Editorial: Sense at last
OPINION: For the first time in many years, a commonsense approach is emerging to balance environmental issues with the need for the nation's primary producers to be able to operate effectively.
The phrase ‘fiddling while Rome burns’ comes to mind.
The bureaucrats in the capital will argue it takes time to get a plan sorted that is fair for Hawke’s Bay and other areas devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle and other weather events. No one doubts the complexity of this, but the destruction happened two months ago.
Those in Wellington go home each night to a house, something many Hawke’s Bay people no longer have. The Wellingtonians have a job and a future, unlike growers and orchardists in the Bay – many of whom face years of indebtedness.
No bureaucracy is designed for speed. However, it’s time they got up to speed and broke new ground.
The devastation in Hawke’s Bay and along the East Coast is mind-boggling. It’s almost bizarre to see a huge shipping container standing upright in an orchard, hectares of silt and shattered homes and business premises reduced to matchwood.
The damage may look terrible, but what about people’s lives, their future, their mental health and their children? We see signs of things being ‘drip fed’ to people. Can’t the pen pushers see this just adds to the stress and creates more uncertainty?
While the Government did a good, quick, early response by providing some cash for the clean-up, the promise of more help seems to be on the back burner. It appears that everything is being done behind the scenes and the communication from all those involved in supposedly sorting this out has been poor.
Many people badly affected are annoyed that their plight is going unnoticed and they feel abandoned – even by some of their own industry organisations. ‘Why aren’t we on the news?’ they complain.
The claim by Hawke’s Bay orchardists that there is a lack of leadership in the recovery operation is on the money. There is none! Grant Robertson seems to have disappeared. Has anyone heard anything publicly from the CEO of the Cyclone Recovery and do they know who she is?
What the people of Hawke’s Bay and other areas want is not a bundle of long-winded, incomprehensible reports, but a one-page plan of what’s going to be done and a bundle of cash – the opposite of what they are getting now.
