The devastation brought by Cyclone Gabrielle, as well as the spectre of climate change, drew the overwhelming focus of MPs speaking in the Debate on the Prime Minister’s Statement in Parliament today.
As the huge costs of rebuilding lives and infrastructure start to become clear, political leaders found themselves bracing for more difficult times ahead, and banging heads in the chamber as usual.
Chris Hipkins delivering the Prime Minister's Statement in Parliament, 21 February 2023. Photo: Phil Smith
The new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, spoke from the start of the sheer calamity of the cyclone as well as the Auckland flooding during the previous week; of the deaths (11 confirmed from the cyclone and 4 from the flooding); of the wide range of personal tolls taken and the ruinous impacts on land, homes and businesses, infrastructure and finances. The impacts are not just on the people of Hawke’s Bay and Auckland regions, they are impacts on the country as a whole. Hipkins stressed that the “cyclone has changed a lot from a budget perspective”.
“Right now, the task ahead of New Zealand may seem daunting to many people. There is a big challenge ahead of us all. But the cyclone and its aftermath won’t be with us forever. We will need to look through the cycle. We’ll be building a country of opportunity and energy where our kids can thrive. We can do these things. We can rebound strongly from the cyclone, we can navigate the global pandemic of inflation, we can invest in the skills and innovation required to power up for the future, we can build back better, we can build back safer, and we can build back smarter, and we can do that by working together, so let’s get cracking.”
As with the Prime Minister, all party leaders who followed in response to his statement acknowledged victims of the cyclone and the sacrifices of first responders. They each offered multiple accounts of people they’d personally met and listened to in the immediate wake of the disaster. It could be tempting to characterise these as mere attempts to show the public that the political leader had got their boots on the ground and rolled up sleeves to help in the response. But it’s also hard to imagine MPs weren’t at least a little affected by the harrowing accounts they’d heard and are looking to help.
“In the days and weeks and months ahead it’s really important that we have those stories and those people at the forefront of our minds as we wrestle with the right response and recovery,” said the Opposition leader Chris Luxon.
“It’s important that we don’t forget them, we don’t forget that actually delivering really getting things done for them is what’s really going to matter here, rather than platitudes and nice statements,” he said, adding that there will be more events like Cyclone Gabrielle.
The next speaker, James Shaw of the Green Party, who is the Climate Change Minister, noted that Luxon didn’t mention the words ‘climate change’ in his speech. Then he hit out at elements of the opposition for prioritising the need for adaptation over mitigation of climate change and the “New Zealand is too small to make a difference” claim.
“New Zealand’s population is about the size of Los Angeles. So if we’re saying actually, you know what, New Zealand is too small to make a difference, we’re saying it’s ok, Los Angeles, you don’t need to do it, then we’re also saying New York doesn’t need to do it, and Chicago doesn’t need to do it, and San Antonio doesn’t need to do it, and what you’re saying actually is the United States doesn’t need to do it.
“We all have a part to play, and we must play the part we’re given,” said Shaw before being asked by the Speaker to withdraw and apologise for an inference that the Opposition were hypocrites in claiming to be committed to New Zealand’s carbon emissions reduction targets.
By the time ACT’s David Seymour spoke, the debate had descended into the sort of politicking that the political leaders themselves have been emphasising this was no time to be doing.
“The reality is that we have a Climate Change Minister who blames everybody but himself for the failure of his own policies. We have had emission reduction schemes that just don’t work,” Seymour said, although Shaw had already left the chamber.
And so the Debate on the Prime Minister’s Statement continues. By the time it ends, the vast majority of MPs are expected to have spoken. The debate runs for up to 13 hours but is usually spread out in chunks over a week or two, allowing for MPs to attend to other general business here and there.
