EQC), horizontal infrastructure work, and key projects. From this work, four main lessons were identified.

Lesson 1—people must be at the centre of the recovery

Mr Ryan described this as an extraordinarily difficult task given the complexity and scale of response activities, but vital to retain the trust and confidence of the people. While it is important to celebrate success, we also need to be honest about what we don’t know—and what we can achieve and by when—to set realistic expectations. He noted the importance of giving clarity to people about when things will be made better. Often agencies were forced into stretch goals to give people this clarity, that they then didn’t meet (e.g. Earthquake Commission (EQC) and anchor projects’ timelines), which led to disenchantment. Involving the community in decision making helps to build a sense of collective ownership. There was a lot of good work in this space early on, but trust and confidence declined because people felt they couldn’t influence the decision making.

Lessons

• Involve the community in decision-making to build a sense of ownership • Set realistic expectations to retain the trust and confidence of the people • Regularly review systems and controls (financial and risk management) and pressure test

systems under disaster scenarios • Review governance arrangements regularly by asking the question is what we’re doing fit

for purpose for the current phase of the recovery • Collaboratively (across sectors) anticipate challenges and prepare for those that may

eventuate


Lesson 2—good systems and controls are even more important in difficult times

At the early stages when things are moving quickly and money flows, the risk of fraudulent expenditure is high, and this can undermine trust and confidence. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority took too long to put basic systems and controls in place. While these improved over time, this has been described as ‘people were building the plane while they were flying it’. Good systems and controls (e.g. financial and risk management) provide a solid base for making challenging decisions and hard trade-offs with major cost implications. There are a lot of things we can do in advance to be ready for major events (e.g. contracts with ICT suppliers, good processes and systems, and practice).

Lesson 3—governance arrangements need to be reviewed regularly

The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s early leadership worked extremely well (e.g. dealing with condemned buildings and an overarching recovery strategy). But over time, as recovery moved into reconstruction it lost momentum, with a lot of emphasis placed on ‘doing’ rather than leading the recovery, resulting in a loss of confidence of the community. There were some things that organisations across the recovery could have dealt with earlier or been foreseen, like removal of asbestos or the line between repair and improvement. A lot of this could be prepared ahead of time and anticipated. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and other agencies got busy doing things, so there was little time spent and space for thinking about contingencies, scenarios, or what might happen in the future. It is difficult to rethink governance when you’re busy, but it is critical that at every phase we keep a conversation going about this, and ensure governance is fit for purpose for the phase we’re in and the issues we are experiencing.

Lesson 4—clarity, co-ordination, and co-operation are essential

Co-ordination between public agencies is absolutely critical to the success of the recovery as not doing it well delays progress and results in poor outcomes. The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority did this well initially, but as noted above, over time it found it difficult to balance its strategic leadership role with delivery of its ever-expanding portfolio of tasks. This led to a lack of clarity for staff, stakeholders, and the community. Agencies need to trust each other to coordinate and collaborate. This trust wasn’t always there (e.g. the funding and service level disputes on the pipes and roading network could have been avoided). While there will always be tension, this can be anticipated and planned for.

We can prepare for more than we realise

In summary, we can prepare a lot more than we realise for these events. We know the next big event will be complex, costly, and there will be uncertainty. We just don’t know how complex, costly, and how much uncertainty there will be. We know that New Zealand will get hit by the big one, we just don’t know when. In New Zealand we do a great job preparing for known contingencies, but not so well for the catastrophic. This kind of thinking is what Mr Ryan would like to see come out of the Canterbury event. Lessons from Canterbury should help us better prepare for catastrophic events. Citing the example of the marker stones used in Japan, we need to actually read the lessons from time to time and remember them. As incoming Auditor-General, Mr Ryan will remain incredibly interested and will ensure we do everything we can to learn from these events.

Panel discussion (Day One) – Building resilient communities 17

Breakout panel discussions—Day One

Building resilient communities

Associate Professor Carol Mutch (University of Auckland)

What did we learn from the role schools played as social anchors?

Carol Mutch’s key message was “If we want cohesive, connected, resilient communities, look after our schools.” Presenting research in a range of Canterbury schools and recording their earthquake stories, Professor Mutch described the ways schools are the hubs of their communities as social anchors in the preparedness, response, and recovery phases for the community; the school itself; and for individual children and young people. From 120 interviews, Professor Mutch gave examples of the ways principals and teachers provided care for children and the community and how they included children as active participants in the response and recovery planning.

Pre-disaster recommendations included:

• Engage school representatives through different stages of disaster planning • Address the gaps in training for principals and teachers

Post-disaster recommendations included:

• Provision of timely, accessible, and ongoing support for principals and teachers • Understand the impact of secondary stressors and decisions that contribute to further distress.

Lessons

• Engage school representatives through each stage of pre-disaster planning • Address the gaps in response and recovery training for principals and teachers • Provide timely, accessible and on-going support for principals and teachers post disaster • Review activities and policies adopted during previous disaster recoveries and adapt (as

appropriate) to the situation and local context • Continually seek opportunities to connect with local communities • Build relationships in ‘peace time’ • Start recovery planning as soon as possible in the response period so the transition is

seamless • When planning the rebuild, focus on both social and hard infrastructure, and recognise

the importance of home and place • Support inclusive community planning, including with mana whenua • Seek local knowledge of land hazards, including mana whenua • Engage with marae leadership with recovery planning

18 Panel discussion (Day One) – Building resilient communities

In response to a question on whether it is more important to have half your schools open or your schools half open, Professor Mutch said it’s better to support what is left after a disaster and keep it going as long as possible so people can move through that phase, and then engage people in the planning forward.

Rose Henderson (Director of Allied Health, Canterbury District Health Board)

Positively adapting to a changed reality

Rose Henderson’s presentation emphasised that psychosocial response and recovery is not about returning to normality but “positively adapting to a changed reality,” both individually and collectively. Acknowledging the change of lead agency for psychosocial recovery from the Ministry of Social Development to the Ministry of Health in 2016, she emphasised the benefit of collaboration and building relationships during “peace time.”

Ms Henderson spoke of learning from what is needed and successful in one event is not necessarily going to work in another event. She illustrated this point with the different contexts between the Christchurch and Kaikōura events to demonstrate why it is vital that agencies must always be connecting to the local affected communities and adapt the strategies to the local context.

Another key learning was that recovery planning must start as soon as possible in the response phase so the transition to the recovery phase is seamless. Ms Henderson stated that psychosocial recovery takes many forms (e.g., the rescue of the two cows) and closed by stating that “there are different ways in which we can meet the mental health and community needs if we explore these with the community and are prepared to take a few risks.”

Dr Karen Banwell and Professor Simon Kingham (University of Canterbury)

Building strong, resilient communities: what we learned from the Canterbury Earthquakes

Karen Banwell and Simon Kingham presented the Christchurch study that was completed as part of the Resilient Urban Futures project2. The Christchurch study explored the role of place and neighbourhoods in developing social networks for community resilience. Its findings were based on interviews of key leaders/stakeholders, as well as forty residents from four suburbs carefully selected because of their diversity of density, socio-economic status, urban form, and accessibility to facilities and environment. In presenting their findings, they highlighted the contribution of ‘being local’ and ‘urban form.’ How these facilitated individual and collective benefits (or not) for an informal local response were illustrated with quotes from residents on being local and belonging; the differences among street types; having access to natural and green spaces; and gathering and bumping places, especially schools and community hubs. For example, some suburbs did not respond particularly well after the earthquakes because they did not have a place to meet and organise. Their key message was the importance of home and place and that planning for local social infrastructure is not just about hard infrastructure, it’s about people.

2 The Resilient Urban futures project is an MBIE funded 4-year project, Multi –disciplinary group of over 40

researchers under leadership of Professor Phillipa Howden-Chapman (University of Otago).

Panel discussion (Day One) – Building resilient communities 19

Robyn Wallace (Director, Te Runanga o Ngāi Tahu)

An indigenous perspective

Throughout her presentation Robyn Wallace provided suggestions from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu on building resilience. The context of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu is that they have a local, regional, and Te Waipounamu (South Island) lens. They learnt they needed to build an understanding for external agencies of the Ngāi Tahu context. On building social capital through partnerships and recognising that every event is different, Ms Wallace emphasised the importance of supporting inclusive community planning and including mana whenua (local leadership). Examples included sharing knowledge of ‘no go’ areas and good areas, investing in community infrastructure, and supporting local skill development following a disaster. Ms Wallace spoke of marae or the more contemporary meeting places as natural places to gather together to provide manaaki, not only for their own people but also for the wider community members and visitors. While during the immediate response there’s a welfare component, marae are not just about welfare. Ms Wallace described the marae leadership structure and the importance of including leadership conversations at other levels. Marae are currently developing their preparedness plans, and in doing so developing relationships with the wider community’s response organisations. With Ngāi Tahu recognised as a statutory partner in the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act, Robyn said that iwi and hapu members were respected and able to have a say in the official decision making on recovery issues. The recognition of their role in the Kaikōura event was not as successful. Ms Wallace recommended a law change that recognises iwi in response and recovery phases.

Asked why she thought Ngāi Tahu was not recognised in the management of the Kaikōura event, Ms Wallace thought it likely that amidst the general chaos, they may have been considered primarily as being in the welfare space. It was noted that after the September earthquakes in Canterbury most of the marae were open within hours and were unrecognised for quite some time as important places where people could seek shelter and safety.

20 Panel discussion (Day One) – Construction and housing

Construction and housing

Associate Professor Tim Sullivan, (QuakeCoRE Flagship 4)

Earthquake Engineering for Next Generation Infrastructure

Looking at the history of earthquake engineering in New Zealand, the 1931 Napier earthquake prompted the development of world-leading standards and seismic design focused on life safety. Considering the impacts of the 22 February 2011 earthquake, Professor Sullivan’s presentation examined whether buildings (residential and commercial) behaved as engineers expected, and what lessons were learnt. Looking at both modern and older multi-storey buildings, much of the damage observed, to both structural and non-structural elements, could have been expected.

However, the question was raised about whether buildings and infrastructure performed how building owners and the community expected. The quake had many negative impacts, including huge disruption and monetary losses.

QuakeCoRE was formed following the quakes and its mission is to place New Zealand at the forefront of disaster resilience. There are a number of flagships, and Flagship 4: Next Generation Infrastructure is addressing the need to reduce damage and disruption by developing new building systems, engineering tools and guidelines, and a new strategy for communicating performance and reparability. Key challenges include improving the seismic performance of non-structural elements and residential buildings so as to reduce the likely losses and disruption generated by future earthquakes. In conclusion, earthquake engineering is vital for next generation infrastructure to get our communities back up and running quickly.

Lessons

• Ensure a balanced response to residential and commercial space; take lessons from iwi on building on unsafe land and have a discussion on which heritage spaces should be protected

• Develop building systems, engineering tools and guidelines to reduce non-structural damage and disruption and develop a new strategy for communicating performance and reparability

• Increase the participation of women in the construction industry • Enhance the technical capability of key institutions and make arrangements for technical

leadership for recovery • Review the New Zealand Building Act to address post-disaster aspects

Panel discussion (Day One) – Construction and housing 21

Asked about funding streams aligning with research needs, Professor Sullivan said that the difficulty with funding any research is understanding what research is really valuable, and that requires significant foresight and an appreciation of the broad range of issues at hand. There is a role for the industry and academics to speak out on the need for more engineering research. There is some good funding available and, of course, there could be more. In a perfect world, if we’d engineered Christchurch better we wouldn’t have had such a recovery to deal with. So there’s clearly a real need for earthquake engineering research.

Asked if any work was being done to tie his research into residential houses, Professor Sullivan replied that a number of groups have been looking at new information on residential housing, but he was not aware of any major change recommendations to provide improved outcomes for housing in earthquakes. There should be more research on housing that delivers on less physical damage, and not just on life-saving performance in earthquakes.

Gill Palmer (Principal Policy Advisor, Department of Internal Affairs)

Building back better with women

Gill Palmer presented Building back better with women—a project initiated in 2013 by the Ministry for Women to connect the underutilised female workforce to construction jobs for the rebuild, with a wider goal of changing the way we use our workforce and put what we learnt into practice across other industries and regions in New Zealand.

Ms Palmer began with the results—women’s participation in the construction industry increased in Christchurch from approximately 10 percent in 2013 to 17 percent in 2018. The project involved communicating the business case to potential partners and employers; collaboration with key industry and training organisations to get agreement on the vision and actions, which increased the visibility of women to create a ‘new normal’; and measuring the change.

The lesson learned was that women in construction is a win-win:

• For the economic wellbeing of women and their families • For businesses, by giving greater choice and diversity in their workforces • For Christchurch, by working toward an economy where everyone contributes • To address the wider issues of skills shortages and improving female career prospects.

Asked whether the roles women took up in the rebuild were different and what needs to be done to encourage women to get involved in wider roles, Ms Palmer replied that one of the things women said would help attract them into the jobs was if it built onto their existing skill sets. The number of women training in trades and enrolments in the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology increased 800 percent. They did see more women going into trades that were ‘second fit’ roles, such as painting and plastering, and fewer women choosing the ‘hard end’ roles. Initiatives promoting trades for women included booklets and advertisements. The purpose of these was to persuade employers to look for women, share information about how to welcome them, and use networks to share experiences.

22 Panel discussion (Day One) – Construction and housing

Ms Palmer confirmed that the Ministry for Women liaised with Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and other entities concerning women being significantly impacted by stress and anxiety due to the earthquakes and noted that women were leaving their jobs to go and look after their families, which was reflected in the labour force statistics.

Dave Brunsdon (Director, Kestrel Group) and Mike Stannard (Consultant, Kestrel Group)

Providing Technical Leadership for the Recovery Following Large-scale Disaster Events

Dave Brunsdon and Mike Stannard’s presentation centred on the formation of the Engineering Advisory Group (EAG) to provide technical leadership, its purpose, why it was needed in the context immediately following the earthquake sequence, and the unique issues arising from the Kaikōura earthquake in 2016. The two major built environment challenges were the NZ Building Act not addressing post-disaster aspects and the very limited technical engineering capability in central and local government.

The EAG’s purpose was to promote consistent approaches to assessing land and buildings, to keep engineers and consenting authorities on the same page, and to support lead government agencies on a range of issues arising from the quakes. Achievements included the production of a suite of documents to improve practice, lift the game, and get greater consistency of practice. The New Zealand Geotechnical Database evolved from the Canterbury earthquakes and is highly regarded across the world.

Kaikōura was a timely reminder that there will always be a next event, and it will be different from the previous one. Lessons learnt from the Christchurch earthquakes were applicable in the Kaikōura quake, both in the rural district and a metropolitan centre, however the damage did have differences. The Wellington City Council stepped up and commissioned event-specific guidance. However, the support of an EAG would have helped rural districts that were left to their own devices in regard to building and recovery matters.

The presentation concluded with key areas where future work is required to consolidate recovery lessons from the earthquakes:

• Enhance the technical capability of key institutions • Make arrangements for technical leadership for recovery • Co-ordinate and share information • Clarify where ‘business as usual’ regulatory and legal arrangements need modification • Improve investment and use of knowledge.

In response to a question on the membership of the EAG, Mr Brunsdon and Mr Stannard advised that while there was no specific advocate for homeowners, EAG members drew on their own experiences with ‘munted’ houses and heritage buildings.

Discussion on key areas for Auckland and Wellington to focus planning on included ensuring there is a balanced response to residential and commercial space; having a discussion on what heritage spaces should be protected before the event; and taking lessons from iwi on building on unsafe lands and incorporating them into district plans.

Panel discussion (Day One) – Construction and housing 23

A further point raised was whether there is a need for the New Zealand Government to have a chief engineer. It was noted that this this was one of the recommendations from the Royal Commission on the Canterbury Earthquakes.

The types of geotechnical information used to designate red zones was also raised, and it was noted that while this information has advanced since the time of the Canterbury earthquakes, there was reasonable information based on liquefaction maps and people knew the sort of areas of worst vulnerability.

A final question was regarding whether enough thought was given to the trajectory in some of the assessment processes and the interface with the claims settlement process. This is one of the learnings from the quakes.

24 Panel discussion (Day One)—Business recovery lessons

Organisational leadership and governance

Lessons

• Evaluate the characteristics we require from leaders in a recovery environment • Create collaborative environments, such as shared office spaces, to facilitate trust building

and collaboration between organisations • Create an environment during the recovery where staff expect change and innovation is

encouraged • Know your insurance policy - how it's activated and what is covered • Choose to move your business forward rather than maintain the status quo (e.g.

accelerate projects if you can) • Communicate to your customers frequently in a range of mediums • Establish services that provide neutral advice to balance insurers’ and clients’ rights • Establish an effective cross-sector public advisory service that has the authority to act and

be independent from its governance group • Establish monitoring and reporting systems, to use data to adapt services to community

needs • Establish processes for sharing information with stakeholders • Secure leadership right from the top to provide support for collaborative governance

models and those individuals involved • Determine and clearly communicate the priorities for your organisations following a

disaster, putting staff welfare and wellbeing ahead of other challenges • Build resilience into infrastructure before a disaster • Consider traffic implications and surface conditions when deciding which roads stay open • Use alliances rather than the business-as-usual decision making models to speed up

restoration, where appropriate • Take time to consult on options to create buy in, as this will save time in the long run • Define what your organisational stakeholder connectivity needs are in a recovery

environment and start building those relationships now • Support the community sector by providing them with channels to raise issues on

mandate, resourcing and funding

Panel discussion (Day One) – Business recovery lessons 25

John Vargo (Executive Director, Resilient Organisations)

Ten lessons for organisations: How to survive and thrive in a crisis

John Vargo presented 10 lessons based on seven years of research from his team. The 10 lessons are summarised below:

1. Operational Preparedness

This includes many things, such as infrastructure, pipes, plumbing, IT systems, and business continuity planning. Based on a survey of the challenges for business in the Christchurch earthquake, staff welfare and wellbeing were right at top for Christchurch organisations ahead of customer loss, cash flow, and many other challenges. Dr Vargo stated that this speaks hugely for regional culture and ties very closely to the second lesson.

2. Relational resilience

Dr Vargo focused on effective leadership. In particular, he noted there are certain characteristics we want our leaders to have. We want wise leaders, leaders who are courageous and prepared to moderate their own opinions, and leaders who are just. He recommended that we should talk about these characteristics in our leaders a lot more.

3. Creating a collaborative ecosystem

If we have the kind of leadership mentioned above, it will facilitate others wanting to ‘play nicely.’ A Christchurch example is the Enterprise Precinct and Innovation Campus (EPIC) building. This resulted from conversations between small IT businesses that went on to provide ‘homes’ for small innovative businesses and facilitating trust and collaborations between these organisations, such as ‘3am friends.’ Other examples in the community include collaborations between schools and between local and central government, such as the earthquake support subsidy. Such collaborations build trust and build resilience within our communities.

4. Build an adaptive culture; and

5. An adaptive culture embraces emergent leaders

Dr Vargo stated these two go hand in hand. If you build an adaptive culture, leaders will emerge. Examples include the “Coffee and Jam” session at the Ministry of Awesome, where people can learn, network, and build trust. Based on research by Nilakant and Walker et al at the University of Canterbury, building an adaptive culture comes out of trust and caring for one another and the willingness to collaborate, listen, and put different solutions into practice. Dr Vargo thinks we need to work on building an adaptive culture.


6. Beware of the insurance paradox

Dr Vargo described the Christchurch earthquake sequence as being one of the best insured earthquakes (in history), that slowed down recovery because buildings were demolished that probably could have been repaired, and because of the volume of claims. It also created difficulties and heartache for many people. Long term benefits include better eco buildings and facilitating community connectedness. Vargo also describes the aspects of insurance paradox in relation to business owners, concluding that there are two sides to the process of improving the insurance issues; the insurance industry who are working on it, and us - we have to know what our insurance will and won’t do.

7. Choose to bounce forward

Dr Vargo outlines how some organisations chose to bounce forward, some bounce forward by happenstance and some barely hung in there. The University of Canterbury is an example of an organisation that chose to bounce forward by accelerating projects they had been thinking about for some time, definitely in terms of their infrastructure.

8. Put first things first: your people and your customers

From their research and analysis, they found that recovery is dependent on demand and the ability to meet that demand. While he notes this is just common sense, it is very easy to take your eyes off the ball in the thick of the quagmire. Look to the horizon at least some of the time, and pay attention to your people.

9. There is no such thing as too much communication

Dr Vargo illustrated lessons eight and nine with a picture of the extensively damaged interior of a company’s building after the earthquake. The company firstly took care of their staff in order to get the business back up and running, while letting customers know that they could meet their orders. To reassure a sceptical customer, the phone call included an invitation to fly down and see for themselves and then make their decision. The point illustrated the quote from George Bernard Shaw “the single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place”, in that he didn’t just rely on words for his communication.

10. Innovate like crazy

The Canterbury earthquake sequence generated a tsunami of turbulence and change, not just for Canterbury, but was a national disaster and there will be more things coming, not just earthquakes. This is why he has put an emphasis on adaptive planning, a collaborative ecosystem and trust. Using the analogy of trust as being like oil to the machinery, he said that without trust, it’s like pouring sand in machinery. It slows everything down. Dr Vargo closed with the point that we require a fresh kind of thinking along the lines of the 10 lessons above so we don’t just want to survive the next big disaster, but thrive.


Dr Sarah Beaven (University of Canterbury), Darren Wright (Ex Chair of the Christchurch Earthquake Community Forum), Jenny Hughey, (Christchurch City Council)

Collaborative governance in a recovery environment: The Residential Advisory Service

Dr Sarah Beaven began by stepping the audience through the context, stakeholder perspectives and claim numbers that gave rise to the formation of the Residential Advisory Service (RAS), and how it conformed to the key characteristics of collaborative governance. She explained how blame attribution and mistrust results from what the literature describes as ‘sector failure’, the situation when the regular sector arrangements have failed to address a complex issue. A workshop in August 2012 brought together the combined knowledge of private insurers, Earthquake Commission (EQC), community, non-government organisations (NGOs) and central government. Low levels of trust, a lack of coordination and lack of specialised independent advice were identified as the main problems. RAS and the RAS governance group emerged as the solution. Dr Beaven’s analysis of the independence mechanisms of RAS included features such as: neutral advice to balance insurers’ rights and clients’ rights; advice provision independent of the governance group, and the governance was independent in that it balanced the influence of senior representatives from key sectors. The RAS was able to adapt to meet changing community needs identified through monthly collation of data gathered through the service. The other key function of the RAS was serving as a recovery coordination platform, sharing information upwards to central government and insurance council member networks, as well across the main organisations involved, and intervening where necessary to address issues at their source.

Jenny Hughey then described that the role of Council was to link through its existing networks, providing familiar meeting spaces. Challenging the Council early on was the culture of blame and mistrust, the pressure it was under to empower residents struggling with the adversarial aspect of their claims, and struggle with its commitment to the rebuild and recovery effort. The Council missed an early workshop in 2012 but soon came forward to join.

The collaborative aspect of the RAS appealed to Council and had its full support. Ms Hughey also acknowledged the benefit of a collaboration able to adapt and change to assist and empower residents.

The independent who represented community interests on the RAS Governance Group, Darren Wright, spoke next. Mr Wright described the key aspects of this role as being to engage and maintain feedback loops with existing and emerging community groups, and to hold other members to account.

Challenges for community representation on such groups were:

• accessing emerging groups • recruiting suitably qualified representatives who were in touch with relevant social issues • lacking a mandate and funding • managing a heavy workload • balancing confidentiality with engagement • reducing the effects of the power imbalance between funders and community members • challenging the confidentiality to increase the accountability.


Dr Beaven’s final insight for leaders was that a collaborative governance arrangement is incredibly difficult to set up and keep going. It requires leadership right from the top to support individuals and the collaboration

Jim Harland (Director Regional Relationships, NZ Transport Agency)

Leadership in times of crisis and how to set priorities

Jim Harland first described the NZ Transport Agency’s three key roles in an emergency which are: staff welfare as a priority, keeping the transport system open, and working with other agencies on recovery and funding. Shelter and support for staff was a priority as one-third had damaged houses. With 50 percent of the urban sealed road network damaged, Mr Harland noted how different the response and recovery would have been if the earthquake strengthening of key bridges had not been completed by previous generations. It was also beneficial to have strong relationships in place with key agencies and network providers.

Decisions on the roads staying open post-earthquakes were determined by their condition, whether the surface was still passable and their importance. Damage to the network had a major impact on the time it took people to move around the city and caused a dramatic drop in bus patronage as the centre of the city was red zoned. Mr Harland described the Transport Agency’s review of the priorities in the earthquake response and recovery plans within the first few months.

One of the critical early decisions was the use of an alliance to undertake the rebuild of the damaged underground pipes, bridges, roads and retaining walls. If the Transport Agency and the Christchurch City Council (CCC) had used a business-as-usual process, involving the identification of the condition of all assets that needed repair followed by a competitive tendering process, it would have significantly delayed the recovery and increased the cost of completion. Mr Harland described the Alliance as being where the owner (Christchurch City Council, NZ Transport Agency and the Department of Prime Ministers and Cabinet) worked with the five contractors to identify the work to be completed, levels of service, the sharing of risks, innovation and final pain and gain on cost. He noted that estimated costs of the work evolved as better information became available. An important part of the alliance process was an independent assessor providing advice on estimates of costs with an open book audit of Alliance invoices. A more formal oversight of the Alliance outcomes and costs was put in place by the owners as the programme proceeded.

Mr Harland concluded his presentation by outlining the top priorities going forward which included port access, public transport and the central city. Speaking to a key learning related to the Greater Christchurch Transport Statement prepared post-earthquakes, Mr Harland noted that at the time this statement was prepared by partners, the focus was on preparing the statement as soon as possible. On reflection, he stated that if he could lead this work again, it would have been better to have taken an extra three months for public consultation.


Andreas Huck (PhD Researcher, University of Darmstadt, Germany)

Building urban and infrastructure resilience in Christchurch through connectivity

Andreas Huck presented his research on infrastructure and governance and in particular the relationship between institutional connectivity (i.e. the coordination and cooperation of the various actors that have a stake, urban and infrastructure resilience, and the assumption that more connectivity leads to more resilience). Mr Huck first outlined the types of institutional connectivity and the components of urban and infrastructure resilience. There are three broad, overlapping dimensions of institutional connectivity: policy domains, governance levels, and spatial jurisdictions. Urban and infrastructure resilience is also made up of three main resilience capacities: resistance, recovery, and adaptation. Institutional connectivity is constantly changing (e.g. the establishment of Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team and their joint governance arrangements). His key question was “To what extent did institutional connectivity or the lack of it, influence urban and infrastructure resilience in Christchurch?” He provided a range of examples from his research, one of which was how the capacity to resist (in the case of building on liquefiable land) needs high connectivity with policy domains (where risk information was available), yet land was still built on liquefiable ground. A further example was the red zone buy-out policy and the need to be take account of implications for local infrastructure management. Mr Huck concluded that enhancing more connectivity between actors and organisations may not be sufficient to build more resilience, but that as a first step toward resilience organisations need to define what their connectivity needs are.

Summary of the panel discussion on questions from the audience

Reflections on trust

Building and maintaining relationships during business as usual is important but can be time consuming. Maintaining those relationships in a healthy way without too much overhead is a critical piece of that picture. Like connectivity, relationships are dynamic and can be built or lost very rapidly in different sectors.

Coordination needs to be transparent. We need a public domain platform where anyone can see what is happening. The moment that a group or a sector is excluded from that coordination structure, they are likely to lose trust.

We must have genuine, open relationships where people actually engage and talk to each other, including in offices. The way to build trust is to constantly practice with each other and recognise that there’s going to be churn in personnel and in leaders.

It’s an incredibly hard job to try and rebuild that trust that’s already been lost.

Mandate

Having to engage with the community where the mandate is ambiguous or non-existent is a real challenge. It’s critical to recognise that it’s impossible to have a community representative who has the mandate of the community, because the community is such a large, complex, and fluid thing.


Reflections on transparency

There is no excuse for any public agency not to be fully transparent when time is not an issue. But if time is tight or there are life-threatening circumstances at play, then sometimes that transparency can occur after the event; however, it may not be possible to do all the relevant consultation.

Further insights on leadership and governance

We’ve been talking about trust and transparency, but it comes down to personal character. We need to become more virtuous people so we treat each other better.

On transparency and the blame attribution dynamic, those people who worked incredibly hard in Christchurch came under enormous and hostile pressure from certain groups and on social media. It was extremely hard for them. One of the problems when there is a lack of transparency is that it can create a toxic environment.

It was brave to have a community representative on the RAS governance team and that lead to more community representatives participating in other groups, such as the transition board. Even though it was a challenge, we still need a lot more community representation on these boards.

Risk information has to travel across policy domains and it can’t just stay within the domains of civil defence and emergency management.

Panel discussion (Day One) – Mental health lessons 31

Mental health lessons

The panel decided to have just two presentations to provide the context and leave the remaining time dedicated to answering questions.

David Meates (Chief Executive, Canterbury District Health Board)

For David Meates, people are the most important consideration: before, during, and after an event. Mr Meates described the ‘whole of system’ journey the DHB had been on prior to the earthquakes, which had placed people at the centre: there was a shared vision of direction and foundation for all involved. This whole-of system foundation was first tested by the flu pandemic in 2009. This served them well later with the earthquakes (e.g., people knew and trusted each other already). Key observations in the context of mental health were:

• How central agencies work with the local community and the infrastructure and networks that are already in place are very important. There is no recovery if it’s not about people.

Lessons

• Resource the health sector appropriately to meet the increased demands for mental health support

• Have in place a shared vision and direction across the whole (e.g. health) sector to serve as a foundation for crises

• Ensure that people remain at the centre of health sector values • Know your staff and systems - keep systems but build in flexibility • Take a 'whole of system’ approach to health services - this helps build connection and

trust across the system • Be clear on the difference between transformation and recovery planning. Recovery holds

us back to yesterday and sometimes we need to transform to a different future • Reflect future population needs when using a population-based funding formulae, as

opposed to using current population data • Critically examine and put in place health system funding for long term recovery scenarios • Balance positive messaging with the realities of the situation. Both are important, but one

at the expense of the other is destructive • Provide consistently concise information • Build an understanding of secondary stressors given how damaging these can be for

people’s wellbeing; they have the potential to be mitigated • Identify the problems that people can solve themselves, and create an environment for

people to do the right thing • Keep a forward focus on how we continue to evolve health services to meet the needs of

our community, and collectively prevent intergenerational issues from emerging • Support people having to make key decisions (e.g. regarding their homes), while under

stress

32 Panel discussion (Day One) – Mental health lessons

• Christchurch got safer in part because people got to know their neighbours. The flip side is the danger of metrics and giving meaning to data that has no purpose and context. Mr Meates illustrated this with the example of using current data to make decisions about populations, if it is not reflective of the future population needs. He also stressed the importance of using evidence about populations. For example, populations in decline before a disaster decline really rapidly after, while those growing before a disaster grow at a far faster rate than they would have without the disaster.

• The challenge of messaging. The balance of wanting to give a good message versus the realities of a population are often in conflict. Both are real and important and one at the expense of the other is actually destructive to communities.

• Constructive frameworks and thinking on funding should not occur in the middle of a disaster. • The CDHB’s role is unusual in that it cannot vacate facilities and have time to organise itself.

People in health were rushing into buildings rather than exiting them, as vacating can cause more harm. They have to have ongoing ability to work and function while dealing with the same pressures and challenges that others are.

• Some population cohorts continue to suffer ongoing health effects of the earthquakes. • It is important that we don’t normalise the abnormal.

Associate Professor Caroline Bell (University of Otago)

Caroline Bell provided a summary of psychological impacts, the science and neurobiology of psychological responses, what the literature provides us on the phases of disaster, and implementing interventions post-disaster.

Exposure to a terrifying life event will trigger frank fear. With 12,000 aftershocks in two years continuing to trigger a hyper-alert state, responses to sounds such as trucks going by, difficulties concentrating, and sleeping difficulties were common. Dr Bell pointed out that while these responses are abnormal in normal times, during this time, they were completely appropriate and from this a minority of people would develop mental health disorders. Secondary stressors, such as persistent exposure to damage, insurance issues, and the uncertainty around schools added to these trigger responses. Dr Bell stated that we should learn from secondary stressors, given how damaging these can be for people’s mental health.

Turning to science and neurobiology, Dr Bell explained the hard wiring of our responses to life-threatening situations to the amygdala in our brain, that when triggered makes the planning and decision-making part of our brain go off line and focusses us completely on getting to safety. While good in a life threatening situation, when the amygdala is constantly triggered the thinking part remains relatively off line, strategic thinking is inaccessible, and a person becomes fully focussed on the stress. Dr Bell stated that agencies need to be well informed about this, which is why giving simple concise information repeatedly is really important.


Using the Zunin & Meyers Phases of Disaster, Dr Bell illustrated the phases, the evidence on post-traumatic growth presented by Virginia McIntosh, and the distinction between individual and community experiences on how long the phases take. She stated that most people in Canterbury had a resilient response. While this did not mean that they were fine, they did not develop a mental health disorder. Of those who did, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression disorders were the most frequent. Dr Bell advised that the Christchurch Health and Development study could offer us the most rigorous research on the mental health impacts, as of the 1000 children followed for 40 years, 50 percent were in Christchurch at the time of the earthquakes and 50 percent weren’t. The first post-earthquake measures taken 18 months after the events reported significant increases in depression, PTSD, anxiety, and smoking in those exposed to the earthquakes.

A sense of safety and calm, individual and community empowerment, individual and service-wide connectedness, and a sense of hope are the four components that predict positive responses for staff and patients. Dr Bell spoke of applying these components to streamlining services by implementing interventions for individuals with normal stress reactions, those with functional impairment, and those with complex needs. While there was an energy and desire from the staff and teams for implementing quality improvements in this time of stress, Dr Bell shared the issues staff experienced, such as fatigue and cognitive weariness, absenteeism and ‘presenteeism’, and the results of the staff survey WHO-5 wellbeing scores. The CDHB is committed to initiatives to improve and monitor staff wellbeing, and Dr Bell noted that when a disaster hits, it’s the start of a very long process. Most people do not develop long-term mental health problems, which is remarkable, but some do and it’s a long tail.

From Dr Bell’s perspective, the denial of an increased mental health need and the absence of a post-disaster planning and funding framework for health were two examples of gaps and misses.

Tips for disasters included planning now, knowing staff and systems, keeping systems but being flexible, and keeping people at the centre of everything that is done.

34 Panel discussion (Day One) – Mental health lessons

Questions to the panel

Panel members were:

• David Meates, Chief Executive, Canterbury DHB • Toni Gutschlag, General Manager, Mental Health, Canterbury DHB • Associate Professor Caroline Bell, University of Otago • Nigel Loughton, Clinical Director, Odyssey House Trust Christchurch • Dr Phil Schroeder, Canterbury Primary Response Group

What were you most surprised by?

The repeated and sustained denial of the increase in demand for mental health services, despite knowing that increased mental health need is an expected consequence of a large disaster.

The community being much stronger than expected. While counsellors were available in emergency GP services following large aftershocks, it was found that once people had seen the GP or nurse for their presenting issue, people felt that they didn’t need anything further.

If given the right problem, there is nothing people can’t solve. The challenge (for agencies) is providing and creating the environment for people to do the right thing.

The way the system came together and was responsive to what the needs were. It was the sense of community and coming together that led to a single point of entry process for managing referrals, see what was needed, and change how we do things together.

Are we resourced well enough for mental health? Are the lessons being learned in terms of preparation for the next big event?

Mental health resources will remain a challenge, and it is not just money, it is staff and resources. It is our responsibility to provide a safe environment in this challenging situation. It’s important we keep a forward focus on how we continue to evolve, that we continue to meet the needs of our community, and collectively prevent intergenerational elements from happening.

How do we ensure GPs know what to do in a disaster?

We were also going through the same things as our community. It was probably a minority that couldn’t respond. The three big lessons were: that networking prior to the earthquakes put Canterbury in a better place to deal with a major catastrophe; that increased funding to patients meant that we immediately had free earthquake-associated mental health consultations that are still going; and our partial role looking after all our practices and pharmacies.


How can communities ensure systems are in place that are genuinely people first?

We have to remain focussed on people. There is a distinction between recovery and transformation, and sometimes we need to transform to a different future. Using learning from the treaty processes, we have to be able to acknowledge when we haven’t got something right and reset to allow a resolution to occur.

Was there a difference in the staff health wellbeing survey between mental health and general health services?

There was no tangible difference. We have an ongoing challenge of highly engaged workforces along with a worrying underlying reduction of resilience and wellbeing. There are significant differences of wellness in parts of our organisation (e.g., staff working in services with brand new facilities have a sense of hope for the future, and those who aren’t have a sense of being overwhelmed with the quantum that is coming).

What would you do differently to ensure the need for additional resources is recognised?

Using examples of the context that was unprecedented, such as the rapid dislocations of communities and the size and scale of the event, there is now a lot of evidence about what is going to happen based on multiple disasters in different parts of the world; we have to get better at using and reflecting the evidence in our plans. With the size and scale of the event being unprecedented, no one set out to make it complicated or difficult but that was the end consequence of the issues and challenges.

Can you comment on people’s ability to make decisions about recovery of their homes when in a state of post- disaster stress and associated vulnerabilities?

People were presented with some of the most complicated decisions they were ever going to have to make at a time when they probably weren’t biologically in the best space to do this. Again, this is predictable. We know this we should plan for this, which is a lesson we can learn for the future.

If community cohesion protects against mental health problems, how do we enhance and maintain it?

In respect of resilience, the science-based initiatives available in the community such as the All Right? campaign and the Mental Health first aid courses provide continued resilience development. The challenge is to ensure we don’t create a split from the feeling of being one community when some people have moved on and others haven’t.

As a country the learnings are able to be picked up— the good and not so good. Although a number of things that had been learnt the hard way in Christchurch, they were still quite difficult to get set up in Kaikōura. It is a collective challenge of how we get better about not just talking about learnings but bringing them to life.

We will only have been really successful if we don’t leave parts of our community behind, and it is a challenge about how we do that. An important part of changing the story to one focused on the future and outcome rather than the issues and challenges is the acknowledgement of what has and hasn’t worked. If we can do that we can come out so much stronger and in such a better place.

36 Panel discussion (Day One) – Business recovery lessons

Business recovery lessons

Leeann Watson (Chief Executive, Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce)

Leeann Watson served as the Chamber’s General Manager during the earthquake recovery, and began by sharing her view that businesses are a part of any community, and should therefore be part of any recovery.

In Canterbury, the majority of businesses are small to medium sized and run on very tight budgets with little contingency. Over 7,000 business were impacted by the earthquakes. In spite of this, the business failure rate during the recovery was only marginally more than the attrition rate in a business-as-usual environment. Ms Watson noted that it was fortunate that two business recovery coordinators were employed before the February event, and after the earthquakes Recover Canterbury was able to set-up an 0800 helpline and support website within 48 hours.

A plethora of information was made available to the public following the events, but very little was tailored for businesses. The Chamber filled that gap by taking a multi-channel approach to communications. It also tasked its co-ordinators with meeting businesses in person to ascertain what support they needed. Business owners often reported they did not require support, however with some this was clearly not the case. This highlighted the importance of asking the right questions in face-to-face meetings. The Chamber was able to use information collected on challenges that businesses were facing in its advice to the Government.

Lessons

• Ask business owners a range of questions to find the full extent of the challenges they are facing

• Visit businesses and conduct on-site meetings to gauge their challenges and need for support

• Communicate with the rest of the country that the region is open for business to allow business-as-usual to occur where possible

• Hold staff, client, and insurance records in multiple locations and in multiple formats in the event of the office being inaccessible. Know how to access the information

• Build relationships before a disaster strikes • Establish systems for any Government support funding to employees to be paid via their

employer rather than directly • Record damage before clearing up and delegate insurance settlements to professionals • Focus on the wellbeing of the business and staff • Publically engage with the community and listen to their thoughts when considering the

opportunities ahead • Support the local economy and businesses where possible, instead of hiring external

contractors


External communications were also needed to let those outside Canterbury know that the region was still open for business. Exporters played a huge role in this messaging by continuing to ensure export orders were delivered. The Chamber received an incredible number of offers of support from those outside the region. It was challenging to connect the offers with those who needed it.

The first priority for businesses was to check on their staff. Following this, the next priority was to secure access to data and premises. Approximately 6,000 businesses were unable to access their premises in the CBD. This meant that they did not have access to stock, employee records, or insurance policies. The Chamber supported businesses by maintaining a database of available office space and co-ordinated with Civil Defence Emergency Management to secure access.

The Earthquake Support Subsidy supported 2,300 businesses and 11,700 employees. This initiative helped build trust between the Government and the business community. In total $200 million in cash was distributed as part of the initiative. Without this support many businesses would have closed down, and employees would have been left unpaid. It was critical that the payment to employees went via the business, rather than directly from the Government, as this helped maintain the relationship between the business and their staff.

The Canterbury Business Recovery Trust Fund provided cash injections to ensure business survival (e.g., relocation costs and sales and marketing). Again, this demonstrated the high-trust model between the Government and businesses.

Ms Watson’s overall observations from the events were that

• recovery is a marathon not a sprint; • those businesses that were involved with the Chamber and were well connected within their

sector were used to reach out for support; • there is innovation in times of adversity, especially with small companies whose businesses are

tied to mortgages — this is a big motivator; • the resilience of businesses shouldn’t be underestimated; • messaging needs to be consistent and reliable; • the high-trust model between the Government and businesses is essential; • central government actions early in the recovery were enabling, but less so later in the recovery;

and • risk of employee flight is significant for businesses, and the subsidy was essential for keeping

people here.

Ms Watson noted that these lessons are not new, and that it is important to get the fundamentals in place. She noted that there is evidence of businesses having become more resilient since the events. For example, businesses now have improved staff wellbeing cultures, have more flexible staff working arrangements, are more knowledgeable on insurance matters, and are better able to collaborate with other businesses within their sectors.

38 Panel discussion (Day One) – Business recovery lessons

However, there are signs of complacency. For example, too few businesses have resilience plans, and there is a question as to whether the move to cloud-based IT systems is just shifting the risk. Businesses are also not well placed to provide mental health support following a disaster. Ms Watson noted that there has been very little interest nationally in learning the lessons from Canterbury.

She concluded by summarising the key lessons from the Chamber’s perspective:

• Recovery takes time, so be ready for the long haul • Build relationships before a disaster hits—this worked well for Christchurch where agencies and

businesses have always worked well together • Every disaster is different, and initiatives in response to one disaster may not work in another

context • Take time to assign roles, as the best people in a BAU environment may not be the best people

in the same roles in times of crises • It is important to keep records at multiple locations and for the owner to know how to access

the stored records • Business should keep in constant communication with staff—be flexible and update them on

progress • Know how to contact the landlord (and for landlords the tenants) • Business should record damage before clearing up (e.g., by taking photos), and ensure that

valuations are up to date • Know what the insurance policies cover and when business interruption cover is triggered • Delegate insurance settlement to professionals. This often helped achieve a better settlement

and allowed owners to focus on their businesses • With recovery agencies, it is important to clearly communicate who is doing what, and have that

conversation on what is best for the city vs best for project.

Ms Watson’s final comment was on the central city — more and more businesses are returning, and there is a need for us to change our narrative and focus on the opportunities so that we can continue that momentum.

John Vargo (Executive Director, Resilient Communities)

There is a need to think through access management to an area impacted by a disaster in advance of an event. The central city cordon was tightly controlled, which caused stress for business owners seeking access to their premises. In some cases, businesses sneaked through the cordon to get access.

The businesses that flourished after the earthquakes made decisions that allowed them to bounce forward. It is important for businesses to build a culture of optimism, to spot opportunities, and see past the challenges.

With respect to Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, Dr Vargo noted that there was a need for central government involvement given the impact of the events.


Russell Cull (ChristchurchNZ)

Russell Cull noted that it was important for business recovery coordinators to ask the right questions (e.g., asking whether the owner’s home was damaged as well as the business premises). While the east of the city was harder hit, it is home to older and larger manufacturing businesses. These businesses coped disproportionally better, which Mr Cull thought was due to this sector’s focus on “fixing things.”

He was asked to provide his reflections on the November 2016 Hurunui-Kaikōura earthquake. One of the key initiatives was setting up a catering alliance with local businesses to feed the rebuild workers. This helped support businesses impacted by the fall of tourism and also had the added benefit of building relationships by linking workers to the local community. A lesson we can draw from this is to seek opportunities to keep money within a region.

Mr Cull concluded by noting that a key lesson was with the red tape that organisations had to battle through. There is a need for authorities to work more effectively with first responders and the community.

40 Panel discussion (Day One) – Youth in disaster recovery

Youth in disaster recovery

Sati Ravichandiren (President, Student Volunteer Army)

Sati Ravichandiren is the incoming President of the Student Volunteer Army, an organisation set up in Christchurch following the earthquakes with a focus on mobilising students to assist in their community. Mr Ravichandiren used his talk to share the organisation’s story and the key lessons that emerged.

Following the earthquakes, the University of Canterbury was closed and lectures were cancelled, and there was a real desire of students to contribute. The Student Volunteer Army began life as a Facebook page, seeking volunteers to help clean up some of the damage from the earthquakes (e.g. liquefaction). Following the September 2010 event, students helped remove 65,000 tonnes of silt. Following the February 2011 earthquake, 14,000 students volunteered to help and 360,000 tonnes of silt was removed in one week. It was at this point that the Student Volunteer Army was born.

The timing and circumstances created a good environment for such a movement and youth engagement to begin—the earthquakes took place during term time, and while the University was closed, many students lived in areas with less earthquake damage. The University has also always encouraged extracurricular activities through its strong club culture. Students had the skills, time, energy, and desire to make a difference and just needed the right framework to contribute.

Lessons

• Seek advice from tertiary institutions on youth involvement. They often have a strong club culture and the right framework for organisations such as the Student Volunteer Army to emerge

• Engage with youth in the recovery phases rather than just the response phase • Guide youth on where they can be involved, communicate clearly the value and impact of

their work and give them room to try out their ideas and fail so they can learn from their experiences

• Understand Pasifika culture, before seeking Pasifika youth engagement • When consulting with community groups, work with each group to agree on which

representatives are called on to provide views, so that individuals within the group aren't overburdened

• Establish youth development models and frameworks such as the ones used in Canterbury

Panel discussion (Day One) – Youth in disaster recovery 41

Their presence within communities was beneficial, and they wanted to keep a channel open for students to continue contributing to communities. They have since diversified into other areas, such as organising events to connect students with communities; leading projects, such as the replanting of trees in the Port Hills following the fires in 2018; and establishing programmes with primary schools to help bring up a generation of community contributors. However, Mr Ravichandiren also noted that during term time students are time poor and it is difficult for them to set aside time to create events—this is why having a framework and organisation like the Student Volunteer Army is important.

The capacity of youth to be involved is consistent across disasters, but they learnt that there are some disasters where opportunities for youth involvement worked better in the recovery phases rather than the response phase (e.g., the Port Hill fires, where students did work that might otherwise not be done and brought communities together).

Mr Ravichandiren ended with the message that when you are working with youth, a balance of guidance and empowerment is important. He asked that leaders guide youth on where they can be involved and clearly communicate the value and impact of their contribution. He suggested we need to look for opportunities to keep youth involved in conversations well after the response phase and into the recovery phase.

Riki Welsh (Trustee, Pacific Youth Leadership and Transformation (PYLAT) Council)

Riki Welsh was elected the first chairperson of what has become the Pacific Youth Leadership and Transformation (PYLAT) Council. PYLAT is now a registered New Zealand charity whose purpose is to encourage Pasifika youth to participate in all worlds, especially democracy. In his presentation, Mr Welsh provided a Pasifika perspective on the recovery lessons.

He acknowledged that, following the earthquakes, there was a real desire by decision makers to involve diverse communities, but there was a lack of understanding of youth’s place and role in Pasifika communities. Hierarchy plays an important role in these communities, which can be a challenging cultural consideration to overcome for those organisations that wish to engage with Pasifika youth. For example, decisions on how young family members use their time rests with the family, not the individual, and the views of elders are given a higher weighting within the community. The mid-tier members of the community (in their 40s and 50s) encouraged and supported youth to get involved and ensure their voice was heard. Young people need to learn to give their opinions in a respectful way, and elders need to be more understanding when they do share their opinion. It is also important that discussions on more difficult topics are encouraged, as opposed to being shut down.

Before the earthquakes, there was no organised youth group focused on Pasifika communities. The public consultation sought in the earthquakes was encouraging, but it was incredibly time consuming and challenging for the few individuals who were repeatedly called on to provide views on behalf of the whole community. The pre-existing youth engagement frameworks, developed by the Canterbury youth sector, paved the way for Pasifika youth to get involved. Mr Welsh noted that preparation for civic engagement is important, and he gave an example of asking students to vote for a school’s Head Boy and Girl to model that behaviour.

42 Panel discussion (Day One) – Youth in disaster recovery

The PYLAT Council was formed to enable Pasifika youth to engage with democratic debates on a wide range of topical political issues (e.g., the Pacific Youth Parliament events). Through the Council, a wider number of Pasifika youth were asked to represent the community on advisory groups, maintain consistent messaging, and share information from these meetings with the Pasifika youth community.

Hannah Dunlop (Former Youth Recovery Project Coordinator, NZ Red Cross and Waimakariri District Council)

Hannah Dunlop is works in the area of Youth Work, Education and Youth Patriation. Her current role is Youth Engagement and Education Team Leader with Environment Canterbury. Following the earthquakes, she helped champion youth participation within the community through her role at Waimakariri District Council and later through her work with the New Zealand Red Cross.

Through the recovery, many leaders and professionals encouraged youth to be involved. In spite of this, Ms Dunlop reflected on her personal experience of feeling burnt out from trying to convince some leaders to give young people a chance. She believes we should ask young people how they can best be supported and make it easy for them to get involved and invest in making that happen.

Meaning, control and connectedness are central to good youth engagement. She encouraged leaders to learn how to engage with young people by familiarising themselves with successful youth development models and frameworks, such as Positive Youth Development as championed by the Wayne Francis Charitable Trust and Canterbury Youth Workers Collective. There are many youth participation models out there, and it is worthwhile exploring which ones are the best fit for your organisation’s journey. Many regions across New Zealand are not as fortunate as Christchurch, which has established best practice frameworks.

It is also important to teach young people how to get involved (e.g., many do not know they have a political voice, nor understand how to navigate the civic system).

Ms Dunlop concluded by noting that Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that “[…] children and young people have the human right to have opinions and for these opinions to matter.” Leaders need to create a space and tools for young people to have a voice and give due weight to their views. Give them room to experiment and fail so that they can learn.

Panel discussion (Day One) – Communicating the recovery story 43

Plenary panel discussion – Communicating the recovery story

Gerard Smyth (Film Maker, “Christchurch Dilemmas”/”When a City Falls”)

In his opening remarks, Gerard Smyth noted that the media presence in post-earthquake Christchurch was the least discussed subject of the recovery. This is because the media seldom discusses the media, and there is such a small media presence in the city now. A strong media is essential to hold government to account, and without it there is a lack of accountability, people are ill-informed on government’s plans, and there are few vehicles for their input. For a democracy to be fully functional, there needs to be checks and balances and this is the task of the fourth estate. A vibrant media celebrates change and champions those who take us with them.

It is all about timing. Thirty years ago, Christchurch had a healthy media. The Press and Star had significant newsrooms, and Radio New Zealand and TVNZ had separate and large newsrooms based in the city and produced a nightly programme of stories from Canterbury. TV3 also employed a large newsroom. But at the time of the quakes all that had gone. State-funded news had been centralised in Auckland, and the media slashed or closed across the regions. Since then, the media presence in Christchurch has been further slashed, when the stories need to be told. Mr Smyth’s view was that today, outside of The Press, all that remains are small newsrooms to prepare stories for Auckland audiences — about us but not for us, and many journalists have moved into public relations. A 2013 University of Canterbury study showed less that 3 percent of New Zealand on Air funding comes to the South Island. Reporting during the quakes missed much of what was happening—acts of kindness, care, and consideration were everywhere but the media reported stories of looting and misbehaviour. They missed the stories of our goodwill and cohesion.

Following a catastrophic event, we have an innate need to be involved in our own recoveries, and it is the media who are conduits, connecting communities. In Christchurch, communities found extraordinary energy, with 106,000 ideas going into the Christchurch City Council’s ‘share an idea’ programme. But a few months later that optimism had been overtaken by the adoption of a top-down emergency powers plan, operating largely in secrecy. Without a vibrant media of earlier years, protest was dismissed. Mr Smyth noted that The Press reacted magnificently to the task of informing the city in the days after the quakes despite its own trying circumstances, including the loss of its building. However, in recent years

Lessons

• Support local media infrastructure to enable a fair representation of the many recovery stories

• Use funding models that allow scope for risk, so the community can lead creative projects • Consider whether prioritising speed and cost efficiency might come at the expense of

wellbeing and psychosocial recovery • Be open, transparent and authentic with journalists • Provide information to newsroom leaders so that they can contextualise the story and

help them understand why it is important to the people

44 Panel discussion (Day One) – Communicating the recovery story

the task has become too large for a cut-down press. He thought that some of Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s PR budget could have gone a long way in funding a daily half hour bulletin for and about our community.

If the top-down approach had led to an efficient recovery and a city built fit for purpose, these methods could be justified. This hasn’t happened, with anchor project timelines not met, many commercial buildings built but few family homes built in the central city. A community-led recovery might have built the city asked for in ‘share an idea’— a green and futuristic city. The model adopted (based on a retail CBD model) is failing internationally, and today’s cities should be a vibrant mix of residential and commercial space that works 24 hours a day. There has been little debate on the convention centre, placed on a prime spot without a business case being presented to the public, and we have been told where the stadium will be without discussion. On the positive side, however, we have Tūranga, the Town Hall, and city council projects, and so many wonderful inputs from Ngāi Tahu with a change in the culture of the city. But there are too few stories about this and the public may not be up to date.

With people power we get better decisions and feel better about our lives. We want connection and the chance to contribute. Mental health statistics in Christchurch are terrible, and we need a media to get us talking. The feeling we had post-earthquakes could have been a motivator for our recovery. What we need is a shared vision, something that currently doesn’t exist, and profiling that is the task of the media. We need the fourth estate publicly-funded here. Then Christchurch can contribute to New Zealand as a champion, a shining example of a visionary city of the future, profiled by the media.

Barnaby Bennett (Publisher/Designer, Freerange Press)

As an independent publisher, Mr Bennett described his role in the recovery as trying to document what is happening by publishing what others won’t publish, and giving a presence to the transitional movement. His concern was that we are not communicating recovery stories very well and are in danger of misunderstanding what has happened. He argues that the official recovery story as told by government ministries is wrong, with an overemphasis on the positive, and doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground. While acknowledging many positive things have and continue to be happening, he argues that we need to be honest about our failings or we are in danger of repeating them when the next disaster happens. Mr Bennett cited three government reports on the Government’s response to the earthquakes as examples of incomplete, inaccurate, or narrow accounts of the recovery: the 2015 review of Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority led by Dame Jenny Shipley; DPMC’s 2017 Whole of Government Report; and the Office of the Auditor-General’s 2017 report assessing the effectiveness of Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority.

Mr Bennett gave numerous examples of what he considers went wrong or could have been done better, including: the demolition of more buildings than was necessary, the destruction of several category A heritage buildings without any public discussion, widespread public dissatisfaction with agencies across both council and Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, a failure to acknowledge and fund mental health adequately, failure to implement a transport system, and spending large sums on two major buildings without a decent business case. He outlined several reasons why these things happened, including leadership style, under-trained managers, an over-focus on efficiency and argued that the


leadership of the recovery became too attached to outputs rather than outcomes, had a fear of public discourse, and a focus on control of the message. He said that both local and international expertise were ignored and instead, Christchurch has been repeatedly afflicted by poor and low quality mid-level managerial direction and advice. He believed that some of this is still happening. One of the major issues he identified is the sustained lack of a big-picture vision for Christchurch (e.g. no mention of climate change in the recovery plan and the lack of current clarity about transport planning). He also noted the lack of progress with Cathedral Square, the most important public space in the city, after eight years.

Mr Bennett believed that the recovery story is not a fair representation of where we are in the city and the mistakes that have been happening. Another point he made was that the recovery is not just one story, but multiple narratives competing and colliding. And the disappearance of the media at this time is an unfortunate accident. A good media gives presence to different entities. Democracy is messy and creates debate and we need to celebrate it, but it needs an infrastructure to make it happen. Perhaps the state has a role to play, supporting the media infrastructure for example through advertising.

With publics (specific interest groups) emerging only in response to a failure of the political system, for example woman’s suffrage, it was challenging for publics to form after the quake with the difficulties facing the media at the time. This meant that local expertise lacked a voice.

In his view, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority should have been a Crown agency with a board rather than a unit reporting to a government Minister, and should have hired the best experts from overseas whose knowledge included participatory practices. The monolithic narrative around the Blue Print was problematic, a mistake that we should have realised as it’s a mistake that has been learnt from other disasters overseas, and we probably thought of recovery too much rather than resilience and our ability to jump to different stable states into the future.

He concluded with 5 main recommendations which were:

• Government develops legislation that is ready for the next disaster. There needs to be permanent ‘at hand’ legislation that can be quickly adapted, not ever again entirely invented in the chaos after a disaster. This should be encoded into legislation now and have a permanent team on it. This needs to be run as an independent body (i.e. less directly political) that has very specific obligations to engage with both local and international expertise. The major challenge of our time is climate change. Any post-disaster situation needs to be seen as an opportunity to adapt our country for this future. Every disaster and disaster recovery plan from now on needs to include how it will re-invent places in response to climate change;

• It may be better to do things more slowly and more expensively — efficiency is not everything in terms of wellbeing and psychosocial recovery. Bringing a wellbeing approach to disaster recovery more systematically might address this problem;

• Work out ways to fund low risk, high value creative projects and the community sector so they can keep doing what they are going to do anyway to help the community, a little more easily. If the transitional projects and funding taught us anything it is the value of small funds to small projects with big possible outcomes;

• Provide more and sustained direct funding to the community sector;


• Reform the Local Government Act with lessons from the quake. Councils need more funding from different revenue streams so they are less reliant on central government and the inherent conflict generated from this. Perhaps it’s also time to give Mayors more power and flexibility to change cities as this is needed. Councils need to have disaster plans that anticipate problems, but also identify opportunities specifically in relation to climate change.

In a final comment, Barnaby concluded that one way of meeting many of these goals is to put young people at the heart of the recovery and that the best projects such as the Margaret Mahy Playground have done this. Start giving more political power to the youth. Jacinda Ardern says it best. She doesn’t want New Zealand to be the best place to raise a child, she wants it to be the best place to be a child.

Joanna Norris (Chief Executive, Christchurch NZ)

The editor of The Press at the time of the quakes, Joanna Norris framed her presentation around the motto on the newspaper’s masthead— “Nihil utile quod non honestum,” which translates to “Nothing is useful that is not honest” and has guided its journalists since its founding in 1861. In the first edition, the editorial team wrote, “No real freedom can exist in a country without a free press. The press, whilst it leads, at the same time expresses the public mind.” The dedication to this ideal was demonstrated the day after the February 2011 quake, when, with its building destroyed and a staff member killed and others injured, a copy of The Press was delivered to homes. For many it was the first news received by the community, and earned the right of the publication to keep its motto on its masthead.

Ms Norris noted that it was a very difficult time and it was gruelling telling stories as people were hurting and mourning the loss of life as well as their city. As the recovery proceeded, residents also mourned the loss of control and could not see a place for themselves in the decisions being made for the city. The initial flush of hope was slipping away with what they perceived to be a top-down approach to decision making. People approached the newspaper wanting to be heard, and the only tools at hand were their stories. This was a very challenging time for The Press, coinciding as it did with the disruption that was occurring in the media industry with redundancies and ongoing uncertainty. Investigative stories during this time could only be told by the newspaper, the people of the city were increasingly locked out of the story. At one point a city leader described The Press team as the ‘enemy of the recovery,’ which was deeply upsetting, but The Press published the stories as a record of the time.

Journalists flew in and out of Christchurch to tell our stories while local journalists were here every day telling our stories. There were many stories of great hope and joy that spoke of opportunity. ‘Share an idea’ gave strength, and The Press told stories of the student army, the Pallet Pavilion, the Margaret Mahy playground, and the reopening of the art gallery five years after closure, reclaiming its place as New Zealand’s most exciting gallery. The Press also talked about the hardworking staff of the city and regional councils and government agencies; the DHB, which worked so hard for the people in the community; and the super rugby team’s success despite a make-shift stadium. As the rebuild matured, there were the stories of the openings of the cafes, restaurants, New Regent Street, the Earthquake memorial, the trams, the Crossing, the adventure park, Hoyts EntX, and Tūranga. All these were stories told by local journalists over the past eight years; authentic stories for our community that formed an archive of our history for generations of the future.


In her new role at ChristchurchNZ, Ms Norris’s job is to grow the economy and tell the world of our city in a different way. It is important to tell stories that bind us together, profiling Ōtautahi globally, and she is still guided by the motto “nothing is useful that is not honest.” Recently a visiting city-maker expert urged us to stop talking about the quakes, but we never will—they are part of our story. In a search for a thread in our stories that binds us, a common theme keeps returning. This is a story that links our past, our present, and our future: the arrival of early Māori settlers who became the strong iwi, Ngāi Tahu; the early European settlers; social innovators, challenging the status quo leading to votes for women on a global scale; and scientific and industrial innovators splitting the atom, inventing world-leading jet boats, motorbikes, and software. It is the story of heroic Antarctic explorers, generations of local leaders exploring new and sustainable ways of living and reducing inequality, and all our people who lived through thousands of quakes and those who came after to help us build, and the children who now flourish. This is a story of exploration—our people have always been explorers and always will be.

When reflecting on the lessons learned, Ms Norris always returns to the value of our stories and how powerful they are. The lesson she would like to leave us with is, whatever your role is in the rebuild, and wherever you are, it is your responsibility to be open, transparent, and authentic. Talk to journalists and trust them—they are the eyes and ears of the public you represent. Our stories must be true to help explain our history, define our present, and shape our future, because, after all, nothing is useful that is not honest.


Panel discussion

A video of the panel discussion “Communicating the recovery story” can be viewed at the link below: https://www.eqrecoverylearning.org/connect/symposium/?mode=grid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6r1-MSKCYc&feature=youtu.be

The discussion covered a range of issues raised in the presentations, including:

• the role of local versus national (Auckland-based) media covering the quakes and whether the local story could be told;

• public trust in the media; • the role of the media in holding both the public and private sectors to account; • the need to support media infrastructure and why we need a non-commercial TV channel; and • who should be telling the stories in 10 years’ time.

https://www.eqrecoverylearning.org/connect/symposium/?mode=grid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6r1-MSKCYc&feature=youtu.be

Welcoming address – Dr Rod Carr (Vice-Chancellor, University of Canterbury) 49

Welcoming Address: Dr Rod Carr (Vice-Chancellor, University of Canterbury)

As the Vice Chancellor of the hosting organisation, the University of Canterbury, Dr Rod Carr used the experience of the university to provide an affirming note to the end of the moving and courageous presentations of the day. He illustrated how the university had been extremely well supported by all its stakeholders, including the government of the day and the present government. He thanked Christchurch and its leaders for their strong support and goodwill; Ngāi Tahu as one of the university’s stakeholders and for their support when seeking Crown support; and the university’s staff, who operated in extraordinary circumstances—teaching in tents on the campus carparks and prefab buildings and making commitments without necessarily knowing how they would achieve the outcomes that they did.

He reported that a billion dollars had been spent on the campus since the earthquakes. Dr Carr thought the university was probably running ahead in its response and recovery, largely due to the scale of damage and disruption not being as complex as it was in other parts of the city. However, he did highlight that they had to confront the issues and circumstances both in the built environment and in mental health issues that the wider city was challenged by.

Dr Carr then outlined why he believes the university is now experiencing the growth that comes with transformation. Describing the growth in the enrolments, he reported that at week 8 of the 16 week enrolment process, all halls of residence were full for 2019. The University Council approved $80 million for a 500-bed hall to be built. The University has recovered and exceeded its full-fee paying international student enrolments, and applications to enrol from new to UC full-fee paying students for next year are up 35 percent. Domestic applications across the university are up 25 percent. On checking with Tertiary Education Commission chief executive, Tim Fowler, on what he was seeing across the system, he noted the numbers are generally flat compared with the University of Canterbury’s growth.

In addressing why this matters for the city, Rod explained that Christchurch high school leavers appear to be staying here – very different to 2014 when the vast majority chose to leave the city. He also stated that it’s important to attract students from the outside of the city. For every student who stays and might have left or comes from outside the region and stays for three years, they bring $100, 000 of purchasing power to their community. More importantly, around half of the students who graduate are staying. They fill jobs and create opportunities that are vital to continuing to prosper as an urban area and a province.

In welcoming the audience to the university he said that with all the heartache and reflections on how we could do things better, he believes the city is transforming – and by his view that by 2020 it will be better than it would have been absent the tragedies of 2011. This is the result of the effort of thousands of people both in and outside of the city. In conclusion, Dr Carr hoped that despite disagreement, those attending will enter into the spirit of learning which is at the heart of a university.

50 Day Two – Morning plenary keynotes

Day Two – Friday 30 November

Plenary keynotes

Laurie Johnson (Disaster Consultant)

The Canterbury Earthquakes within the context of other major disasters

Laurie Johnson’s international perspective drew on research about the process of planning and role of urban planners in post-disaster recovery from across six countries. The specific focus was leadership in recovery at all levels of government.

In describing what a catastrophe does, Dr Johnson emphasised that people are at the centre of recovery. She also provided examples of the effect of post-disaster time compression on urban development activities in time and space, and explained why urban development is different in the post-disaster recovery period compared with normal times.

Lessons

• Use and enhance existing systems and government structures to promote information flow and collaboration

• Make your plan and take action simultaneously. For example, transitional use policies enable community functions to get going in the short term, while planning for the long term

• Avoid permanent relocation of residents, except in extreme circumstances • Establish a people-centred and community-driven collaborative recovery governance

model, rather than a directive model • Review the CDEM Amendment Act (2016) to include transition recovery direction for long-

term recovery • Select people with the personalities and skills that can maintain people-centred and

community driven collaborative governance principals • Provide mentors and added capacity to strengthen without supplanting local leadership

and ownership for recovery policy • Review the level of government regulatory oversight of the residential insurance market • Select the appropriate type of public consultation strategy according to whether the aim is

restore or transform • Review housing best practices for use in recovery such as rent controls, and affordable

housing quotas inside new developments • Mainstream recovery planning beyond recovery managers • Build trust through frequent use of social media and honest reports based on strong

monitoring, mapping and data-management

Day Two – Morning plenary keynotes 51

Focusing on the phases of post-disaster recovery, Dr Johnson spoke of the significant change that people had to respond and adapt to; how different parts of the community will be in different phases of recovery; the benefits, costs, and uncertainties of transformational change rather than restorative change; and the resistance that can come with too much change. Dr Johnson illustrated this last point by noting how early disaster researchers cautioned that the first reconstruction plan that every person has in their mind is that of the pre-disaster city. Every plan that follows post-disaster competes with that pre-disaster view, often intensely.

She then presented the four main challenges found across the six countries’ cases and invited the audience to think of these as levers or tools that can be used to enhance recovery, illustrating with examples from the Canterbury case.

Finding and managing funding

True to all cases was that “the power over the recovery process is held by the level of government that controls the acquisition, allocation, and distribution and audit of public funds.” In the case of the Canterbury earthquakes, Dr Johnson suggested it was perhaps inevitably central government, being a major funder, even though this contradicted pre-existing national policy that acknowledged local primary in disaster recovery. For the Canterbury recovery, she noted that the commitment by all levels of government has been enduring, which Dr Johnson says, is not always a given. A point of difference to other disasters was the degree of financing by private capital through insurance markets, with not nearly the level of government regulatory oversight of the private residential insurance market compared with many other hazard prone areas, such as California and Florida.

Providing information

For recovery actors to act, information is essential. She found that recovery policy and crucial course corrections were informed by New Zealand’s strong institutional scientific norms, practices and standards, inquiry, and monitoring. Continued national and local media coverage of the recovery has also been a valuable information sources, and it does not always occur as it has on the Canterbury recovery. The value of media as an information source includes checks on government, insurers, and contractors. Dr Johnson gave special acknowledgement to Canterbury TV and The Press, given the impact of the February 2011 earthquake on both organisations. She also noted that when information gaps in recovery information occur, new organisations and sources emerge, such as Rebuild Christchurch and Canterbury Community Earthquake Recovery Network and leaders should expect and embrace them.

Promoting collaboration and co-ordination among all stakeholders

Broad stakeholder ownership makes recovery sustainable. The work prior to the earthquakes on the urban development strategy, was an example Johnson provided of how collaboration and coordination between many agencies and actors such as residents, business owners, and non-government organisations, helps to strengthen local government relations. However, post- disaster, trust and working relationships were strained between national agencies and between national and local government agency leaders and staff. Noteworthy collaborations were the governance partnerships with Ngāi Tahu and the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team alliance in the first five years and


the recognition of local leadership and Ngāi Tahu in the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act of 2016, although she noted there we still challenges in the multi-level government collaboration. Also noteworthy was the strong capacity of the business community, residents and other non-governmental groups to self-organise and alleviate gaps in communication, coordination, advocacy and even litigation.

Balancing time constraints

Looking back, Dr Johnson believes the nature of the earthquake sequence was a particularly cruel condition of this disaster for balancing time constraints. Essentially every four to six months when a larger event occurred the clock was essentially reset on time compression demands along with risk perceptions. This effectively exacerbated differential recovery rates that were described in The Press three years on from the Darfield earthquake as the four tribes of Christchurch: the angry, the disillusioned, the untouched, and the hopeful.

From the team’s research across the six countries, they offer seven recommendations. The first three are focused on governance and how to approach recovery leadership and structure recovery organisations.

1. Reconstruct quickly but do not be hasty

2. Enhance existing systems and existing government structures to promote information flow and collaboration.

3. Increase local capacity and empower local governments to implement recovery actions.

Dr Johnson stated that most governments create some sort of recovery management office following disasters, but the degree of centralised authority as it was in Christchurch is rare. Time compression demands a streamlining of decision making and normal bureaucratic processes, however a directive leadership model is a less effective model. More effective is a collaborative governance model, to which Dr Johnson provided further examples.

The recovery management policy and guidance, both in New Zealand and the United States, are based on the principles of collaborative governance, yet neither have defined the organisational structures and authorities for long-term recovery. While the Civil Defence Emergency Management Amendment Act 2016 includes direction on transitional recovery, this is for the early recovery period, not long-term recovery. While no one model for recovery governance will fit all situations, and given how difficult it is to establish post-disaster governance arrangements ahead of disaster, Dr Johnson urged that we shouldn’t shy away from trying to do so and recommended that there should be a scale-able range of models.

The core principles of people-centred and community driven collaborative governance should be maintained in organisational design and in the selection of the personalities and skills of those involved. Strengthening without supplanting local leadership and ownership for recovery policy can be done by providing mentors and added capacity as it was for the Kaikōura District Council following the 2016 earthquake.


Linking to the next three recommendations, Dr Johnson acknowledged that there were some very good examples of planning, data management, and communication practices employed by Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team, Earthquake Commission (EQC), and many others, which need to be remembered. She also noted, however, that there were some major oversights and missed opportunities.

4. Plan and act simultaneously

5. Budget for the costs of communication and planning. Revise budgets, plans and approaches over time

6. Emphasise data management communication transparency and accountability.

Dr Johnson acknowledged that deliberating and acting simultaneously can be very difficult to accomplish but provided the examples of the Christchurch City Council’s draft Central City Plan and the Share an Idea campaign to illustrate success in this area. Dr Johnson also noted Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and the Christchurch City Council’s approaches which enabled community assets, such as the Re:START mall and temporary art installations, to keep disaster impaired functions going in the central city in the short term while planning for the long term.

The frequent use by recovery managers of social media, web-based mapping, data management, and strong monitoring such as the Wellbeing Survey, facilitated the building of trust between the Government and community and was used far more than in most other places. Periodic reviews serve to inform recovery managers as to whether they are still meeting the community vision, especially as time compression can increase the probability of mistakes. Dr Johnson recommended stronger monitoring, government intervention, and reviews were needed for insurance settlements, home repairs, and rebuilding plans to ensure continued appropriateness in the constantly changing community and economic context.

7. Avoid permanent relocation of residents and communities except in rare instances and only with full participation of residents.

This recommendation, in the Canterbury context, was one of the hardest and most conflicting parts of her research and she hopes this will continue to be studied and the lessons considered from for some time to come. New Zealand’s first loss residential insurance scheme offers a safety net that few other hazard prone countries have. The unique obligation of the Earthquake Commission (EQC) to fund land damage repairs, resulted in a suite of policies and standards for residential repair and rebuilding that includes the residential red zone. Few other schemes elsewhere cover ground remediation costs and scientific based repair and rebuilding standards.

Challenges included the rebuild workforce arriving and competing for housing in an already-depleted stock and soaring rents and sale prices until new housing development started to develop in 2014 and 2015. In 2015, the New Zealand Human Rights Commission noted that all seven elements of the right to housing, such as legal security of tenure, availability of essential services, and affordability were adversely affected. This was particularly the case for renters, persons with disabilities, the socially and economically disadvantaged, and residents of the red zones. Post-recovery housing best practices that Dr Johnson


pointed out need more attention to include rent controls and affordable housing quotas inside new developments.

The residential red zone programme was a major land-use change for more than just residential property owners inside the zone, with impacts on physical, social, institutional, and economic networks in surrounding neighbourhoods and across the region. Complexities that required remedial actions later or had to be adjudicated by the courts could have been surfaced through public hearings early on in the policy development and initial programme design. The International Association of Public Participation provides a range of strategies for selecting the appropriate type of public consultation. These include informing and consulting strategies aimed at restoring or replacing what existed before, or collaborative and empowering approaches that may be better for transformation and regeneration. The certainty that the residential red zone buyout programme aimed to provide was eroded by high housing costs and delays in insurance settlements. Slowing down to deliberate with the public, Dr Johnson stated, while it may seem contradictory, results in satisfaction that can increase the recovery speed later.

In closing, Dr Johnson spoke of the beautiful legacy being left; preserving the collectively memory for future generations through the commemoration of the lives lost; and beautiful attention to design in public spaces, pathways and structures. Learning is an important part of legacy, and recovery had been the least understood area of disaster research. New Zealand’s attention to capturing the lessons of the Canterbury earthquakes recovery is an invaluable resource to scholars and the managers and leaders of future disasters around the world.

To ensure future recovery experiences are improved, Dr Johnson strongly encouraged her audience to ensure that pre-disaster recovery planning is mainstreamed beyond disaster managers. There must also be a paradigm shift from asset-centred to people-centred policies for recovery, risk, and resilience. Community conversations about expectations of building, infrastructure and societal impacts in a range of disaster scenarios are fundamental for building resilient communities and ensure that the lessons of Canterbury earthquakes endure.

Questions and Answers

On the point of restoration vs regeneration and transformation, from your view and from what you have seen around the world, what do you think has been achieved here?

There are a lot of places where the devastation alone forced transformation. Following the Canterbury earthquakes, however, there were a lot of incremental and selective transformational policy choices made in isolation that all together put a lot of the urban landscape into a state of transformation which in turn caused a drag on the region’s overall recovery.

None-the-less, this recovery is going remarkably fast for the amount of change that is going on. That is likely because of the private insurance funding and the government commitment to the recovery. So it’s a combination of things that are happening— there’s a lot of drag and it has caused pain for the community, much of which came from post-disaster decisions not from the damage itself.


There is significant legacy and long-term benefits that are going to come from the effort to transform: we will see an entirely new town and new infrastructure. These things are going to serve Christchurch well into the future but there has been cost to that.

Do you consider private insurance is an important part of recovery?

The financing for this disaster wasn’t entirely borne by individuals and government and much more so than a lot of places. The amount of capital coming into the economy had many benefits in terms of getting things going, but also led to the tearing down of many buildings that might otherwise have been able to be repaired. So there is a sort of mixed bag that happens with that capital.

In the regulated part of the insurance market, such as the homeowners’ markets in the United States, we do see areas of government oversight that lead to better recovery outcomes and course corrections when there are delays. So there is a safety net, government intervention, in other places which can help with some of the insurance related issues.

How do you shift some of the models of governance and arrangements towards co-design models?

Recovery governance and the way national agencies are structured don’t easily lend themselves to co-design approaches but generally local governments have the experience and skills to do it. One of the challenges of the centralised recovery approaches following these earthquakes was how the government-community relationship got severed. I think Christchurch and its community boards have been strengthened over time in part because of that severing. You have a very precious thing with your community board system that a lot of countries don’t have, and that is where co-design can take place. For example, you could have planners assigned to every community board working with that board feeding up information to the city council and staff and designing recovery policies and practices. Co-design doesn’t mean you have to actually sit down and pick which house goes where, rather it’s an infrastructure feeding information up.

Did Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s finite lifespan contribute to short-term thinking or increase its aversion to risk?

The aftershocks really played a mind game on risk perception. But it wasn’t just hazard risk; many of the recovery policy decisions were very risk averse or conservative. In my opinion, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority was just a mechanism to get the first five years going so that’s why I also wanted to stress the importance of the government’s commitment to this recovery. I didn’t see an effort to wind down Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority or walk away before its sunset date. It’s really important to remember that continuity of governance and reflections on the errors was being incorporated into the organisation design for the next five years of recovery too.


Dame Silvia Cartwright (Chair, Public Inquiry into the Earthquake Commission)

Public inquiry into the Earthquake Commission (EQC)

Appointed to lead the Public inquiry into the EQC (the Inquiry), Dame Silvia covered the Inquiry’s nature and purpose and provided her early thoughts on how it will proceed.

The purpose of the Inquiry is to examine the role and work of the EQC in the aftermath of recent natural disasters and to learn lessons that can be applied to improve how it operates in future events. The Inquiry is independent of Ministers and reports to the Governor-General. The Inquiry is free to determine how it will operate and is only obliged to deliver against the terms of reference in a timely manner.

The Symposium has given Dame Silvia the opportunity to understand the stress and trauma experienced as a result of the quakes. While she acknowledged the need to make progress as quickly as possible, she noted the importance of spending time on planning and design to ensure the Inquiry delivers what it has been asked to do. Dame Silvia stressed that she won’t be adopting an adversarial or traditional approach or refereeing between parties, and will not be addressing questions of civil, criminal, or disciplinary liability; the resolution of actual claims; or reopening unsettled claims. She will undertake fact finding through seeking information and inviting submissions, and will explore and question this information and make recommendations consistent with the focus of the terms of reference3.

Expanding on the purpose of the Inquiry, Dame Silvia noted that it is to learn from the experience of dealing with insurance claims and not to find fault or assign blame or merits of settled claims or decisions courts have already made. It is to look at the insurance system and related questions, including what worked, what didn’t, what has changed, and what more can be done to make the system better. It might look at:

• improvements in claims management in the period since the Canterbury quakes (e.g., Kaikōura ) • supports for claimants, such as the Residential Advisory Service and the recent Greater

Christchurch Claims Resolution Service • other reviews, including proposals to amend the EQC Act; the proposed Canterbury Earthquakes

Insurance Tribunal; and the review of contract law by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; and

• other reports written and changes arising from them.

Dame Silvia also wants to hear from those with direct experience of submitting claims and the subsequent handling of them by EQC and other insurers, as well as central and local government. Processes have subsequently been developed for seeking and receiving submissions, hearing evidence, hearing information confidentially, and testing ideas for doing things better. A community reference group has also subsequently been set up to help design a process for hearing insights from different parts of the community.

3 https://dpmc.govt.nz/publications/terms-reference-public-inquiry-earthquake-commission

https://dpmc.govt.nz/publications/terms-reference-public-inquiry-earthquake-commission


In conclusion, Dame Silvia said that this presentation gives a broad indication of her approach, and there is lots of detail behind it. There are already a number of inquiries taking place, and her team will work with them to find out their processes. Dame Silvia noted she would work with her team over Christmas 2018 to finalise the detailed design and would then communicate it widely. She encouraged the audience to make contact and express an interest.

Questions from the floor:

Bearing in mind that the detailed design is yet to be finalised, Dame Silvia responded to some questions relating to the review as follows:

• the terms of reference were wide enough to cover EQC governance issues • the enquiry is not adversarial and will be seeking information from the wider community as well

as formal information • the report might include reference to any illegal or inept behavior, but she will not be

recommending any action as a result—that’s not the role of the Inquiry • she will be calling on central and local government people to give evidence, including regarding

what went well for them and what didn’t • the review will include psychosocial impacts of the processes, insofar as it covers the whole

experience of working with EQC and communication • the question of cost pressures and how much money the EQC has, is not is covered in the terms

of reference and will not be include in the report.

58 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Arts, culture and heritage

Breakout panel discussions – Day Two

Arts, culture and heritage

Martin Kozinsky (Assistant Planner, Christchurch City Council)

Lighter, quicker and cheaper: How has temporary activation shaped the recovery of Christchurch?

Martin Kozinsky outlined the issue of the staggering physical and social damage post-earthquake and the problem of widespread vacancies, lack of retail and creative spaces, and a city without its people—issues that the pace of recovery was not able to address. However, when the cordons came down there was a groundswell of community projects encouraging people to re-engage with the central city, which in turn created the political willingness to try and do things a little differently; it also created a new way of working for the Council. This led to the creation of the transitional city programme, now the Enlivened Places programme, which delivered a series of low-cost, high-impact urban regeneration initiatives to address the issues of disconnection and long-term systemic vacancy. The five key responses were fund the grassroots movement; lower barriers; inject vibrancy; trial and test; and regeneration through community partnership.

Lessons

• Include scope for risk in funding models aimed at facilitating grassroot transitional city projects

• Lower barriers to the temporary use of vacant space for transitional projects • Trial and test a project as a temporary, moveable asset before going fixed with a

permanent asset • Test programmes in areas with long-term land vacancies - you don’t need to wait for a

disaster to do this • Collect the post-disaster stories of ordinary people over a period of years • Support community arts programmes to strengthen wellbeing, social cohesion and

resilience • Support communities to identify what value the heritage places offer them • Map heritage places and identification plaques and make sure the information is

accessible in a post-disaster situation • Address gaps in expertise in heritage buildings, historical reconstruction and best practice

post-disaster • Include heritage in response and recovery planning

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Arts, culture and heritage 59

Examples of grassroots movements that were core funded included Greening the Rubble and Gap Filler. These consisted of over 100 projects that enabled the movement to continue and provided contestable funding to projects that activated and enlivened private vacant space. Temporary facilities, such as pop-ups for use in open spaces, were also provided. The Creative Industries Support Fund provided $1.7 million over five years to enable creative industries that had lost premises to re-establish. Of these, 92 percent continue to operate in the city. Other initiatives to lower barriers and encourage vacant space activation included the creation of Life in Vacant Spaces, which facilitated 410 projects, and a rates credit programme and temporary use licence, set up to encourage property owners to allow temporary activation. Success stories emerging from this include Rollicking Gelato, which was started as an ice-cream cart by a 16 year-old, and the Imagination Station, now based in Tūranga. Vibrancy and colour were provided through initiatives such as creative hoardings, public art, and the traffic sheep in place of road cones. An example of trial and test was the use of paint and planters to test road side lay out until the design settled, and then became permanent. Other new ways of working included the pilot programme of food trucks in the Cathedral Square, which is still running, and the regeneration of a vacant plot in Linwood village through community partnership. The message Mr Kozinsky had is that you don’t have to wait for a disaster to test programmes as you go, because every city has its gaps.

Lessons learnt: trial and test through a lighter, quicker, and cheaper approach; test the project as a temporary, moveable asset before going fixed with a permanent asset; get people invested in the process; and enable people to help themselves.

Professor Paul Millar (Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor - College of Arts, University of Canterbury)

Building a Digital Archive to support post-disaster research: what works and what doesn’t

Professor Millar is the director of CEISMIC (the Canterbury Earthquake Digital Archive), a digital archive project set up seven years ago to collect stories for future research. From April-December 2012, The QuakeBox – Korero Mai: Tell Us Your Story - collected 722 stories in 13 languages and recorded 120 hours of video. Two years ago it was decided to go back and re-interview a significant number of contributors and ask them to update their stories. They discovered that there was no longitudinal study anywhere in the world where a large body of subjects talk about recovery from a major disaster after a period of years.

Professor Millar spoke of the benefits of retelling the stories of ordinary people and just how important it is to have a counter to the official accounts. These stories show us what is missing, including what is personal and absent in the languages of public issues, policies, and broad population studies. Individual stories resist the idea of disasters becoming safe and controllable over time. They also resist efforts to homogenise disaster by revealing vulnerability, impact, response, and recovery to be profoundly gendered or ethnicity based. He also explained the important distinction between disaster narratives and resilience narratives, with the latter referring to collective voices reframing tragedy in positive terms; disaster narratives, however, are individual and specific to the teller’s situation. An important thread of their analysis will be the account of the Māori participants, advancing indigenous disaster narratives about which even less is known.

60 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Arts, culture and heritage

In response to a question, Professor Millar confirmed that the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study was a catalyst for the study and his team are talking to the leaders of that research, evolving as they go.

In conclusion, the project shows how research with no other intention than to be as broad based as possible can start to have important initiatives develop from it. The hypothesis revealed itself over time. The project team will spend the next three years interviewing people and writing reports and are hopeful of making a documentary series that looks at some of the people and recounts their stories, giving us a perspective seven years on. It is hoped that the exercise will be repeated at 14 and 21 years on, looking at how people from diverse communities across Christchurch have recovered from the disaster.

Dr Catherine Savage (Director, Ihi Research) and Kim Morton (Founder, Ōtautahi Creative Spaces)

Ōtautahi creative spaces: a collective arts-based, strengths approach to facilitating well-being following disaster events

Ōtautahi Creative Spaces was set up in 2015 in response to fall out from the Christchurch quakes to boost wellbeing, social connection, and resilience through creativity. International research has found community arts programmes provide an alternative to existing day mental health programmes for people experiencing stress. The goal was to activate and respond to the local community’s needs following the repercussions of the earthquake. The programme has supported 135 artists and has two strands: artist mentoring and creative wellbeing groups. Ihi Research was commissioned to evaluate the programme.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with 20 participants, and the programme evaluated against the key outcomes identified by the funders, which were wellbeing, social connection, strengthened families, cultural connection, community participation, and post-disaster resilience. The findings indicated that the research participants had significant benefits across these key outcomes, and the speakers presented these in more detail.4

What started as an earthquake response has become something bigger with a life of its own. It has provided a platform for transformation where artists thrive rather than just survive. The speakers want to see a long-term commitment to initiatives that support the wellbeing of people within the community.

4 Savage, C., Hynds, A., Dallas-Katoa, W., & Goldsmith, L. (2018). “Evaluation for Otautahi Creative

Spaces Trust: December 2017”. Rangiora, New Zealand: Ihi Research

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Arts, culture and heritage 61

Amanda Ohs (Senior Heritage Advisor, Christchurch City Council)

Lessons in heritage – caring for our community identity in a disaster

Amanda Ohs’ presentation focused on what happened to the city’s heritage and why, the impact of the loss and the importance of heritage to recovery, and how we can be better prepared to care for community identity in future disaster response and recovery.

Prior to the earthquakes, Christchurch was recognised nationally and internationally for its wealth of heritage buildings. Nevertheless, it was unprepared to respond to the impacts of the earthquakes eight years ago and the threat to heritage. The scale of loss and change in such a short time is rare. Half of the central city’s protected buildings were lost (135 out of 309 protected buildings) and more than one-third of all protected Christchurch city buildings were demolished. It’s what those buildings—and their loss—add up to collectively that matters, both for Christchurch and the nation.

The reasons why so many heritage buildings were lost are varied. Some of these reasons were that buildings were so badly damaged that repair would have eliminated the heritage aspects; there was no established role for heritage staff in the civil defence processes; and there was insufficient time to take a long-term view of the impact. Engineering and insurance matters largely determined the outcomes. Ms Ohs noted that it was difficult to save a building when the owner wasn’t willing, and many were sold ‘as is, where is’, with owners taking the insurance money for repairs with them. While there was substantial demolition, some could have been avoided with changes to processes and policies. Conservation covenants and district plan protection were removed when heritage was at its most vulnerable. The blueprint acknowledged heritage but didn’t protect it.

It’s not easy to convey the impact of heritage loss to the community, but it includes lost connections to place, past, wellbeing benefits, each other, culture, and identity. An example is St Paul’s Trinity Pacific Church, built in the 1870s, which was ready to start strengthening before it collapsed in the February earthquake and is now just an empty site. However, there have been some positive heritage outcomes. We have seen Ngāi Tahu heritage made visible; thousands of archaeological fragments have been uncovered, which has expanded our knowledge of history; salvaged materials have been reused; and many façades have been retained.

Heritage needs to be approached as vital to civil defence response and recovery planning, as it contributes to all aspects of community wellbeing and would have lessened the loss of heritage buildings following the earthquakes. It is a unique drawcard for visitors and contributes to a host of benefits. So how can we be better prepared to safeguard heritage sites in future disaster situations? Local councils need to know their heritage places and their value at a local level and support communities to identify what is important to them. Seek alignment with Heritage New Zealand, undertake mapping, think about identification plaques on places of importance, and make the information accessible to use in a post-disaster situation. Build relationships by connecting and collaborating with all involved, including local and central government, emergency organisations, iwi, and owners. A training gap in understanding historical building construction for engineers needs to be addressed, along with a shortage of expertise in best practice heritage conservation. The key action is to integrate heritage into the process as part of the normal civil defence response.

62 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Cross-community perspectives

Cross-community perspectives

Community Languages Network Information Group (CLING)

Sally Carlton (Citizens Advice Bureau), Shirley Wright (Manager, Christchurch Resettlement Services) and Maria Fresia (Christchurch Coordinator, Interpreting New Zealand)

Communicating with Canterbury’s culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities

Sally Carlton introduced the group Community Language Information Network Group (CLING). CLING was formed following the February 2011 earthquake in response to areas identified at a meeting of CALD community members and agencies, facilitated by MSD’s Settling-In manager. The key issue was that information was not reaching CALD communities, including health and safety messaging and ongoing recovery information. Dr Carlton acknowledged the importance of strategic partnerships, giving an example of Ngāi Tahu’s welcome of the CALD community to use the marae for their collaborative activities.

Shirley Wright presented some key challenges and gaps. First she explained the difficulties for people who speak English as their first language when information is communicated above the reading age of 12. Adding to the difficulties for effective communication of information to CALD communities is when this material is then translated directly in a ‘one size fits all’ approach, and without considering different cultural responses. CLING still works with stakeholders today, promoting the use of professional interpreters and drawing attention to the challenge of working out what information is translated.

We must not automatically assume that CALD community members are all ‘vulnerable;’ many are refugees who may have built resilience through their own journeys. Ms Wright also said we need to do better engaging the CALD communities in their own and the city’s recovery, as this was missing.

Lessons

• Communicate for diverse audiences in easily understood language • Ensure trained interpreters are used to translate material where possible • Build and maintain trusting relationships with CALD communities and support them in

their own and wider community’s recovery • Build cultural competency within organisations • Provide disaster messaging in a variety of languages and channels • Remove physical barriers preventing wheelchair users from participating in community

engagement and social activities • Identify and address gaps in civil defence planning for people with intellectual disabilities • Support and upskill people with intellectual disabilities to develop their emergency plans

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Cross-community perspectives 63

CLING has since released best practice guidelines on how to communicate with CALD communities following disaster.5 Ms Wright credited the wide dissemination of their resources to their strategic partnerships and the collaborative use of resources. Through this, CLING has also contributed to other collaborative projects, such as the United Nations project Migrants in countries in Crisis (MICIC)6, and prepared disaster messaging in a variety of languages for radio with Plains FM, Council, and Civil Defence Emergency Management.

Ms Wright noted that while the lessons have garnered international attention, there has been less adoption of these lessons locally.

Additional lessons presented by Ms Fresia and Dr Carlton were

- It is essential to have developed connections and trusting relationships with CALD communities before a disaster.

- Build cultural competency within organisations, including a tolerant attitude to differences - Provide information in an accessible form, in simple language, and with use of professional

interpreting services and through culturally appropriate media e.g. ethnic media - Ensure multilingual messages are part of civil defence strategy - Recognise and invite people from CALD communities to participate and support them in their

own and the wider community’s recovery - Raise awareness of best practice engagement with CALD communities.

Dr Johnny Bourke (Deputy Director, Burwood Academy of Independent living)

Community recovery following Canterbury earthquakes for wheelchair users

Dr Johnny Bourke’s research aimed to understand how people who use wheelchairs experience community inclusion four years post-earthquake. As most research had explored around two years post-disaster, Dr Bourke had an opportunity to look longer term at the experiences of a proportion of the disability community— wheelchair users.

The first phase was based on individual and group interviews involving 13 participants with diverse factors such as ethnicity, age, time in a wheelchair, wheelchair type, and impairment type (e.g., cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury etc.). Five themes from wheelchair users emerged. These were

- The earthquake magnified pre-existing barriers: how do you take part if you cannot get past road cones or up the kerb cut?

- Community inclusion takes energy: because you have to have energy to overcome the barriers as well as the energy to go about your day to day life

5 https://ccc.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Services/Civil-

Defence/BestPracticeGuidelinesofDiverseCommunitiesDisasterMarch2012.pdf 6 https://micicinitiative.iom.int/micicinitiative/best-practice-guidelines-engaging-culturally-and-

linguistically-diverse-cald

https://ccc.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Services/Civil-Defence/BestPracticeGuidelinesofDiverseCommunitiesDisasterMarch2012.pdf

https://ccc.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Services/Civil-Defence/BestPracticeGuidelinesofDiverseCommunitiesDisasterMarch2012.pdf

https://micicinitiative.iom.int/micicinitiative/best-practice-guidelines-engaging-culturally-and-linguistically-diverse-cald

https://micicinitiative.iom.int/micicinitiative/best-practice-guidelines-engaging-culturally-and-linguistically-diverse-cald


- Social connections are important - Opportunity found—rebuilding from a blank slate - Opportunity lost—if not rebuilt properly.

The results from the second phase of the survey of 64 participants showed that across six domains of community inclusion (footpaths, housing, social interactions, car parks, buildings, and public spaces) the difficulty of access increased considerably post-earthquake, as expected. However, by 2015 it had only reduced a small amount from post-earthquake levels and not at all improved from pre-earthquake levels.

Dr Bourke’s summary findings are the multiple magnified barriers reduced community inclusion, which in turn, constitute social exclusion. There is need to reconceptualise disability following a disaster, given that there is effectively a form of social discrimination for people atypical in a body or cognitive sense. Finally, the need to realise the opportunity for change and organisations bring communities in to be proactive characters in coproducing socially transformative change.

“Just as disability is not the inevitable consequence of physical or cognitive impairment, disaster is not the inevitable consequence of natural disaster” (Hemingway and Priestly, 2006, p.25)

Dr Bourke closed with two photos taken from the city where form, function, and accessibility look good, stating “it’s what we have to aim for and it’s definitely achievable.”

Trisha Ventom and Michael Krammer (Earthquake Disability Leadership Group)

Shaken not stirred

Trisha Ventom and Michael Krammer describe how they became and advocacy group, what needs and gaps they aimed to address, how they have learned and evolved through sharing with others.

The earthquake reflection group grew from a conversation between the two presenters, not long after the second earthquake, in which Mr Krammer shared his experience of being home alone in the central city, terrified, confused, and unable to reach any of his family. After sharing his story he felt much better and thee two presenters began to wonder how many other people felt like Mr Krammer.

With research indicating gaps in preparedness, especially with knowing neighbours and feeling connected to communities, Ms Ventom and Mr Krammer organised a meeting with the Christchurch City Council's disability advocate and eight members. For some, this meeting was the first time they had ever talked about their experience. A key learning was that people with intellectual disabilities hadn’t told their stories nor had a say, and there were gaps in civil defence planning for people with intellectual disabilities.

From this they grew into an advocacy group and created a workshop, Shaken but not stirred, to support and upskill people with intellectual disabilities to develop their own coping strategies. Initially the group received support from IHC (New Zealand’s leading provider of services for people with intellectual disabilities) then later, the Red Cross. To date, Ms Ventom and Mr Krammer have delivered 32 workshops across New Zealand with 700 people with intellectual disabilities attending.

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Cross-community perspectives 65

Measuring success included asking three questions at the time then 2 months later. They were:

1. Do you have a support network? 2. Do you know your neighbours? and; 3. Do you have an emergency kit?

Creating a support network was identified as the hardest part of creating an emergency plan, which in turn put pressure on support staff. Further areas of improvement were in relation to the emergency kit, as while many people knew they had one, they didn’t necessarily know where it was, what it contained, or how to use it. The group has continued to evolve, addressing these identified challenges and further raising awareness of their stories through films capturing their experiences, and how they are coping three years on. They have also formed a partnership with Emergency Management Canterbury to create a survival kit and ‘a game of three’ because of the need to have a group of three in your support network. The great partnerships have continued with more recent collaborations with All Right? Community in Mind, and the Christchurch City Council. The group has been able to achieve the development of leadership skills, the promotion of education and awareness, and has built strong partnerships.

Associate Professor Kathleen Liberty, University of Canterbury

Protecting the mental health of children and families in post-disaster communities

Dr Kathleen Liberty presented evidence from two descriptive longitudinal studies, a longitudinal intervention study, and a replication study, examining the effects of earthquakes on children and the effectiveness of a school-based intervention. Making the intervention research possible were a range of local funders, 23 schools, 18 ECC’s, the children, and their families.

The longitudinal studies compared children who experienced the earthquakes and those who did not. From research in other countries, we know that the most common impact of earthquakes on children is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, most studies were in communities, structures, and cultures quite different to those in Christchurch.

The results showed increased frequency of behaviours associated with symptoms of brain dysregulation, and these were supported with recordings of principals speaking about how new entrants between 2013-2015 had different learning and behaviour, which had been affected by the earthquakes between 2010 and 2013. Symptomatic behaviours include inattention, sleep behaviours, anxiety, irritability, and temper outbursts. As earthquakes provide no advance warning, the physiological self-regulatory process in young children can be affected if these occur during a sensitive period of brain development. Given the repeated exposure to earthquakes—with more than 10,000 earthquakes from 2010 to 2017—it follows that the stress would have severe impacts on developing brains.

After explaining the autonomic nervous system and the effects on the brain architecture, Dr Liberty provided evidence that supported how the development of PTSD in children affected by earthquakes is independent of parenting style. The impact on parents of children’s disrupted sleep patterns and worry and concern over their children’s behaviour can make it a struggle for parents to be at their best as parents and in the workplace.


While international research indicates that within two to three years with experienced teachers, children’s symptoms would reduce, the evidence from the University of Canterbury told a different story, with 52 percent of children with worsened or persistently high PTSD symptoms. A range of strategies was selected from research interventions because the strategies matched to biological symptoms of PTSD or helped others interact with children with these symptoms. These were then aligned with the New Zealand context and Ministry of Education requirements and including low-cost and low-stress for teachers. Intervention strategies were introduced over three years in a prevention science approach. Included in the eleven strategies were “Drink to think and think to drink,” which aimed to address dehydration associated with stress and impacting on memory, thinking, and concentration. More difficult for schools to implement was the “Play, eat, learn” strategy, which involved trial and error in changing the school day schedule to align with children’s circadian rhythm. Other strategies involved changes to the classroom décor and after classrooms became calmer in years two and three, teaching children positive coping skills.

While the positive impact was less pronounced in schools where it was not possible to implement all the strategies, results in the remaining schools showed many benefits and improvements, including a sense of calmness resulting from a reduction in PTS symptoms, less absenteeism, significant improvement on achievement and increased creativity, which is associated with resilience.

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Social recovery lessons 67

Social recovery lessons

Lessons

• Manage recovery by facilitating resources, opportunities and assistance and through being an advocate on issues that impact the community

• Get communities in a self-sustaining position as quickly as possible. Minimise the impact of bureaucracy to communities and facilitate as quick a return as possible to a working infrastructure

• Prioritise how organisations contribute to recovery, with stronger weighting given to those self-funding their proposed activities

• Facilitate the community to work on what is important to their own recovery, with local leaders driving those ideas forward so the community is working with people they know and trust

• Provide local staff with a mandate to lead. Social recovery needs local leadership and regional and national support and funding

• Build social recovery delivery on pre-existing services, programmes and relationships, where possible

• Build genuine partnerships and base them on honesty, trust and common outcomes • Engage in a range of ways to reach a many people as possible. Communicate frequently

and honestly • Closely align recovery workstreams (e.g., co-locating social and infrastructure services, to

increase understanding of each other's perspectives) • Focus on regeneration, not just restoration of services, to keep a forward focus and start

planning transition to community ownership on day one • Establish the systems (i.e., monitoring, governance and agency collaboration) to identify

and alleviate secondary causes of stress • Establish strategies to support everyday conversations about how people are feeling i.e.

grow emotional literacy • Anticipate that specialist mental health services will be required longer term • Establish advocacy services as soon as possible (i.e. somebody who can stand beside

individuals and help them resolve issues)

68 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Social recovery lessons

Hamish Dobbie (Chief Executive, Hurunui District Council)

Speed of recovery

Mr Dobbie presented using three concepts he describes as core for recovery: Cash is King, Fast is Good, and Local is Best. The key lesson regarding Cash Is King is the need to prioritise how organisations contribute to recovery. Those who can fund their own activities make a stronger case. Mr Dobbie illustrated the concept of Fast is Good in relation to minimising the impact of bureaucracy during the recovery; he said that by facilitating a quick return to working infrastructure, properties, and social structures, people can contribute more to their community’s social recovery. Local Is Best is summed up as learning from others and facilitating the community to work on what is important to their own recovery, with local leaders driving those ideas forward so the community is working with people they know and trust.

Mr Dobbie then provided examples of how these concepts played out for the Hurunui District Council. They had a lot of organisations and individuals helping to fund their recovery in cash and in kind. This included Lotto; a massive fundraising effort by Waiau community for a new pool; a door-to-door social needs programme by North Canterbury Rural Support Trust volunteers; and the use of a campervan for a mobile hub from the Salvation Army. A key challenge to planning recovery, Mr Dobbie stated, is that you need to already have these relationships in place. The Waiau pool was also described in more detail to illustrate the Local Is Best concept. He then outlined the way they facilitated and supported goals of the community, emphasising the Council’s role is providing administrative support.

Fast Is Good, is directed toward getting communities to be self-sustaining as quickly as possible. While every recovery needs a plan, he pointed out that working with incomplete data, constant change, and unforeseen needs can compromise a recovery plan. He described how his Council identified its community’s needs and facilitated or advocated for the range of complexities facing its communities, such as mental health issues, the direct and indirect financial pressures, subsequent social pressures, challenging bureaucratic processes.

While acknowledging that “recovery is a marathon and not a sprint” Mr Dobbie emphasised the need to get off the start line as soon as possible and go at a steady pace, because time is an enemy; therefore, fast is good. Throughout his talk he emphasised that the role of managing recovery is not to manage the recovery, but to facilitate recovery by providing resources, opportunities, and assistance. As bureaucrats the role is to be an advocate on the issues that impact your community.

In response to a question concerning assisting people with insurance claims, Mr Dobbie said that the Hurunui District Council didn’t have the crossover between EQC and the private insurers as was the case in Christchurch, and that was helpful because fast is best. But getting a prompt cash insurance pay-out brought a new set of problems, and some people needed help on how to use that money.


Sandra James (Connecting People Limited)

Social Recovery 101 – Waimakariri District Council’s social recovery framework and lessons learned

Sandra James presented 11 key lessons based on Waimakariri’s published document “Social recovery framework and lessons for social recovery.” Ms James acknowledged the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management for the grant and her co-author, Jude Archer. As she spoke to each of the lessons, she described the key approach they took and illustrated with examples, some of which are listed below.

Lesson 1. Exceptional, courageous strategic leadership. Without this, their story could’ve been very different. Examples included Council leaders providing the mandate for staff in recovery positions to be courageous and centred on the community.

Lesson 2. Social recovery is not the same as Civil Defence and Emergency Management Welfare. Here, Ms James described welfare as short-term fixes, whereas social recovery requires a different mind-set and approach centred on working with local people.

Lesson 3. Social recovery programmes/services must be driven by ‘real community’ need. Ms James illustrated the process they used to develop their social recovery framework, and how they grew it, readjusted, and refocused it many times.

Lesson 4. Social recovery needs local leadership and regional and national support and funding. Using a rowing analogy, Ms James said that the local leader can bring all the oars in the ocean at the same time and it makes the boat go faster.

Lesson 5. Always start with what’s there. Social recovery is not business as usual, however it does need to be closely linked with business-as-usual services and programmes. Here, the pre-existing knowledge of who did what was very helpful.

Lesson 6. Build genuine partnerships and base them on honesty, trust, and common outcomes. Ms James emphasised empowering people to take action, and working very hard to say ‘no’ to some of the fabulous initiatives that were proposed.

Lesson 7. Be genuine with your community engagement. Over 18 months they had over 11,000 contacts and engaged in a range of ways to reach a many people as possible; not just those who came to public meetings.

Lesson 8. Make communication relentless, real, and responsive. Key to this was having a dedicated person working with residents to find out what they wanted to know and simplify technical information.

Lesson 9. Closely align to other recovery workstreams. Ms James illustrated this by talking about a hub that had over 80 people on site and helped understand other perspectives (e.g., social and infrastructure recovery teams), and were in the community, with the community.

Lesson 10. Social recovery needs to focus on regeneration, not just services. Having regeneration conversations assisted with being forward focused.


Lesson 11. Start planning your exit on day one. This lesson was best practice from the literature. Here, Ms James described the legacy project “You, me, we, us;” a project to empower people to make things happen. Initially established by the Waimakariri District Council, it is now completely community owned.

James concluded her presentation with recommendations, including the need to capture experience and lessons learnt and continue to discuss across all levels, translate those lessons learnt into operational processes and systems, and the need to build social recovery capability and capacity.

In response to a question on the benefits of close coordination between social and infrastructure recovery, Ms James noted that the respective teams worked extremely closely so they could have the right supports in place. She said they also linked very well to economic recovery, cultural recovery, and environmental recovery. Being co-located also helped.

Dr Lucy D’Aeth (Canterbury District Health Board)

Lessons learnt about promoting wellbeing post disaster: Evaluation of the All Right? Campaign

The All Right? Campaign is a partnership between Community and Public Health (CDHB) and the Mental Health Foundation. Based out of the evidence referenced in a report by Sir Peter Gluckman, the campaign started in 2013 and is funded by the Ministry of Health. The All Right? Campaign is an example of what health promotion can do with adequate resources to bring together a mixed team of disciplines, including mental health promoters, analysts, and people in the community. By measuring reach and impact annually, they know that as of June 2018, 84 percent of people had seen the campaign at least once and 37 percent recalled taking some action directly as a response.

Illustrating with an example from the Facebook thread, Dr D’Aeth spoke of the importance of supporting everyday conversations and the important skill of translating science into evidence-based (but fun) advice. Their work is based on research in local communities to ensure good evidence about how people are feeling, along with international evidence; she gave particular mention to the New Economics Foundation’s Five Ways to Wellbeing (give, connect, take notice, be active, and learn).

The biggest lesson was the need to identify secondary stressors early and put good management in place. How well authorities and communities negotiate and alleviate these stressors is an important measure of social recovery. Dr D’Aeth reported that the wellbeing deficit for those with insurance and repair claims not yet settled was by far the biggest secondary stressor of the disaster.

Dr D’Aeth spoke of the value the campaign had for people with mental illness, Pacific, Māori, and culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and the partnerships and new resources resulting from those partnerships. This includes repeated indications that schools and children were struggling and the resulting programme “Sparklers,” which links to the education curriculum.

The All Right? Campaign is about growing emotional literacy and extending our ability to say how we are feeling beyond ‘all right.’ Quoting evidence on the protective effect of experiencing awe and curiosity at the same time as experiencing terror and rage, Dr D’Aeth purported that as a nation prone to natural disaster, we need to grow our children’s capacity to experience awe and curiosity and be able to name those feelings.


In closing, Dr D’Aeth stated the importance of growing the wellbeing conversation where it happens: where people live, learn, work, and play. Supporting social recovery is about building off the collaborative wisdom of the community. Research and evaluation has guided every step to ensure the language and experiences reflected in the campaign resonate with the populations we are serving.

Dr Virginia McIntosh (Senior Lecturer, University of Canterbury)

Surviving trauma: Learning about post-traumatic growth from the Canterbury earthquakes

In providing the context to the research on post-traumatic growth, Dr Virginia McIntosh shared that while anxiety responses to the earthquakes would be common, most people would improve without treatment and specialist services. While those primarily with depression would be able to access existing pathways, a dedicated specialised service for those traumatised by the earthquakes was planned by a collaboration between the Clinical Research Unit in the Department of Psychological Medicine, Otago University and the Christchurch Anxiety Disorders Unit.

While providing services, they observed that they shared common traits with patients, family members, including fear, anxiety, worry, and hyper-arousal. At the same time as treating people who were traumatised, they were seeing many stories of generosity, support, fun, inspiration and optimism. They became very interested in why some people coped well and some didn’t.

With over 100 patients aged 18-65 years wanting to contribute to the research, they noted that not all had high earthquake exposure. They all had psychological distress, with over 80 percent with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They also recruited over 100 people who were coping well, selecting those with higher earthquake exposure than the clinical group so that difference would be unlikely to be explained by exposure.

Dr McIntosh summarised posttraumatic growth by describing it as the positive changes that happens with struggle. The resilient sample experienced substantial posttraumatic growth. However, they found that resilience didn’t influence posttraumatic growth, but higher peritraumatic distress—distress associated with life events and ongoing distress—did. Females showed more posttraumatic growth than males. Further analysis of the transcribed interviews found that the resilient group had a balanced acknowledgement of positive and negative outcomes. They also made positive appraisals about self, others, silver linings, downplaying the negative, awe, and role. In closing, Dr McIntosh highlighted how strongly their findings connected to the five ways to wellbeing.


Questions to the panel

What steps can be taken to ensure that the needs of all residents are still met by local government?

Some people may be reluctant to come forward and seek that support but it is up to local government to go out and offer it. This includes outreach, and where it is practical, informal means such as a coffee.

With the benefit of hindsight, what would the presenters do differently? Either with their practice or their research?

Move more quickly into the advocacy space by providing one-on-one support for individuals, because the community is made up of individuals.

Trust people in their expertise and wisdom. We’ve talked quite a lot about how the people could trust the authorities, but the authorities need to trust the people.

Specialist mental health services dedicated to treating earthquake-related trauma were closed prematurely and a team that was set up to respond and treat Cantabrians should still be going.

What are your observations from your research for the welfare of the over-65s?

According to the latest Wellbeing Survey, general wellbeing for over-65s sits at a very high level. The people who don’t come out very well are the 18 to 24 year olds, who are very lonely and don’t feel connected to their sense of place.

We are very good as a community at looking after the people who we perceive as very vulnerable, and the elderly are part of that.

Resilience gets better with age and the over-65s provide that initial leadership to get things going.

Perspectives on volunteers and reliance on volunteerism as part of social recovery and the legitimacy or otherwise of that.

To give is a way to wellbeing. Volunteerism was huge and people wanted to be involved, especially a lot of older adults but also kids in schools. It provides opportunities to reshape and be involved in their communities, so it is hugely important.

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Community leadership 73

Community leadership

Dr Ryan Reynolds (Founder, GapFiller)

Gap Filler Christchurch—On community leadership

After the September 2010 earthquakes, the founders of what became known as Gap Filler got the idea to turn some of the vacant spaces on private land into temporary public spaces. They knew people wanted to gather and decided that buildings lost could be social gathering spaces. The project was self-funded and koha-based, and performers were invited to get involved.

Although the concept was relatively simple, it took weeks to get going, with 90 percent of the time getting leases and other operational matters sorted. There were safety concerns and barriers to communities becoming proactive. People got in touch with the founders to find out how to get involved, which made them realise that there are huge mental barriers to getting involved in projects such as these.

LESSON: You have to address people’s mental blocks

You must be pro-active to address mental blocks to get people to step forward, as they have had years of being deterred by regulations.

The projects showed how structures could be built without paperwork (e.g., small offices) and how to get things to fit existing regulations (e.g., the garden pergola).

There were some wonderfully successful temporary projects.

Lessons

• Be pro-active in encouraging people to be involved in transitional projects • Identify gaps in leadership within your community and focus your energy there • Where appropriate, provide people-centred services as business as usual. Ask the question

"why return to business-as-usual if it does not feel people centred and accessible?" • Seek the expertise that community leaders provide, which includes community funding

models they can access • Communicate in person, where practical, when gathering or disseminating information to

the community • Include information on how the decision was reached when communicating to

communities • Be prepared to take risks and value the capability of all your community members • Facilitate and empower the community to self-develop and organise their own social

structures • Consider ecology and biodiversity in recovery planning

74 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Community leadership

Overwhelmingly, temporary architecture was based on shipping containers for retail, offices etc. They wanted to try other things and landed on the humble pallet. A design team was involved in the early stages of construction, and the Pallet Pavilion was created. Over its 18 months’ lifespan, it hosted 212 events, from ticketed events and buskers’ festivals to food caravans. It was hoped that it would be a transformational project and others might follow suit. It failed in this respect but was a success in many other ways.

LESSON: It’s not enough to be (or find) a trailblazer.

You need a lot of others involved, such as story tellers, sign posts, sheep dogs (guides to get you there), and drumlines keeping people inspired to go on. These are all forms of leadership that go hand in hand. Gap Filler played some, but not all, of those roles. For people who might be responding in a post-disaster situation, look at what you have and find the roles that are not being played, and that is where you can focus your energy

What does ‘putting people at the centre’ mean in practical terms?

Dr Reynolds spoke of his positive experience as part of the Christchurch City Council’s initiative ‘Rebuild Central’, a drop-in centre providing advice to the public from numerous teams, including Gap Filler. There he felt very much at the centre, cared for, and accessible.

To conclude his presentation, Dr Reynolds noted that people are very keen to get back to ‘business as usual.’ His advice was that we shouldn’t go back to business as usual without asking why; this is the most important question. In his experience, going back to the usual ‘inaccessible’ has damaged the relationships built up during these times. People are not at the centre any more. There is no business as usual for Gap Filler, and they are now getting more work outside of Christchurch, especially in Auckland. Outside of Christchurch, people are looking at how they can make the gap filler type of activity part of their normal.

Asked what enables people like him to step up in a crisis, he replied that he had the time then but that wouldn’t be possible now. We need to find resources to enable people to step up.


Leanne Curtis (Founder, Canterbury Communities’ Earthquake Recovery Network (CanCERN)) 7

Leanne Curtis’s presentation related to her role with CanCERN and her experience in working with the key government earthquake recovery agencies. Ms Curtis described her role as the most privileged job in the recovery as she was able to sit at the table with people making decisions and able to see the ‘big picture’ and layers of decision making and relationships. However, it was conditional on doing the ‘right’ thing, and a huge burden; officials regarded CanCERN as being representative of the whole community, ticking a certain box, and it was not a happy experience overall. She recommended that there should be more care of community leaders, including community funding models, and spoke of the need to feel valued by those in positions of leadership.

Ms Curtis outlined her experience in terms of the key themes she sees emerging from the symposium, and how it ought to be. These are

- Trust: trust the voice of the home dwellers. Also, if you are trying to gather or disseminate information, find out where people are gathering and go there. It starts to create a cycle of trust.

- Transparency: it felt like the community were told after the decision has been made. We need to know how the decision was reached and how decisions reflect an understanding of the homeowner’s needs.

- Relationship: good, but not embedded in our practices and discussing recovery around a table is not the same as forming meaningful collaborative relationships.

- Putting people at the centre: This is not embedded in our practices. Ms Curtis provided an example of a homeowner trying to sort out drainage issues; it is very difficult to get coordination across agencies to remedy situations.

Ms Curtis described her experience as being personally frustrating, as we are not embedding what we’re talking about into practice. This is essentially because recovery organisations continue to work within their own systems and drivers and decisions are made that reflect organisational goals before they reflect the systems and drivers of the affected community.

On the positive side, the recovery involved incredible people doing amazing things, and she has enduring relationships to continue to help people.

7 The network included 39 residents’ groups that ranged in size from 50 to 1000 members. It worked

with a wide range of recovery organisations to ensure there was a greater understanding of the affected communities and a meaningful commitment to two-way communication with decision makers. CanCERN was wound up in 2015.

76 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Community leadership

Margaret Jefferies (Chair, Project Lyttelton)

Lessons we learnt —Project Lyttelton and its Time Bank at the time of the earthquakes

Margaret Jefferies’s presentation began with a brief outline of Project Lyttelton naming two of its most well-known projects, Time Banking, and the Farmers Market. Time Banking is sharing skills, measured in time. The Lyttelton Time Bank was the first in New Zealand and there are now more than 30 across the country. These two established structures within Project Lyttelton played key roles in community recovery.

Lessons learnt at the time of the earthquakes

1) Healthy communities have the ability to self-organise.

This means building strong communities before an event. Lyttelton was successful because it had these structures in place. Being part of your community means getting to know your neighbours and doing things together (e.g., ‘bumping places’ such as the farmers’ market). The Time bank knew how to get hold of around 500 people and understood the skills those people could contribute.

2) Self-organising

There is a moment after an event when many possibilities arise. In that moment:

• Be honest, open, be prepared to take risks • Know things grow best on the edges and support that • Recognise that everyone has skills to share • Life is the goal not the money economy • Don’t abuse the opportunity and do bad things.

Sir Stephen Tindall asked how much money Project Lyttelton wanted and how they wanted to use it, and the group responded that they didn’t know. He provided the funding anyway, and it was incredible. This is an example of facilitating and empowering the community to self-develop its social aspects.

3) Co-operation is always more fruitful than competition

Values are important, all of the time. These values include trust, respect, compassion, and deep listening. Be fully human and work with love.

It was noted that the Government provided subsidies to keep businesses going post-earthquakes, and perhaps a similar approach could be taken to community groups. Trust them to get on with their jobs and stop finding loopholes. Ms Jefferies advised that money was available for counselling, and communities are very efficient at using what resources they have.


Discussion and summary

Dr Karleen Edwards, Chief Executive of the Christchurch City Council, facilitated the session, and summarised the main lessons she had taken from the presentations before inviting comments from the audience.

A number of audience members raised their concerns about the lack of community involvement in the symposium, including organising it.

There was general discussion on what ‘putting people at the centre’ and ‘true partnership’ meant including whether Council would change its institutional practice as a result (of the feedback from the symposium).

In her closing comments, Dr Edwards spoke about what it means for agencies to improve the way we engage, care, and value our community leaders.

78 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing

Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing

Lucy D’Aeth (Co-chair, Christchurch Psychosocial Committee) Tim Gordon (the Improvisers)

Lucy D’Aeth explained the term ‘psychosocial’ and its place in the Civil Defence and Emergency Management legislation as a subset of welfare. The Ministry of Social Development (MSD) had legislative responsibility for mitigating the social and emotional impacts for the response and recovery until 2016, when it shifted to the Ministry of Health. Psychosocial recovery involves a collaboration of many communities, friends and family where most of it is centred.

This drama session unfolded through the main characters: Craig, Bridget, their children Kelly and Jack, and Bridget’s parents. These characters were born from community members’ experiences shared in the workshops held by Community and Public Health prior to the symposium. The scenarios presented were based on cell phone conversations at specific times and are followed by a discussion on the relevant programmes and support available at that time.

The discussion relating to the first conversation in June 2011 highlighted how stressful new jargon is, why new policies are needed to create the right support, and why access to good information is a psychosocial priority in a fast-changing environment; each disaster will produce different jargon. A lesson for agencies supporting people, including those for whom English is not their first language, is that they need to upskill quickly, and update regularly to keep up with changes (agencies did this weekly).

Earthquake Support Payments provided by MSD included a range of new subsidies to provide support. Agency insights included how people unused to needing this type of support were reached and how MSD staff from other parts of the country freed up Canterbury MSD staff to tend to emergency support needs. We also started to hear how the psychosocial responses of the two children were manifesting in different ways.

The conversation in February 2012 strongly conveyed the stress, frustration, and anger, in particular from dealing with EQC on behalf of Bridget’s parents. Aiming to mitigate this stress, Dr D’Aeth presented information about the Canterbury Earthquake Temporary Accommodation Service from 2011-2017,

Lessons

• Create easy to understand information • Upskill quickly and update staff frequently on policies, subsidies, processes and

information due to the fast changing environment • Collaborate with other services to improve access to subsides, especially those unused to

needing subsidies • Shift business-as-usual work to staff in other locations to increase local capacity to tend to

emergency support needs • Establish and maintain a strong wellbeing monitoring framework • Increase social and community connectedness through collaborative community-led

initiatives

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing 79

which assisted with temporary accommodation costs, housing and earthquake support coordination and provided an 0800 help line. We also heard about other impacts, including that of the difficulty trying to maintain predicable routines for the children and the acknowledgement of the different psychosocial responses by children to the uncertainty of schools co-locating or merging.

Three years on the impacts are still accumulating. Dr D’Aeth explained that schools changing, sharing sites, and merging had a significant impact on the lives of students and parents and adding to this was the changing commuting routes and concerns over student safety, given they were in a time of continuing aftershocks. She described the initiatives that emerged to support schools and the importance of measuring the psychosocial priorities and progress in recovery and provided a summary of the Canterbury Wellbeing Index8 and Survey9 –pointing out that results at this time also indicated that parental-aged responders were affected by the many cumulative stressors.

The call marking four years on, introduces the Summer of Fun (2012- 2017) and the effectiveness of these neighbourhood events in supporting people and building community connectedness. The All Right? campaign enabled starting conversations and naming a range of emotions being felt through the recovery process. Dr D’Aeth reported that around 80 percent of the population had heard of the All Right? campaign and around 40 percent had acted on it to nurture themselves or others. Bridget and Craig were observing “the new Christchurch,” including the formation of new social networks.

On being overwhelmed with dealing with EQC and mitigating this and other stress, we heard more about the Earthquake Support Coordination Service, a collaborative governance model designed to provide tailored advice and expertise to clients accessing help from government agencies. This part of the discussion highlighted what true collaboration, person-centred support, demonstrating values and bicultural partnership looks like. A number of other innovations and collaborations grew through this time including the Public Sector Organisational Resilience Team, Aviva/The Loft and Gap Filler.

The two concluding calls illustrated the breaking down of the relationship between Craig and Bridget through the prolonged stress of just “trying to survive.” Free Earthquake Counselling was available from 2011 and was well used. Dr D’Aeth spoke of how the ease of access and normalisation of talking as self-care, fostered a lot of healing.

Reflecting on what they had been through, Bridget asked those at the symposium to take the lessons learnt home so that others do not have to go through the same ordeal that they have.

Dr D’Aeth summarised the main lessons as being: it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it; be person centred first and foremost to build that sense of control; recovery is a team sport; and leadership happens at all levels and needs the relationships to function. Measuring process and progress through the Wellbeing Survey and Index is important for building public trust.

8 https://www.canterburywellbeing.org.nz/ 9 https://www.cph.co.nz/your-health/wellbeing-survey/

https://www.canterburywellbeing.org.nz/

https://www.cph.co.nz/your-health/wellbeing-survey/

80 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Infrastructure recovery

Infrastructure recovery

John Bridgman (Chief Executive, Ōtākaro Limited)

Mr Bridgman’s presentation provided a brief history of the journey that led to the establishment of Ōtākaro Limited and updated the audience on the progress of the ‘anchor projects’.

The anchor projects frame the CBD, and encompass individual projects costing approximately $1.5 billion;

• The Convention Centre is over 25 percent complete and is scheduled to open in 2020, taking bookings up until 2023. Negotiations are underway to secure an operator for the venue.

• The Metro Sports Facility will be one of the largest facilities in Australasia, and is scheduled to be handed over to the Christchurch City Council in 2021.

• Progress is underway in the East Frame, which will provide900 homes for up to 2,000 people. 172 homes are under construction, and a further 150 in the design phase. Construction is expected to be complete in 2024.

There are examples of mixed-use developments being enabled, with a focus on regenerating old buildings.

Ōtākaro Limited has identified 13 key benefits for the city once the projects are completed, from emotional wellbeing through to economic benefits. In the next two years, projections show there will be a 30 percent lift in benefits realised, and by 2022 this is expected to increase to 80 percent.

There is still a lot of work to do, and it is important that people remain at the centre of their projects.

Lessons

• Create a unified view of the end goal, while maintaining flexibility over time • Design infrastructure recovery to enable the public and private infrastructure sector to

work together to restore essential services as quickly as possible • Create collaborative private/public sector plans to scale up organisations and secure

appropriate resources to restore essential (lifeline) services to the community as soon as possible.

• Prepare your organisation for the long haul and set a clear end goal • Facilitate public interaction and listen to their views when developing the end goal • Manage expectations through the recovery journey, and reset expectations after further

events. Provide communities with regular updates on progress towards end goals • Involve future asset owners in conversations about how important decisions will be made

on assets they will be inheriting • Consider impacts of infrastructure works on communities in decision making • Develop skills in the local population and use local providers and resources, where

possible

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Infrastructure recovery 81

Through the question session, Mr Bridgman shared some of the key lessons from his perspective:

• The Blueprint provided a strong framework for Ōtākaro Limited, and the ‘Share an Idea’ campaign was an outstanding contribution to the development of the Blueprint.

• It is important that there is a unified view of the end goal, but there is a question on how we maintain flexibility in the plans as time moves on. This is incredibly difficult to achieve as it is not so easy to change course on large projects.

• Public engagement and bringing communities along in the journey are important, for example, by providing regular progress updates.

Ōtākaro Limited has a reverse gender pay gap, and 68 percent of those employed at Ōtākaro Limited are women. However, other construction firms struggle to achieve similar numbers, as so few women are going down the construction career pathway. There is a need to keep telling the story of opportunities in the sector at school, not only about engineering, but also about architecture and other construction-related fields. Organisations can develop initiatives to bolster diversity and provide women with opportunities to grow.

Ian Campbell (Former Executive General Manager, Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team)

Ian Campbell used the SCIRT model as an example and provided a summary of the key considerations when governing and managing an operation in a recovery environment.

Following a disaster there is a need for immediate action in the infrastructure space, especially for restoring essential services to the community such as access to safe drinking water. Existing organisations are unlikely to be geared up to commence work immediately, due to the requirement to scale-up and secure appropriate resources. The issue of restoring services is a joint private and public sector concern, and therefore any organisation set-up to deal with these issues should be designed to enable both sectors to work together.

Every disaster is unique, with varying factors such as asset ownership and population size to consider and examination of what the differences mean in practice. For example, funding partners and decision-making organisations will be a part of the governance structure, and their own governance needs should be recognised. However, it takes time to establish appropriate systems and controls, and it is important to recognise that the full scale of damage may not be known for some time. Yet work still needs to get underway immediately. A level of autonomy allowed SCIRT to commence work, and it helped that the organisation’s purpose and objectives were clearly communicated at the outset.

When establishing an organisation such as SCIRT, other important decisions need to be made and clearly communicated, such as how the organisation will engage with the community, agreed funding contributions, and the scope of work that will be undertaken. It is important to involve asset owners in these conversations to manage expectations and ensure that they are not inheriting a legacy they do not want. It is also crucial to start thinking about eventual handover of the assets early in the recovery.

82 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Infrastructure recovery

The community will be under stress and experiencing varying levels of trauma, and they want assurance that their infrastructure will be fixed within a reasonable timeframe. Having that conversation with the community is key, and we need to remind ourselves that people lie at the heart of the rebuild. We also need to build a supportive culture within the organisation to look after the team.

Mr Campbell concluded with some of the key lessons:

• Betterment is a tough conversation, but the opportunities need to be considered; • Budget is just one factor; the impacts of works on the community is also important to consider; • Take time to engage with members of the public, explaining what you are doing and why you

are doing it. This will help relieve pressure on the team and negative perceptions from the community;

• The rebuild is an opportunity to generate new standards and practices for the industry, such as improved health and safety practices;

• When securing resources, support the local economy where possible by seeking local providers; • Also seek opportunities to develop the skills of the local population; • Do not rush in immediately after a disaster—set your organisation up for a marathon. It took

SCIRT 18 months to reach peak output; • There were missed opportunities to get processes in places for SCIRT sooner. Don’t leave things

to chance—planning can take place before a disaster happens; and • Because of the collaborative approach taken, the industry is now better connected and stronger.

We can prepare for civil emergencies and put mechanisms in place so that work can get underway as soon as possible.

Stephen Selwood (Chief Executive, Infrastructure New Zealand)

Stephen Selwood provided a comparison of the approach taken in Canterbury with two other regeneration programmes.

In 2003, the Government of New South Wales determined that the Barangaroo precinct in Sydney would be redeveloped from shipping facilities to provide more commercial office space and recreational areas. The key outcome sought from the programme was to turn the area into a centrepiece of development in the city.

Authorities wanted public space to account for at least 50 percent of the development, and for the public amenities to be self-funded by six-star green rated commercial developments. The objectives were achieved, with the public domain having secured funding through the private sector investments.

In preparation for the London Olympic Games, authorities undertook a 600-hectare urban regeneration programme in east London—an area home to a lower sociodemographic population, with limited growth potential. The outcome of the programme was to leave a strong legacy for East London and enable future growth.

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Infrastructure recovery 83

The construction model for the programme was similar to the SCIRT alliance model. Redevelopment was led by an Olympic agency, with clearly defined outcomes provided by the Government. As with SCIRT, the alliance members were incentivised through the pain share/gain share model, encouraging the teams to deliver projects ahead of time and under budget. Overall, the programme was delivered ahead of time and $1.3 billion under budget.

The success of both programmes was due in part to the clearly defined outcomes and strong narrative about the urban regeneration story. The Christchurch Central Recovery Plan ticked these boxes— it was aspirational and included clear statements on the long-term outcomes sought. However, agencies soon lost sight of this and instead focused on costs. Lead agencies elected for more traditional design/build project models, and governance bodies varied over time.

There was an increasing focus on cost delays rather than the end goals (a vibrant city centre), resulting in agencies having to defend progress rather than communicating the vision of the Blueprint and providing the community with hope.

Mr Selwood noted that good leadership brings people together and can help drive delivery against common goals. Leaders in such a role do not necessarily need to have an engineering background, but they do need to be great communicators, and have the ability to empathise with the local community. Political leaders can create barriers, and any interference in project delivery can be problematic. Their role should be to set the vision and select the right people to deliver and trust them to do so.

In concluding, Stephen recommended critical success factors for future recoveries:

• Have a clear vision, defined outcomes, and unified governance so that all levels understand what we are seeking to achieve and why;

• When selecting board members, look for people with exceptional track records—you can find them here in New Zealand;

• Focus on the end goals, not costs; • Instill a culture of partnership through shared accountability, all the way from governance

groups to delivery teams; • Incentivise good performance; and, • Create a legacy.

84 Panel discussion (Day Two) – Recovery governance arrangements

Plenary panel discussion

Recovery governance arrangements

Dr Suzanne Vallance (Lecturer, Lincoln University New Zealand) and Deon Swiggs (Councillor, Christchurch City Council)

On 9 November, recovery leaders from across local and central government were invited to participate in a workshop. The workshop was designed to draw out objectives and evidence-based insights on the governance structure adopted for the recovery from the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes and practical lessons for those who will take a lead role in future recoveries. Representatives from each of the breakout groups were invited to present back their findings at the Symposium.

Dr Suzanne Vallance is a senior lecturer in the Department of Environmental Management at Lincoln University, and Deon Swiggs is a Christchurch City Councillor. Dr Vallance and Mr Swiggs represented the breakout group focused on the topic ‘Involving the community in the recovery.’

Lessons

• Communicate with communities in a range of ways, including going where communities are and having face-to-face conversations

• Use simple language tailored to diverse audiences and cultures to communicate information

• Provide communities with up-to-date information on how to connect to the right officials for easy and timely decision-making

• Listen to communities, and if something is not working, change your approach • Create a flexible recovery environment and culture responsive to your communities. • Select the right leaders for each phase of recovery and re-evaluate regularly • Manage expectations through the recovery journey, and reset expectations after further

events. Provide communities with regular updates on progress towards end goals. • Designate a single point recovery manager to co-ordinate government support. This

individual should be based locally, know how government works, and reach decision makers.

• Maintain strong relationships between iwi, central and local government and different local government agencies at all times

• Provide support and supplementary staff for local teams over the longer term • Trust the capacity of people to hear bad news • Prepare and plan legislative and institutional frameworks that can be established ahead of

time • Maximise and build on institutional knowledge and pre-existing networks by linking

closely with local authorities

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Recovery governance arrangements 85

A recurring theme through the whole Symposium has been the importance of a people-centred recovery, but less about what that means and how that works. However, involving the community in the recovery is difficult to achieve when the word ‘community’ is not so easily defined. The more traditional forms of community are geographically based, but there are in fact many more types of communities (e.g., online communities), and a person can identify with more than one community. In the Canterbury earthquakes recovery, communities felt shut out of the recovery process. There needs to be a more inclusive environment for communities to be involved and structures in place to support leaders who emerge from communities.

Communication is listening to the needs of communities; going out to where communities are and having that face-to-face conversation. There is also a need to be adaptable to engaging with new methods of communication, such as Facebook groups. There was a perceived lack of transparency by authorities and when information was provided, it was often very technical and not tailored to the audience. This led to the public not being able to trust the information shared by officials. Communities felt disempowered and angry, and this feeling persists today. Officials could have better engaged by communicating the decisions that need to be made, providing supporting information, and involving the community in the decision-making process.

The communication issues were exacerbated by the ‘red tape’ faced by communities when they tried to bring ideas to fruition. Dr Vallance and Mr Swiggs provided examples of the Health and Safety Act, such as the requirement for traffic management plans when organising events. In the recovery environment, the authority to make decisions was no longer with local leaders and community boards, and it was difficult to finding the right person to talk to within CERA with the authority to make decisions. There needs to be fluidity when making decisions on funding, with officials trusting communities and allowing them to take small risks when an initiative is proposed..

They then shared some of the key lessons identified by breakout group:

• When you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t be afraid to say so. Provide a realistic timeframe for when more information is likely to be known;

• The information hubs staffed by different agencies and based within communities worked well; • Have structures in place to support emerging leaders; • Pick the right leaders for each phase of recovery and re-evaluate regularly. Consider flatter

organisational structures, as these can enable better decision making at the right level; • Within the media, there needs to be a balance of reporting bad news and positivity; • Provide communities with information on how to connect with the right officials and the process

for securing funding support. • Empower community groups to take a lead role in their community’s recovery. They have a long

reach within their community, and can ease the burden on the Government to provide information and support; and

• Manage expectations through the recovery journey and reset expectations after further events (e.g., after the February 2011 earthquake).


To conclude the presentation, Dr Vallance argued that there was a need for wider reform of legislation and democratic structures, and she provided her personal reflections on the recovery. Mr Swiggs noted that there is a need to be adaptive in a recovery environment. Listen to communities, and if something is not working for communities, change your approach.

Winton Dalley (Mayor, Hurunui District Council)

Winton Dalley represented the breakout group focused on the experience of those involved in the Hurunui/Kaikōura earthquake. Mr Dalley began by noting that each event is unique—what worked well in the context of one disaster may be quite problematic when applied to another. Different communities may also face unique challenges when responding to the same disaster.

General observations:

• Political relationships matter and must be in place before an event, and relationships between agencies must be equally robust;

• Recovery must begin the day of the event and be locally led. Community trust is won or lost in the first hours following a disaster;

• Local knowledge is also critical as no two communities are the same, so work with local community leaders wherever you find them;

• In a rural event, there are additional complicating factors to consider, such as animal welfare. It is important to recognise that the rural sector has a role in the response and recovery (e.g., vets);

• Central government has a different culture to local government: we work to different masters, and central government is more risk averse. Agencies making decisions centrally would have, at times, been better to listen to local experts; and

• Recovery must take account of the size of the local authority and its capacity.

What should be repeated:

• In Hurunui/Kaikōura, there were well-established existing relationships/networks. The value of this cannot be understated

• A single point recovery manager should be appointed to co-ordinate government support. This individual should be based locally, know how government works, and be able to reach decision makers

• Individual recovery plans centred on local communities should be developed by those who are well placed to prioritise and co-ordinate

• Experienced Christchurch responders and support from Christchurch were welcomed • The Infrastructure alliance (NCTIR) recognised opportunities for betterment, and this was

undertaken where possible (e.g., the bike trail); • The business support scheme was built on high trust, implemented quickly, and was devolved

(e.g., agriculture infrastructure recovery fund); and • Sole insurance lead for property owners worked well.

Panel discussion (Day Two) – Recovery governance arrangements 87

Things that could be done differently next time:

• Strong mutual relationships between iwi/Crown/local government are critical: invest in them at all times;

• ‘Fly-in’ teams of people in for a couple of days at a time were of limited use. People are needed who are in to support the community over longer periods (support and supplement local people);

• Need support from all agencies, but they need to be ‘recovery centric’; • Ministries making decisions at a distance lack local understanding; conversely, local delivery

arms are not delegated to make decisions; • Care for the carers: it’s a marathon and Council staff who are relied on over the long term need

support; and • Uncertainty about funding support leads to indecision and slows progress. Lots of factors at play

and every event throws up different issues. Some Councils have more resources than others; we need good central government policy.

Key lessons and recommendations:

• Relationships matter: there must be trust between local and central government, between different central government agencies and between different local government agencies, and with iwi;

• Recognise that government will always need to be involved, and we need to encourage entrepreneurial attitude within organisations;

• Act as local as possible and build on local strengths and leaders wherever we can find them. That includes local recovery planning;

• Don’t underestimate the capacity of people to understand the hard news. In such circumstances, face-to-face conversations are best;

• Appoint the right people to key positions: their ability to form high trust relationships and reach the right people is critical;

• Have a systemised single point of central government co-ordination; • Have empathetic fly-in teams that are sustained for response and recovery; • Establish a clear funding support landscape: what funding streams are available, who makes

spending decisions, and who is picking up what tab; and • Develop and recruit the different skills and appropriate advisory channels required to deal with

both urban and rural response and recovery.

Professor John Hopkins (University of Canterbury)

Professor John Hopkins is a lecturer in the College of Business and Law at the University of Canterbury. Dr Hopkins represented the breakout group focused on the topic ‘Recovery governance arrangements.’

Preparation and planning for a disaster is perceived as an insurmountable task, but it is possible. Legislative and institutional frameworks can be established ahead of an event, building on existing structures already in place. Continuity is an important factor to consider when developing plans, to minimise disruption on people’s lives. Orion provided a case study of good planning, demonstrated through the measures that they took before the Canterbury earthquakes to prevent mass power outages in the event of a disaster. There were some project successes that enabled continuity, such as the Re:Start Mall, but many of these were not planned in advance.


In the event of a large disaster, there is a need for some form of recovery agency, or single lead body, however the CERA model was not without flaws. Dr Hopkins noted the lack of cross-parliamentary agreement when CERA was established, the lack of transparency within the agency, and confusion around accountability.

There needed to be a place for politics, and public engagement on the policies that were decided upon through the earthquake recovery. One way to achieve this may have been to link the recovery agency more closely to the Christchurch City Council. As an example, in a business-as-usual environment, local authorities are responsible for city planning, and the Central City Development Unit (CCDU) could have been embedded within the Christchurch City Council.

The structure established did not maximise use of institutional knowledge and existing networks. The latter was of particular importance in Canterbury, as many successes came about because of personal connections rather than institutional relationships (i.e., being able to identify decision makers and have a direct conversation with them). However, in larger cities such as Auckland, cooperation between organisations needs to be a part of organisational culture, as it may be more difficult to identify the appropriate decision maker. A positive example of good cooperation came from the inclusion of Ngāi Tahu as a Strategic Partner. They were deeply involved in the recovery, and their networks proved exceptionally useful.

Pre-existing structures will help us through the next disaster, but a good structure alone is insufficient. There needs to be strong engagement with local community groups, as they have access to the best people to develop ideas and champion initiatives. Communities generally felt left behind in the recovery, and Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority was perceived as having a closed culture. The ‘Share an Idea’ campaign provided a channel for the community to have a say in the recovery, but the results felt squandered.

In a disaster scenario, existing problems within the system emerge, and there is a notable issue with local government’s role in recoveries. A theme that emerged through the workshop discussions is the lack of planning in advance of disasters and the benefits of not creating new governance arrangements, if it can be avoided. Central government needs to be involved but not necessarily take full control. When they are involved, there needs to be a planned exit strategy.

Dr Hopkins concluded by noting that recovery is long and slow, and that the world generally does not recover well from disasters. He noted that the recovery phase is not the same as the emergency phase, and we should not be treat it as such.

Hon Dr Megan Woods (Minsiter for Greater Christchurch Regeneration) 89

Hon Dr Megan Woods (Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration) Learning the lessons for a more resilient New Zealand

Minister Woods thanked everyone and acknowledged the challenges the event had on the people in attendance. For some, the event questioned, probed, and challenged their actions, while for others it meant returning to memories and feelings of the past eight years. She shared that for her the event had been a time of reflection and thinking.

Reflecting on her career since the earthquakes, the Minister described how the earthquakes have shaped her political career. She described how the earthquake impacted all parts of the city, including areas not directly affected by the shaking, as these places became refuges for people displaced from areas damaged by the shaking. Now as Minister, her goal is to be the last Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration and return Christchurch to local leadership. Reflecting on the changes in the region’s political representation since the earthquake, she named the few MPs that were MPs at the time of quake and past and current MPs, noting that most of the current MPs, like her, were not MPs at the time of the earthquakes.

Relating to Te Maire Tau’s observation—“where understanding our past often takes time to distil and analyse”—Minister Woods illustrated the effects of people who were not in the city at the time of the earthquake(s) analysing an event separated by time. Accounts from people who were present are critical for building understanding, including being here at this event to

• critically examine (in the academic sense) our response, our rebuild and our recovery, and the thoughts and actions of those involved at the time;

• begin the process of learning lessons from what we have experienced; and • capture a broad range of views. The Minister then emphasised why it is so important that we

have challenging conversations and stated that obscuring groups of people cannot be the legacy that we leave out of our experience.

Lessons

• Critically examine the response, the rebuild and the recovery following an emergency. This includes drawing out the thoughts and actions of those involved at the time

• Hold challenging conversations with community groups, and trust in the public and their capacity to hear bad news

• Built trust by involving the community on recovery planning and implementation decisions

• Create a culture that encourages leaders across all levels of government to try ideas, make mistakes and change course

• Build strong relationships in “peace time" • Legislative frameworks need to be nimble and agile to adapt to the event, the location,

community and time • Prepare funding models for recovery environments

90 Hon Dr Megan Woods (Minsiter for Greater Christchurch Regeneration)

From John Ryan’s presentation she connected the use of stone markers in Japan to Arihia Bennett’s point on how Ngāi Tahu has never built on the land we now call “East Christchurch.” Traditional knowledge was maintained by whānau and hapu and early colonists incorporated this oral knowledge as depicted in the infamous “black map” of Christchurch. Recognising the power of leaving messages on the built environment for future generations, Minister Woods put forward the question “What then, are the stone markers we are going to leave for future generations?” Together with Arihia Bennett they settled on ‘pouwhenua’ for Aotearoa’s context.

The Minister turned to thinking of the future and of those coming after us; she noted two groups of people in particular. She described the first group as the future citizens of Canterbury living in this new Christchurch and considered ways in which the decisions on the rebuild that are made now will shape their lives. The second group are those who will face a major disaster in the future. She hopes when these disasters happen that the pouwhenua we leave them will guide them as they recover from these future events.

On how to make our pouwhenua strong, the Minister presented her five points from the Christchurch context. These are

• Putting people at the centre of planning and implementation. She drew on the presentations of Lianne Dalziel and David Meates, which teach us that disaster recovery is shaped enormously by experiences before the disaster. For example, the inequalities present before the event are magnified after. This, she stated, is yet another of the many reasons we should build a strong and decent society.

• That we use the experience and human capital that exists in a community. She also noted that trust is critical. She spoke of the difficult times that occurred when that sense of trust had been broken and provided examples including the school closures, the cynicism of the recovery agencies, and the experience of home owners who felt government institutions were not on their side. Street parties were an example of using the community experience in the early days when there was a collective sense of “we’re all in this together.”

• Minister Woods described the ways in which the leaders need to trust in the public and their capacity to hear bad news. It’s a key lesson she put forward: we can’t be afraid of trying new things and should accept that there will be risk. She strongly believes local leaders should be more trusted by central government to deliver a lasting recovery.

• That leaders have permission to make mistakes and change course. Minister Woods explained how recovery is inherently political due to the decisions on the allocation of large sums money that need to be made. She proposed we find a collaborative way to remove the danger for politicians to change course in order to be able to innovate, take risks, and make mistakes across all parties at all levels of government.

• Relationships that are built in “peace time” are critical and will help improve the response and recovery when disaster strikes.

Hon Dr Megan Woods (Minsiter for Greater Christchurch Regeneration) 91

Minister Woods suggested two pouwhenua. The first is a legislative framework that covers emergency through to regeneration. She said this broad legislative framework needs to be agile to make it specific to the event, location, community, and time. While the partnership relationship with Ngāi Tahu is very positive, she conveyed the complexities she could see ahead replicating this in other areas where there are more than one iwi. She also spoke of other important learning unlikely to be captured in the legislative framework that could get lost unless we put in that pouwhenua (e.g., what non-business-as-usual funding models look like and have that ready; illustrating with experiences from Canterbury DHB and University of Canterbury).

Her second pouwhenua is the insurance system. She spoke of needing to learn from the Public Inquiry into EQC regarding what happened and what we need to do better next time, including the data capability, systems, government agencies, governance, and culture that we need in place before a disaster.

Concluding her speech, Minister Woods restated her first job is to finish her job in Canterbury, working with local leaders to deliver the city we want it to be.

The Minister shared the four questions she set herself in order to help her do this, emphasising that value includes social, cultural, environmental, and economic value.

• How does it help people progress? • How does it improve momentum? • What value does this provide? • What will this mean for the future?

Minister Woods noted an active and engaged government must work with its people and she believes it is her job to help people get and set our pouwhenua firmly in the ground.

92 Appendix 1: Full list of reduction and readiness lessons drawn from symposium presentations

Appendix 1: Full list of reduction and readiness lessons drawn from symposium presentations

Communication & Engagement

Engagement • Co-create recovery plans with communities, and engage with them on key decisions -

(Hon Lianne Dalziel) • Continually seek opportunities to connect with local communities - (Building resilient

communities) • Support communities to identify what value the heritage places offer them - (Arts, heritage

and culture) • Build and maintain trusting relationships with culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD)

communities and support them in their own and wider community’s recovery - (Cross-community perspectives)

• Facilitate and empower the community to self-develop and organise their own social structures - (Community leadership)

Leadership and Governance

Leadership • Have in place a shared vision and direction across the whole (e.g. health) sector to serve as

a foundation for crises - (Mental Health) • Ensure that people remain at the centre of health sector values - (Mental Health) • Build cultural competency within organisations - (Cross-community perspectives) • Maintain strong relationships between iwi, central and local government and different local

government agencies at all times - (Recovery governance arrangements)

Policy, Strategy and Planning

Policy • Develop building systems, engineering tools and guidelines to reduce non-structural

damage and disruption and develop a new strategy for communicating performance and reparability - (Construction and Housing)

• Review the New Zealand Building Act to address post-disaster aspects - (Construction and Housing)

• Build resilience into infrastructure before a disaster - (Organisational leadership and governance)

• Establish youth development models and frameworks such as the ones used in Canterbury - (Youth in disaster recovery)

• Review the CDEM Amendment Act (2016) to include transition recovery direction for long-term recovery - (Laurie Johnson)

• Review the level of government regulatory oversight of the residential insurance market - (Laurie Johnson)

• Review housing best practices for use in recovery such as rent controls, and affordable housing quotas inside new developments - (Laurie Johnson)

Appendix 1: Full list of reduction and readiness lessons drawn from symposium presentations 93

• Test programmes in areas with long-term land vacancies - you don’t need to wait for a disaster to do this - (Arts, heritage and culture)

• Prepare and plan legislative and institutional frameworks that can be established ahead of time - (Recovery governance arrangements)

• Legislative frameworks need to be nimble and agile to adapt to the event, the location, community and time - (Hon Dr Megan Woods)

• Prepare funding models for recovery environments - (Hon Dr Megan Woods)

Strategy • Build relationships in ‘peace time’ - (Building resilient communities) • Define what your organisational stakeholder connectivity needs are in a recovery

environment and start building those relationships now - (Organisational leadership and governance)

• Take a 'whole of system’ approach to health services - this helps build connection and trust across the system - (Mental Health)

• Build relationships before a disaster strikes - (Business recovery lessons) • Build strong relationships in “peace time" - (Hon Dr Megan Woods)

Planning • Take opportunities to improve and strengthen resilience, including through legislation -

(Hon Lianne Dalziel) • Engage school representatives through each stage of pre-disaster planning - (Building

resilient communities) • Support inclusive community planning, including with mana whenua - (Building resilient

communities) • Seek local knowledge of land hazards, including mana whenua - (Building resilient

communities) • Ensure a balanced response to residential and commercial space; take lessons from iwi on

building on unsafe land and have a discussion on which heritage spaces should be protected - (Construction and Housing)

• Engage with marae leadership with recovery planning - (Building resilient communities) • Know your insurance policy - how it's activated and what is covered - (Organisational

leadership and governance) • Remove physical barriers preventing wheelchair users from participating in community

engagement and social activities - (Cross-community perspectives) • Identify and address gaps in civil defence planning for people with intellectual disabilities -

(Cross-community perspectives) • Create collaborative private/public sector plans to scale up organisations and secure

appropriate resources to restore essential (lifeline) services to the community as soon as possible - (Infrastructure recovery)

94 Appendix 1: Full list of reduction and readiness lessons drawn from symposium presentations

Systems, Resourcing and Training

Systems • Develop systems to continually identify, monitor, and take action on vulnerabilities -

(Hon Lianne Dalziel) • Regularly review systems and controls (financial and risk management) and pressure test

systems under disaster scenarios - (John Ryan) • Know your staff and systems - keep systems but build in flexibility - (Mental Health) • Hold staff, client, and insurance records in multiple locations and in multiple formats in the

event of the office being inaccessible. Know how to access the information - (Business recovery lessons)

• Map heritage places and identification plaques and make sure the information is accessible in a post-disaster situation - (Arts, heritage and culture)

• Where appropriate, provide people-centred services as business as usual. Ask the question "why return to business-as-usual if it does not feel people centred and accessible?" - (Community leadership)

• Establish and maintain a strong wellbeing monitoring framework - (Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing)

• Critically examine the response, the rebuild and the recovery following an emergency. This includes drawing out the thoughts and actions of those involved at the time - (Hon Dr Megan Woods)

Training • Address the gaps in response and recovery training for principals and teachers - (Building

resilient communities) • Enhance the technical capability of key institutions and make arrangements for technical

leadership for recovery - (Construction and Housing) • Understand Pasifika culture, before seeking Pasifika youth engagement - (Youth in disaster

recovery) • Mainstream recovery planning beyond recovery managers - (Laurie Johnson) • Address gaps in expertise in heritage buildings, historical reconstruction and best practice

post-disaster - (Arts, heritage and culture) • Support and upskill people with intellectual disabilities to develop their emergency plans -

(Cross-community perspectives)

Appendix 2: Full list of recovery lessons drawn from symposium presentations 95

Appendix 2: Full list of recovery lessons drawn from symposium presentations

Communication and Engagement

Communication • Set realistic expectations to retain the trust and confidence of the people - (John Ryan) • Communicate to your customers frequently in a range of mediums - (Organisational

leadership and governance) • Establish processes for sharing information with stakeholders - (Organisational leadership

and governance) • Balance positive messaging with the realities of the situation. Both are important, but one

at the expense of the other is destructive - (Mental Health) • Provide consistently concise information - (Mental Health) • Communicate with the rest of the country that the region is open for business to allow

business-as-usual to occur where possible - (Business recovery lessons) • Support local media infrastructure to enable a fair representation of the many recovery

stories - (Communicating the recovery story) • Be open, transparent and authentic with journalists - (Communicating the recovery story) • Provide information to newsroom leaders so that they can contextualise the story and help

them understand why it is important to the people - (Communicating the recovery story) • Build trust through frequent use of social media and honest reports based on strong

monitoring, mapping and data-management - (Laurie Johnson) • Ensure trained interpreters are used to translate material where possible - (Cross-

community perspectives) • Communicate for diverse audiences in easily understood language - (Cross-community

perspectives) • Provide disaster messaging in a variety of languages and channels - (Cross-community

perspectives) • Communicate in person, where practical, when gathering or disseminating information to

the community - (Community leadership) • Include information on how the decision was reached when communicating to

communities - (Community leadership) • Create easy to understand information - (Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing) • Manage expectations through the recovery journey, and reset expectations after further

events. Provide communities with regular updates on progress towards end goals - (Infrastructure recovery)

• Use simple language tailored to diverse audiences and cultures to communicate information - (Recovery governance arrangements)

• Manage expectations through the recovery journey, and reset expectations after further events. Provide communities with regular updates on progress towards end goals - (Recovery governance arrangements)

• Trust the capacity of people to hear bad news - (Recovery governance arrangements)

96 Appendix 2: Full list of recovery lessons drawn from symposium presentations

Engagement • Involve the community in decision-making to build a sense of ownership - (John Ryan) • Take time to consult on options to create buy in, as this will save time in the long run -

(Organisational leadership and governance) • Publically engage with the community and listen to their thoughts when considering the

opportunities ahead - (Business recovery lessons) • Build genuine partnerships and base them on honesty, trust and common outcomes -

(Social recovery lessons) • Engage in a range of ways to reach a many people as possible. Communicate frequently

and honestly - (Social recovery lessons) • Facilitate the community to work on what is important to their own recovery, with local

leaders driving those ideas forward so the community is working with people they know and trust - (Social recovery lessons)

• Collaborate with other services to improve access to subsides, especially those unused to needing subsidies - (Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing)

• Increase social and community connectedness through collaborative community-led initiatives - (Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing)

• Facilitate public interaction and listen to their views when developing the end goal - (Infrastructure recovery)

• Involve future asset owners in conversations about how important decisions will be made on assets they will be inheriting - (Infrastructure recovery)

• Collaborate with local leaders to identify and address the impacts from the same disaster in different communities - (Recovery governance arrangements)

• Communicate with communities in a range of ways, including going where communities are and having face-to-face conversations - (Recovery governance arrangements)

• Hold challenging conversations with community groups, and trust in the public and their capacity to hear bad news - (Hon Dr Megan Woods)

• Built trust by involving the community on recovery planning and implementation decisions - (Hon Dr Megan Woods)

Leadership and Governance

Leadership • Create an environment during the recovery where staff expect change and innovation is

encouraged - (Organisational leadership and governance) • Choose to move your business forward rather than maintain the status quo (e.g. accelerate

projects if you can) - (Organisational leadership and governance) • Build an understanding of secondary stressors given how damaging these can be for

people’s wellbeing; they have the potential to be mitigated - (Mental Health) • Identify the problems that people can solve themselves, and create an environment for

people to do the right thing - (Mental Health) • Focus on the wellbeing of the business and staff - (Business recovery lessons) • Guide youth on where they can be involved, communicate clearly the value and impact of

their work and give them room to try out their ideas and fail so they can learn from their experiences - (Youth in disaster recovery)

• Manage recovery by facilitating resources, opportunities and assistance and through being an advocate on issues that impact the community - (Social recovery lessons)


• Get communities in a self-sustaining position as quickly as possible. Minimise the impact of bureaucracy to communities and facilitate as quick a return as possible to a working infrastructure - (Social recovery lessons)

• Provide local staff with a mandate to lead. Social recovery needs local leadership and regional and national support and funding - (Social recovery lessons)

• Identify gaps in leadership within your community and focus your energy there - (Community leadership)

• Be prepared to take risks and value the capability of all your community members - (Community leadership)

• Prepare your organisation for the long haul and set a clear end goal - (Infrastructure recovery)

• Listen to communities, and if something is not working, change your approach - (Recovery governance arrangements)

• Create a flexible recovery environment and culture responsive to your communities. - (Recovery governance arrangements)

Governance • Establish a formal partnership with the local mana whenua, embedding them within the

recovery governance structure - (Hon Lianne Dalziel) • Include mana whenua in recovery governance structures and where appropriate with the

same legal status as local authorities in response and recovery legislation - (Arihia Bennett) • Review governance arrangements regularly by asking the question is what we’re doing fit

for purpose for the current phase of the recovery - (John Ryan) • Evaluate the characteristics we require from leaders in a recovery environment -

(Organisational leadership and governance) • Secure leadership right from the top to provide support for collaborative governance

models and those individuals involved - (Organisational leadership and governance) • Be clear on the difference between transformation and recovery planning. Recovery holds

us back to yesterday and sometimes we need to transform to a different future - (Mental Health)

• Establish a people-centred and community-driven collaborative recovery governance model, rather than a directive model - (Laurie Johnson)

• Select people with the personalities and skills that can maintain people-centred and community driven collaborative governance principals - (Laurie Johnson)

• Seek the expertise that community leaders provide, which includes community funding models they can access - (Community leadership)

• Create a unified view of the end goal, while maintaining flexibility over time - (Infrastructure recovery)

• Select the right leaders for each phase of recovery and re-evaluate regularly - (Recovery governance arrangements)

• Create a culture that encourages leaders across all levels of government to try ideas, make mistakes and change course - (Hon Dr Megan Woods)


Policy, Strategy and Planning

Policy • Embed mana whenua values and aspirations in recovery plans - (Arihia Bennett) • Review activities and policies adopted during previous disaster recoveries and adapt (as

appropriate) to the situation and local context - (Building resilient communities) • Establish services that provide neutral advice to balance insurers’ and clients’ rights -

(Organisational leadership and governance) • Use funding models that allow scope for risk, so the community can lead creative projects -

(Communicating the recovery story) • Make your plan and take action simultaneously. For example, transitional use policies

enable community functions to get going in the short term, while planning for the long term - (Laurie Johnson)

• Avoid permanent relocation of residents, except in extreme circumstances - (Laurie Johnson)

• Provide mentors and added capacity to strengthen without supplanting local leadership and ownership for recovery policy - (Laurie Johnson)

• Include scope for risk in funding models aimed at facilitating grassroot transitional city projects - (Arts, heritage and culture)

• Lower barriers to the temporary use of vacant space for transitional projects - (Arts, heritage and culture)

• Designate a single point recovery manager to co-ordinate government support. This individual should be based locally, know how government works, and reach decision makers - (Recovery governance arrangements)

Strategy • Seek advice from mana whenua on the long-term issues affecting people and bring that

lens to decision-making - (Arihia Bennett) • Use alliances rather than the business-as-usual decision making models to speed up

restoration, where appropriate - (Organisational leadership and governance) • Consider whether prioritising speed and cost efficiency might come at the expense of

wellbeing and psychosocial recovery - (Communicating the recovery story) • Keep a forward focus on how we continue to evolve health services to meet the needs of

our community, and collectively prevent intergenerational issues from emerging - (Mental Health)

• Engage with youth in the recovery phases rather than just the response phase - (Youth in disaster recovery)

• Select the appropriate type of public consultation strategy according to whether the aim is restore or transform - (Laurie Johnson)

• Build social recovery delivery on pre-existing services, programmes and relationships, where possible - (Social recovery lessons)

• Closely align recovery workstreams (e.g., co-locating social and infrastructure services, to increase understanding of each other's perspectives) - (Social recovery lessons)

• Focus on regeneration, not just restoration of services, to keep a forward focus and start planning transition to community ownership on day one - (Social recovery lessons)

• Prioritise how organisations contribute to recovery, with stronger weighting given to those self-funding their proposed activities - (Social recovery lessons)


• Consider impacts of infrastructure works on communities in decision making - (Infrastructure recovery)

• Maximise and build on institutional knowledge and pre-existing networks by linking closely with local authorities - (Recovery governance arrangements)

Planning • Collaboratively (across sectors) anticipate challenges and prepare for those that may

eventuate - (John Ryan) • When planning the rebuild, focus on both social and hard infrastructure, and recognise the

importance of home and place - (Building resilient communities) • Start recovery planning as soon as possible in the response period so the transition is

seamless - (Building resilient communities) • Create collaborative environments, such as shared office spaces, to facilitate trust building

and collaboration between organisations - (Organisational leadership and governance) • Consider traffic implications and surface conditions when deciding which roads stay open -

(Organisational leadership and governance) • Seek advice from tertiary institutions on youth involvement. They often have a strong club

culture and the right framework for organisations such as the Student Volunteer Army to emerge - (Youth in disaster recovery)

• Trial and test a project as a temporary, moveable asset before going fixed with a permanent asset - (Arts, heritage and culture)

• Support community arts programmes to strengthen wellbeing, social cohesion and resilience - (Arts, heritage and culture)

• Include heritage in response and recovery planning - (Arts, heritage and culture) • Design infrastructure recovery to enable the public and private infrastructure sector to work

together to restore essential services as quickly as possible - (Infrastructure recovery) • Provide support and supplementary staff for local teams over the longer term - (Recovery

governance arrangements) • Anticipate that specialist mental health services will be required longer term - (Social

recovery lessons) • Establish advocacy services as soon as possible (i.e. somebody who can stand beside

individuals and help them resolve issues) - (Social recovery lessons) • Consider ecology and biodiversity in recovery planning - (Community leadership)

Systems, Resourcing and Training

Systems • Establish monitoring and reporting systems, to use data to adapt services to community

needs - (Organisational leadership and governance) • Establish systems for any Government support funding to employees to be paid via their

employer rather than directly - (Business recovery lessons) • Use and enhance existing systems and government structures to promote information flow

and collaboration - (Laurie Johnson) • Collect the post-disaster stories of ordinary people over a period of years - (Arts, heritage

and culture) • Establish the systems (i.e., monitoring, governance and agency collaboration) to identify

and alleviate secondary causes of stress - (Social recovery lessons)


Resourcing • Provide timely, accessible and on-going support for principals and teachers post disaster -

(Building resilient communities) • Resource the health sector appropriately to meet the increased demands for mental health

support - (Mental Health) • Reflect future population needs when using a population-based funding formulae, as

opposed to using current population data - (Mental Health) • Critically examine and put in place health system funding for long term recovery scenarios -

(Mental Health) • Support people having to make key decisions (e.g. regarding their homes), while under

stress - (Mental Health) • Support the local economy and businesses where possible, instead of hiring external

contractors - (Business recovery lessons) • Develop skills in the local population and use local providers and resources, where possible

- (Infrastructure recovery)

Training • Upskill quickly and update staff frequently on policies, subsidies, processes and information

due to the fast changing environment - (Psychosocial recovery and wellbeing)

101 Appendix 3: Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium Programme

Appendix 3: Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium Programme

Canterbury Earthquakes Symposium - Sharing the lessons ... · Hon Lianne Dalziel . Mayor of...

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