February 2011] that obviously it was going to be confronted with significant challenges in terms of rebuilding. I was very aware of the rules that the government put around the red zoning, because my late husband and I received what was described as a voluntary offer, but it was framed as ‘Take it or leave it’. To be honest, I was kind of devastated to lose the place, but then when it came time to leave, I couldn't wait because it was just so dreadful. On 4 September every year I go back to Arncliffe Street, and it's now a large lake in the middle of the Bexley part of the red zone. It's gradually returning to its natural wetland environment.

 

We left in June 2012, about a year after we were red zoned. We were like so many others in having to prove that ours was a total loss, because without that they would only offer the rating valuation, which in Bexley wasn't that high, and it would have been difficult to find anything comparable in another part of the electorate. But the issue wasn't only about me. I was appalled at the concept of moral hazard: that people who weren’t insured shouldn't expect to get a payout from the government. My next door neighbour was in the process of getting cover after her husband had passed away. She had decided on the Friday on an insurer and was to meet them on Monday, and the earthquake happened on Saturday. The moral hazard was an outrageous exclusion of a very small minority of people. They weren't being removed from their homes because they were uninsured but because the government had deemed their properties uneconomic to repair. They really ought to have had the same offer as everyone else. And it had to go to court before there was any significant change. I don't know the actual number affected, but it wouldn’t be more than 30 out of the thousands who were red zoned.

 

I've got a lot of knowledge and history about the areas that were impacted in different ways and the sequence of events that occurred, but I think the government's decision to legislate for a government department to run the city's recovery [CERA: Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority] was the biggest mistake of all. In fact, it was largely responsible for some of the things that went terribly wrong, and the lack of public engagement in some of the decisions they ought to have had a say in. So my deep and personal connection to the red zone was being a part of it. But within another year of moving into our new property in another part of the electorate, I was persuaded to run for mayor.

 

When you became Mayor, how did you see the future of the red zone?

 

I became the Mayor of Christchurch in October 2013. I already knew that there had been an agreement entered into with the government about what they called the blueprint for the rebuild of the central city. But I had no idea at the extent of liability that had been placed on the Council including, just one example, a $400 million hole that was written into the budget and disguised as savings to be found in horizontal infrastructure reinstatement. The financial challenges facing the city going forward, and the things that we signed up to, we had no choice about, because there had already been an agreement made between the previous Council and the government.

 

To this day I still wonder whether I did the right thing and if I should have asked the Council to prepare proceedings against the government on the cost sharing agreement, because it was such a dishonest document. It created a whole lot of expectations about what could be delivered without any financial support attached to it. I don't know whether that would have given me more negotiating coin with the Minister of the day, but I’ll never know because it's not the choice that I made. There was just too much going on, like they were waiting for my election before they released the Land Use Recovery Plan. I remember drawing an image on the board in my new mayoral office setting out the opportunities and the risks that I could see facing the city. Some of the opportunities we were never able to achieve, but it seemed to me that ultimately the red zone could be one of the great legacies for the city.

 

Before I was elected, I asked Bob Parker [Mayor 2007-13] to put forward an expression of interest in being one of the first 100 Resilient Cities that the Rockefeller Foundation was pioneering. It was an international network of cities focused on developing resilience strategies so that we could face the future with more confidence. I thought our city, given what we've been through, was in a great position to take advantage of that. That was about the first thing that I did when I became the Mayor, was to apply to become one of those resilient cities. We were successful in that regard. I was full of hope back in the day – it was all knocked out of me.

 

One of the things I had written down was that we should set up our own development agency. The reason was to show Wellington and central government that we were prepared to change the way that we did things so that they would partner with us. It's in that context that we move forward to the regeneration legislation [Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act 2016]. The government proceeded to set up their own development company without telling us. There was no partnership, no concept that we would work together. They set up their own development company, and it really did shatter the capacity of Development Christchurch to do what it could have been enabled to do.

 

The regeneration planning process was necessarily a compromise to achieve an agreement as to how we might proceed. The process that it adopted for the Otakaro Avon River corridor, as the red zone became known, was pretty amazing. The amount of research and scientific knowledge that was brought to the table was really impressive stuff. So there's a lot of analysis that's been done on the corridor, which has been very helpful for understanding what role it could play. I think when we started, we had the concept of developing it, that there would be projects that would see facilities built and generating money. I was probably visited by every single group that had an idea, like the Eden Project and various other things which are off the table now.

 

Can you explain the moves towards co-governance of the river corridor?

 

Now we are realising that we have this pretty spectacular natural environment that is historically a delta, that it can be that again. It’s got a pre-colonial history to it, and then it's got the red zoning which was a pretty painful process for a lot of people. This is why we agreed in the global settlement [between Crown and Council in 2019] to a methodology described as co-governance. It's really collaborative governance between Ngāi Tūāhuriri, the traditional link to the land, and the community as represented by the Council, so a sense of collaboration between the two. As we set up the Establishment Committee [in 2022] to put in place an enduring entity, we have looked at a framework for decision making which very much understands the ecology and the natural delta status of the area.

 

None of the big decisions have been made, and in many respects, this process has been too long. It probably wasn't assisted by my absence from New Zealand for several months and then signing up to do a university degree hasn't helped either. I've been co-chairing, which is difficult when one party is absent overseas and one party has got teaching obligations at the university, where the other has study obligations. So it hasn't been that easy. The committee has ended up being quite focused on receiving reports on what the Council's doing and that's not what I signed up for. I signed up for a committee that was focused on getting an enduring governance entity into place, getting a recommendation as to what the nature of that enduring entity will be. That wasn’t the focus of a lot of the discussions last year, but it has been this year, and hopefully that is coming to a conclusion soon.

 

I think it has to be a two-stepped process, because of issues that probably we didn't discuss at the event that you convened back in 2019. We didn't really focus on where the money was coming from. And I think there was a general assumption then that there would be land uses that would generate income. But we’ve had advice from Chris Finlayson [Minister for Treaty Negotiations in the National-led Government, 2008-17], who's been excellent, because he's analyzed other co-governance arrangements. Ultimately the recommendation, I think, will be that we have a trust. The Council will have consultation obligations in relation to that. What would go into the trust, those sorts of things would need to be determined and recommendations developed. But somebody is needed to make decisions in the meantime. So establishing it as a committee of Council first, with clear terms of reference, and then for a trust to be established, subject to consultation. Because that consultation obligation sits there under the Local Government Act.

 

It's not necessary for a trust to hold the land. It should certainly be the decision maker about what happens with the land, with those decisions framed in the context of the framework that we've developed. But there are still major infrastructure works to be completed, like stormwater. I don't think a trust wants to own the pipes in the ground. I would recommend that the big infrastructure decisions sit with the Council, but that there is an obligation to consult with this committee or trust, depending on what stage it's up to, so that they make decisions in accordance with the framework. It’s the same with transport. If the Council holds decision making on those issues subject to some consultation with the committee/trust, it's all joined up without transferring liability and responsibility. That creates an ongoing commitment within the city to basically resource the fundamentals, and enables the trust to fundraise. A charitable trust can fundraise in a way a Council never can.

 

How do you see this opportunity unfolding in the longer term?

 

From an environmental point of view, this represents probably the best opportunity that any city has to completely understand and learn from flood risk and climate change. It's a living laboratory, literally, which can add so much to world knowledge on how to protect cities from the risks that they're going to face. What it can add to the city will be measurable, and a trust would do well to measure it. People will come forward and want to study both the history and then what was able to be achieved. Learning to live with water is a better way for people to understand how to face future risks, rather than just building walls to keep it out. I mean, The Netherlands know that they can't keep building walls.

 

I don’t think people elsewhere are aware of this, but they can be once it is established and progress has been made. It will become an attraction in itself. People will see it for what it is, including the significance of partnering with the traditional owners of the land. Working together, we can produce so much more, with the restoration of mahinga kai and a development of understanding amongst young people about the significance of being able to grow their own food, to have access to natural resources to feed their families. It will be an incredibly powerful place to build understanding and knowledge. Putting the framework of principles together in the establishment committee [link when available] was actually more significant than I realised, until once we had it, you could see the benefit was so enormous that you'd want to share it with others.

 

There is nothing in the framework that is inconsistent with the Regeneration Plan as that was an enabling document. It's been written into the district plan. It's going to be important going forward, if the District Plan needs any adjustments, that the trust should be able to consider those, as it's not a static environment. It's going to be constantly changing and evolving as an environment because of the nature of sea level rise, for example. I do think the whole process has taken a long time, and I have views, but I'd rather not record them. The community is pretty engaged in what they're doing already; it hasn't stopped people from proceeding, the community gardens, all of the different uses. The Council’s still developing the wetlands in the Bexley area and that's an ideal regeneration project from an environmental point of view. And there is work proceeding on the landings and the bridges and moving the roadway on Avonside Drive to give the river room to move. Room for the river is just essential, and they're doing this work now.

 

So I don't think that it's held things up; what it has done is enable that focus to go on the sort of principles that sit behind decision making in a way that perhaps wouldn't have been done if we'd gone straight to the to the setting up of the enduring entity or proposing the detail of it.

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Do you think our red zone experiences can be useful for places elsewhere?

 

I do. But there are things that I hadn't focused my attention to, largely around the challenge of funding, the ultimate use of the land. In a busy environment, chairing a meeting of councillors, I hadn't focused so much on those elements. What do we want to achieve? I keep coming back to that because of the opportunity that's offered by this land, which was only made available because people had to surrender their properties. And then learning more about the history of how Māori interacted with the environment and the loss of mahinga kai as a result of breaches of the Treaty, and the use of the Public Works Act to take land that was specifically granted to Māori for mahinga kai. This is an opportunity for restitution as well and that's good and healthy for the river, the land, and for all peoples.

 

On my picture that I wrote on my wall when I first became mayor, the risks around the district plan review were natural hazards, but the opportunity was for public education to understand what those hazards were. But at the time, there wasn't time for that. But now we could be the place where people can see what has occurred and gain understanding of the risks. We've had so much of our environment developed in different ways, that we don't see the underlying risks that are created that we will have to address one day. So maybe that's the answer to your question - can there be public education and understanding of our shared history and the environmental impacts of decisions that were made and the risks we are exposed to? Could we have a conversation then about what we do, how we plan for what might happen in the future?

 

I'm really a big fan of citizens assemblies now. I've joined a consultative group to support the Koi Tu Forum, which is an independent think tank, based in Auckland [https://informedfutures.org]. They have started to develop processes which are about sharing information, knowledge and experience and bringing that all together so that people can publicly develop understanding of issues before we start debating them. Gosh, wouldn't that be unusual?

 

Interview with Eric Pawson at Avebury House, 10 September 2024