A 24/7 Geonet Would Not Have Made Any Difference to Earthquake Assessment : Minister

Acting Civil Defence minister Gerry Brownlee says the Government will talk to GNS, the owner of the GeoNet earthquake monitoring system, about the organisation’s structure in the wake of this week’s 7.8 quake centred around Kaikoura - but warned against concluding that staffing the service 24/7 would have made any difference “on the day”.

“They’ve operated like this for a long time, and I don’t think the 24-7 personnel being there doesn’t make any difference to the sensor arrangements that they’ve got placed around the country in tidal areas and the international connections that they use as part of a global network to assess what’s happened in earthquakes,” he told Q+A’s Jessica Mutch.

Mr Brownlee said overall, there had been a breakdown in the system of alerting communities to the tsunami risk of such a large quake, and that would need fixing, but defended efforts to help people in the more rural and remote areas around Kaikoura where people have reported feeling ‘let down’ by the Government response.

But he said there were plenty of ministers talking to people in those areas and “there will always be people who will feel a little like that. It’s just one of those things.”

Mr Brownlee also discussed his defence portfolio with Jessica, saying dealing with the upcoming Trump administration would mean little in the way of change for New Zealand.

“Just run-of-the-mill politics. Nothing to worry about,” he said.

Q + A
Episode 37
GERRY BROWNLEE – PART ONE
Interviewed by JESSICA MUTCH

JESSICA Gerry Brownlee is with us here. You were there listening to Justin Lester. How is Wellington coping, do you think? And what did you think of him sending out that message, “We’re open for business,” so early?

GERRY I think two things – firstly, I think Justin’s doing a great job. It’s an unenviable position for him to be in. They have a local state of civil emergency there, and essentially, he will be right at the heart of that. On that message, I think some of the reporting hasn’t been quite as it should be. What I said was I was concerned about the way there was— or was there a process for private building owners to report in to the emergency services or the council to say that their buildings were safe for re-entry as opposed to just declaring themselves that those buildings were safe for re-entry. And what I’ve discovered is that the engineering firms who make those checks are supposed to tell the council that those buildings are clear. And what everyone needs to understand well is that under the Health and Safety Act – let alone anything else – they have an absolute duty to inform the tenants as well as the owner of the building what they discover.

JESSICA Because that’s not really happening, is it?

GERRY I’m told that it is happening, and I’ll be checking on that again tomorrow. I’m in constant contact with the emergency services, obviously, and I’ll make contact again with Justin. I want to say – when these things happen, you do need someone who’s pretty calm and capable, and I think you’re seeing that in Justin Lester, and I’m going to have that discussion with him tomorrow. He and I have the same objective. And remember that this is not Christchurch. Christchurch had, in just a few short seconds, 185 people dead, many, many buildings in a state of partial collapse, shop fronts open, transport impassable through most of the city, no power, no water, no sewerage.

JESSICA And isn’t that why it’s so important that this has almost been a warning shot for Wellington, that they get it right, that they crack down on those landlords and things like that?

GERRY My next point was that Christchurch did have its September earthquake, and it did go through checks. And what we’ve learnt in the two buildings that collapsed, killing people, in Christchurch and those who lost their life through falling masonry that those things have to be very very carefully checked, and of course, there have been changes to building codes as a result of those collapses and those expectations.

JESSICA But these are new buildings, though. The Statistics New Zealand, Defence House – these are new structures.

GERRY That’s going to be very interesting, and Nick Smith, as the minister responsible for the housing codes New Zealand, building codes New Zealand, has started the process of investigating exactly what has happened to those buildings. I do think, though, you’ve got to be a bit careful that you don’t let the rumour machine run mad in these circumstances. It always tends to. It did a lot in Christchurch.

JESSICA What do you mean by that?

GERRY People will tell you, “Look, the thing has pancaked.” It’s quite evident neither of those buildings have pancaked. There will be reasons why they’ve shut it, so we need to know – what are the particular reasons and what was the cause of that?

JESSICA But are you also calling on those people, like the CEO of Statistics New Zealand, to be upfront with people and not say that it’s “a little bit of damage”, to be honest with the people who work there and with the public?

GERRY I think you’ve also got to accept that while there was the 7.8 earthquake at 12.02am on Monday morning, there’s been a swarm of earthquakes, more than 900, many over 5 on the Richter scale, some approaching 6. So that will have done cumulative damage as well, and that’s the problem that we’re going to face over the next short while. Last week, we published through GNS – Dr Kelvin Berryman developed with his team a thing called the decay curve, which gives you some mathematical probabilities on inputs that they know from other events around the world of how this thing will unfold over time. So there will be quite intense aftershocks.

JESSICA So what did it say? Can you give us any more details on that?

GERRY Certainly. It was provided to all media. It’s provided in a graphic form as well so that it can be simply explained. It’s a curve that starts with the 7.8, and over time, the probabilities of larger earthquakes diminishes but remains, albeit on a diminishing curve.

JESSICA Because at the moment, it’s about 30% that we’re going to get another 7 to 7.8 quake.

GERRY I think the interesting thing in that was 30% last— I think it was Thursday, so even now, that would have gone out a little bit— fallen to a lower figure. But you simply can’t predict these things totally accurately. If everyone had known that at 12.02am on Monday night this was going to happen, everyone would have been on guard waiting for it, similarly with the terrible Christchurch situation. So from now, all we can do is respond to what’s happened and prepare better and better should these events occur in the future.

JESSICA There was a situation, though, around 12 o’clock where the tsunami warning that should have gone out then didn’t. They said there’s no tsunami warning, and then later, of course, there was that warning that went out to everybody. What happened? What went wrong? Did the system fail?

GERRY I think the first thing is that the earthquake itself was detected inland, and that generally doesn’t trigger a tsunami. What they didn’t understand at that stage was that because of its intensity, because of its length, because there was possibly a second activity in there as well, the faults that came out of it did run into the sea.

JESSICA So it didn’t work, the system, effectively?

GERRY They found out about it, so from that point, it does.

JESSICA But lots of people would have gone back to sleep.

GERRY But Jessica, start from the point that if that epicentre had been a distance just off the coast of New Zealand, there’s no time for a warning, right? Tsunami’s on its way, and it doesn’t matter what your system is. You won’t get warned in time. That’s still pretty scary, but let me just say about this one, because I think we’ve got to build from here. They found a fault that ran 150km up in the north-easterly direction out to sea. Once they knew that, they immediately triggered the tsunami possibilities. I think where the failing is that we have a very nice structure in New Zealand for who gets to do what, probably put together in the calm and polite atmosphere of no disaster. And in that nice and friendly sharing of obligations and authorities, there has been a breakdown, no question in my mind, and I’ve been quite open about that. And we’re going to need to fix it.

JESSICA Other people who feel let down by this are people in some of those more rural communities outside of Kaikoura. How are you helping them at the moment?

GERRY I think there’s a couple of things there. Firstly, we have had a lot of ministers going into those areas.

JESSICA But not so much to the rural areas.

GERRY Yes, they have. They’ve been— Nathan Guy has done a good whip round all those areas and spoken to the farming community. On Friday, Ian Simpson from EQC, Tim Grafton from the insurance council,…

JESSICA Why do they still feel isolated?

GERRY …they had a very big meeting in three of those rural communities. There will always be people who will feel a little like that. It’s just one of those things. But you’ve got to keep on looking at what are the big issues that have got to be fixed. But then you’ve got other communities up there, like Hanmer for example, where there’s not a great of damage. It’s manageable. They’re open for business, and the last thing they want is to think that people won’t come and visit them. Frankly, if you’re feeling a little bit stressed, a couple of hours in the hot pools might be really good for you, so I’d encourage people to do that, because no greater is there than anywhere else.

JESSICA How important is that, though? That even though Kaikoura is affected and will be for several months to come – how important is it from that tourism side that people come back?

GERRY I think it’s very important. And one of the things that we did after the Christchurch earthquakes also was look at what are the keys to the economic base, and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise along with MFAT and others all made arrangements for people to be able to get into their markets and to talk to their customers for arrangements. We’re still at a stage of assessing what’s needed in that regard. And one of the other things I’d say is that from a lot of small businesses in Christchurch, a lot of their customers said, “We won’t call you. We won’t place orders. We know you’re dealing with an earthquake. We don’t want to bother you.” That’s the exact thing they want. And I actually spoke to someone in Kaikoura yesterday who said that they run a mail order-type business out of Kaikoura, and they can stay in business, provided they can get their parcels out or their goods out. There’s all sorts of things like that that we can look at in the coming weeks to try and make those things work. But all of the attractions that were in Kaikoura prior to the earthquake are still there. It’s just accessing them, both for the operators and for the people who might come in, albeit in more interesting circumstances, are still there.

JESSICA Let’s talk about the cost. How much will this Kaikoura quake cost us, and can we afford it?

GERRY As you know, the Prime Minister said he thinks it’ll run into well over the billion-dollar mark. I think that’s the reasonable sort of estimate at the start. But in the end, there are some things that you just have to do, regardless of where you’re at. So there does have to be access in and out of Kaikoura. We do need a through road that takes us up to Picton to keep that connection going. We are going to have to see some temporary work done – and I know Simon Bridges is on to this as transport minister – on the inland road, talking about 700-odd trucks a day. Seems like a very large estimate, but if that’s the case, that road will have to have some work in some parts to make that not only accessible but also safe for others on the road as well.

JESSICA Because ministers have said, ‘Look, we don’t want to do a quick fix. We want to make sure it’s safe and ready for the future.’ Wouldn’t it be a priority just to get it up and running again and then slowly do that?

GERRY To be clear, there will be some quick fixes. And in fact, the road into Kaikoura, which is proving a lot more difficult to open that was first thought, is essentially going to be a quick fix. But on top of that, we’re not going to leave the place accessed only by goat tracks.

JESSICA In terms of GeoNet, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about as well. Their job at the moment is to monitor natural disasters. Do you think that they should be funded so they can operate 24-7? Because at the moment, they’re pulling staff in and doing that, but they’re saying, ‘Look, in the event, all year round, we can’t do that.’

GERRY They’ve operated like this for a long time, and I don’t think the 24-7 personnel being there doesn’t make any difference to the sensor arrangements that they’ve got placed around the country in tidal areas etc. And the international connections that they use as part of a global network to assess what’s happened in earthquakes.

JESSICA Hasn’t the time come, though, to say, ‘Right, we’re just going to do this’?

GERRY Well, the question will be for GNS, which is the owner of GeoNet, how they think they should structure for the future. We’ll obviously talk to them about that, but I think simply racing in in this environment saying, ‘It’s got to be 24-7’, the questions is –what would’ve been the difference the other day? Because if you look at what they’re saying out of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, the US Geological Survey, they’re all saying, actually, this was a really interesting event, multiple faults rupturing at one time, very very difficult to get a handle on exactly what was happening.


PART TWO

Q + A
Episode 37
GERRY BROWNLEE
Interviewed by JESSICA MUTCH

JESSICA Very interesting stuff to deal with.

GERRY Just run-of-the-mill politics. Nothing to worry about.

JESSICA Yeah, just politics. Usual day. Usual day. I want to start off by asking you President-Elect Donald Trump is now going to be in charge, obviously, of the defence direction for America. What do you think that that will mean for New Zealand? Will he have more expectations of us when it comes to defence?

GERRY We’ve had a growing relationship with the United States that’s culminated last week in the arrival in New Zealand of the Samson. And I just wish more New Zealanders could’ve seen the US troops alongside the Australians, the Canadians and New Zealand militaries, operating in Kaikoura. While you have obviously a defence force should you come under attack, you largely have a defence force to pursue peace. And when you can use the capabilities of defence to make people’s lives just a little bit easier, as has been the case this week, then that’s a good thing. But I think the relationship we have with the United States, I can’t see it changing significantly at all.

JESSICA Donald Trump, though, has signalled he very much wants to have a focus on defence for the US. Places like Australia have already started to get in on it. Don’t you think he’s just going to expect more from his allies if we want support from the US?

GERRY We are working with the United States on a number of fronts at the present time. We’ve been, for example, in the Sinai mission since the Camp David talks in the early ‘80s. We’ve got our coalition that we’re part of in Iraq, working to train people, alongside the Australians. And we have a number of other engagements, including the Antarctic as well.

JESSICA But he’s planning to spend $500 billion dollars, it’s a very different...

GERRY Hang on. Just remember, the US defence budget right now is $586—

JESSICA That’s still a lot of extra money to spend, though.

GERRY Hang on. Just put it in the context. They spend $586 billion a year now.

JESSICA Okay, so that aside.

GERRY Their navy budget alone is $180 billion. So when he says he’s going to do these things, is it immediately? Is it going to be an annual increase? Are we going to see $1 trillion spending by the US on defence? I don’t think so.

JESSICA So that aside, there’s different people in charge. And they’ll have different expectations. Have you talked about what the expectations will be like under a Trump presidency?

GERRY He hasn’t chosen his Secretary of Defense yet. And that is a role that is a role that’s quite separate from the National Security Advisor and then the Strategic Advisor he’s got as well.

JESSICA Michael Flynn, that we heard about just then, does send quite a message about what he’s thinking, though, do you not think?

GERRY Michael Flynn is a military man. He’s a decorated soldier. Long and distinguished record in the US military. He will have views. But I haven’t particularly seen exactly where he would think the US should go.

JESSICA He’ll be much more aggressive, though, won’t he?

GERRY Other than saying like so many others are that the jihadi style of activity, terrorist activity, is not acceptable. And that’s not necessarily, in my view, a condemnation of Islam, which is essentially a peaceful religion.

JESSICA In terms of America, do you think they’ve taken on more of the responsibility of fighting terrorism than other countries? Do you think they’ve shouldered the burden, if you like?

GERRY They’ve certainly taken a strong lead on it. And if you look at the coalition that’s dealing with Iraq and Syria at the present time, that’s a coalition of I think about 67 countries. We’re one of 11 who are active in that arrangement. But you do have to have someone who takes a lead role and coordinates that. And I think they’ve done a good job on that.

JESSICA Do you think we’ll be asked to step up in that regard from President Trump? Is that something that you’ve talked about, that possibility?

GERRY No, we haven’t discussed that. We’re being pretty strong on our decision that we will be part of the training mission in Iraq until December of 2018. And if there was to be any change to that, then obviously that would be very well signalled. We’ve got an election coming up next year. We’ll see what the lie of the land is, and we’ll have a better idea at that stage of what a Trump presidency means.

JESSICA Because Australia has already said ‘we want in on this’. And they’ve talked about offering construction and things like that, saying, ‘We’ll help. We’ll do that here.’ Also experts are saying they’ll look to increase their GDP budget percentage spend on defence to more than 2%. Do you think that’s smart?

GERRY Look, I’m not going to comment on Australian policies.

JESSICA But should we be doing something similar?

GERRY We’ve just committed to a capability plan that sees our defence force getting capital investment around the $20 billion mark over the next 12 years now. It’s a lot of money annually.

JESSICA Do you think that will help with any—?

GERRY Hang on. That we’ll maintain alongside with another commitment we’ve made to their operating budget. That will keep us steady at about the 1% mark of our GDP. Now, you look at all the needs that are in New Zealand at the moment, and we’re identifying a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built. We’re clearly going to face more costs in the Kaikoura event. And so you try and balance all that up with what you can reasonably do to participate. Frankly, if were to spend 2% or even 3% of GDP, we’re unlikely to keep up with the Australian capacity, because they are, just simply, a bigger economy.

JESSICA We’ll have to leave it there. Thank you very much for your time this morning, Minister Gerry Brownlee.

Transcript provided by Able. www.able.co.nz

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