Interesting to see the reports of Helen Clark’s comments about our preparedness to deal with a natural disaster.
“There were no deaths mostly because there were years of a strong building code and anticipating that New Zealand, on the ring of fire and volcanic area around the Pacific, could suffer such an event,” she said in an online video chat this morning
This reminded me of something I had been meaning to do since the quake, which was to congratulate successive Ministers of Civil Defence and the officials for the work done to improve oure responsiveness to a disaster. I can remember when working in the Beehive the great work that Rick Barker, for one, led to upgrade the systems and processes of civil defence.
Also great to note that Helen was making these comments on a live Facebook chat. Open government at the global level!
And now you fools have left that idiot Brownlee do whatever he likes with the building code!
Yay Barker, boo the earthquake bill!
OK, and now you have thrown out all the regulations and laws, and handed absolute power and responsibility over to Brownlee, you just have to take a seat and watch. Unbelievable.
Lest we forget it was Ms Clark who said the leaky homes crisis was a NZ Herald “beat up”, so her judgment on the strength or otherwise of our building act and code is somewhat questionable.
I agree our responsiveness was great.It just staggers me that we didnt have a file in Parliament called “disaster responsiveness” which listed legislation which needed to be altered/ignored in case of crisis, so we decided to remove everything.
I’m looking forward to the weekly you-tube Dictatorial Address…