7 June 2006

MCDEM's New Website is Just Fine, Carter Wrong

Civil Defence Minister Rick Barker said, "Again, John Carter is trying to make something out of nothing," in response to claims that the new www.getthru.govt.nz website is not running.

“Mr Carter seems to have had some trouble getting through to the site, and leapt to the conclusion that the site itself was in some way faulty, he was wrong, again,” said Mr Barker.

“In fact I am informed his problem had nothing to do with www.getthru.govt.nz. The error is one that affects 1 – 3% of government websites and only impacted on a few users, despite this, the hit rate on the new site is encouraging.

“Earlier in the week Mr Carter also said that spending money on encouraging people to be prepared for disasters was a waste. Now he says it is terrible if people face a problem reaching information on how to be prepared.

"Mr Carter has tried so hard to trivialize Civil Defence issues in New Zealand to score some kind of political point and he continues to get his facts wrong having never sought any clarification with my office. Yet again, Mr Carter has his head in the clouds.

"Civil Defence is everyone’s responsibility, even Mr Carter’s. New Zealand needs an opposition spokesman on civil defence who is capable of making constructive and sensible use of his time, not one obsessed with trivia and inaccurate ill-informed criticism.

“If he ever gets it right, I’ll be listening,” said Mr Barker.

ENDS

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