government at that point. The future of the Residential Red Zone sat within the delegations of the Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration. Public consultations were already well underway, and a real effort had been made to draw as many people into imagining what the red zone could look like. It was in quite a state of flux, though, with quite contradictory messages around future uses. A lot of ideas that were coming up from the community. Then there ones embedded in the legislation, like the rowing lake; and active consideration of the Eden Project proposal. There was talk about whether there could be some short-term housing put back into the area. And on the other side, there was a community desire to do things like greening the red zone, community gardens, thinking about community usage.

 

There was also a set of uses emerging that I was presented with, not only in that portfolio, but in my Research Science and Innovation portfolio, around how parts of the red zone could be used for test beds for emerging technologies such as for autonomous flying vehicles. So there was a lot of ideas, but there wasn't solidity around how that was going to work. The area was still vested in government and there was work to do around the land titles [of the properties bought by the Crown following red zoning]. And there was still work to find a path through making sure that we had as much local leadership as possible.

 

It didn't make sense to me that this would be something that central government would continue to make all the decisions about. This was very much about the recovery of a community. It was also a huge opportunity for Christchurch. And something I felt really passionate about, having looked at Jan Wright’s [then Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment] maps very closely about where sea level rise and inundation would occur. Given the pain we'd already been through in this city in terms of managed retreat, we had to take a long term evidence-based view of how that land would be used.

 

How closely were you involved in the processes of regeneration planning, and what happened when the draft plan was produced?

 

It was a process defined by statute [Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act 2016]. There was a lot of statutory decision making that sat within it. One of the things when I became Minister is that I was very aware of, however, was a sense there was government and there was community, and a gap between them. So I set about holding regular meetings with community stakeholders, as well as listening to my officials. It was really important that we engage with community aspirations. The danger as a Minister is you hear from your officials and from large organisations, rather than people on the ground. But there were good community structures that meant there was ability to have good engagement.

 

I made it my business to go to community events and look at the ways people were engaging with that space and reclaiming it. I remember very early on being given some beautiful jars of honey that had been made from hives that people had put in the red zone. I have very fond member memories of Evan Smith and the work that he was doing with the Avon Ōtākaro Network. So I was talking to groups, opening doors and making it clear that as a Minister, I was keen to have that engagement.

 

And then in terms of the process, there was the formal signing off plans, drafts, getting it through to that end state. But one of the critical things was how we transferred ownership of the land to the city. I really wanted to make sure we were making good progress on that. It became part of the Global Settlement [in 2019], which was a kind of money wash up, because there was still quite a lot of technical work to do around consolidating residential land titles that LINZ [Land Information New Zealand], rather than Council, was much better placed to do.

 

The final sign off of the Regeneration Plan was one of the critical pieces. And it was probably about that time that Poto Williams came in as an Associate Minister, and as the MP for Christchurch East, she was very interested in what this would look like. There was that formal sign off and gazetting of the plan and the statutory instruments that had to happen after that. One of the things I was determined about in my term as Minister when I started is that I would be the last Minister for Christchurch Regeneration: that by the time we got to the 2020 election, we'd be able to roll those functions back into other portfolios. The Global Settlement signed between the Crown and the City Council in 2019 was central to this: so discussions about land ownership and funding of the red zone got shifted into the Global Settlement process.

 

With respect to the governance arrangements it became, as we progressed through, something that I stepped more and more back from, because it became more of a Council-led process, and that was the right thing to do. The city and the citizens of Christchurch needed to be making those decisions about what the governance looked like and how to put them in place. One of the critical things that I know Lianne [Dalziel] as Mayor was adamant about - and I fully supported her - is that we got the relationship with Ngāi Tahu right around that governance as well. If I had been starting the plan process from the beginning, if it had been my baby, yes, I would have seen that as a critical relationship. But this was work that was already well advanced, that I inherited as Minister. I wasn't going to slow things down by going back and undoing things just for the sake of it. I was also really conscious of the need to advance, but thinking about how we could ensure things like the bicultural relationship would be integral when we got through to the final plan.

 

What was the outcome of the Plan and Global Settlement with respect to the red zone?

 

It wasn't my dream; there were still a lot of unanswered questions, but I was satisfied that we'd moved it enough in the right direction and got it into a place where there could be good decisions made about the land. I’d have preferred to have had really defined funding streams for realising aspirations. One of the things I really wanted to see was having a permanent forest carbon sink in the red zone. Christchurch could have become one of the first cities in the world to have been net zero carbon by using that land in a way that made sense in the 21st century. I would have liked us to have had some really aspirational projects like that with funding and financing.

 

But the process was defined in terms of signing off the plan and letting it go. And that really was the job of the Minister, to let the young adult make their way in the world and  it was too late to start objecting to how the process had been determined. If I'd been Minister prior to the end of 2017, I would have wanted to try and build some public support behind some aspirational projects. And I saw that as a member of the Christchurch community, rather than something top down from Wellington. But I wasn't going to come and impose a project like that onto the plan at that late stage.

 

How do you feel about progress since the plan was signed off, which is now five years ago?

 

I am pleased that we haven't gone and put housing back into there. There was a lot of pressure to do that, especially when I became Minister of Housing. People were saying it would just be temporary. We would have had communities putting down roots again in places that may have had to relocate within only a short period. We're in the middle of a housing crisis, and people could see swathes of land. But having gone through that pain as a city, I considered it would be negligent in my role to consign another group to have to go through in maybe only a few decades. And after a couple of years, people forget something's only meant to be temporary, and it very quickly becomes permanent.

 

One of the other things that came from working with the consultative group [Te Tira Kāhikuhiku][1] was guaranteeing temporary uses in the red zone as we worked through the process. In hindsight, I still think it was the right thing to do. I was really clear that we could not establish quasi-property rights from that kind of use -  that people could say ‘we've been here for five years, therefore you have to make this a permanent thing’. Because that would have got in the way of other necessary decisions. So that was quite a thorny issue to work through. And these had been people's homes: you could still see the shapes of the gardens at that point. I think then it needed to be clear that we weren’t going to build back stuff where people would feel quite rightly aggrieved – ‘Well, I had to move - why are there now other people setting up there?’

 

The idea that we now have the corridor from the city to the sea and the ability to have that green spine: there's something there's a great deal of consensus around. To be perfectly honest, the idea of the carbon sink would probably require some changes to the ETS rules. But if that's the case, there's no reason why you couldn't have linear plantings to make up a carbon sink. Of course, I’d like to see more urgency around it. I'd like to see more urgency around all climate action. I don't think we've lost the opportunity; what we have done is preserved optionality.

 

When you take people from outside Christchurch for a drive through and show the sheer scale of what is the Residential Red Zone, people are just gobsmacked at how big it is. As a city, we’ve been used to having green space in the centre in the form of Hagley Park. There's now something far bigger that sits to the east which could be used in a really different way to 19th century gardens. It’s a bit of a laboratory for how cities can do things differently and start to think of nature-based solutions. There is a chance for Christchurch to show the world what can be achieved. No city usually has that much land open up: it’s a really unique opportunity. I always wanted to look at having some regulatory sandboxes in there, to use a very EU term. We could get some really good science around what can be achieved in terms of urban carbon sinks, using the wetlands and soil sequestration as well.

 

It would require central government to be involved as it has the ability to get things onto the world stage. It would also need champions within the city, like some mayors around the world have led the charge on climate action. There's far more we could do, and thinking about climate futures is probably a whole lot more to the fore of people’s minds now than it was when the Regeneration Plan was drawn up. So there needs to be the flexibility not to be stuck with a kind of a 2018 vision for the city, which was still quite proximate to the earthquakes. The city has changed a lot since and there's now a real mood of optimism here that's lacking in other cities in New Zealand. We're seeing new and different things emerging within our city, and making sure we've got the ability to evolve with those aspirations is critically important. But it is all going to come down to funding, We can have all the dreams and aspirations in the world but there have to be delivery mechanisms and funding.

 

What about the future of the red zone with respect to parliament's current discussions about climate adaptation?

 

I certainly keep banging on about this as I'm on the Financial Expenditure Select Committee, which is doing the inquiry, and I see the red zone as a critical place we can look. There's things we got right, things we got wrong, and we've got a few examples in New Zealand. We've got what happened in the Residential Red Zone; we've got the work that's been going on in South Dunedin, and also in Westport. We've got examples on the east coast of the North Island, post Cyclone Gabriel [in 2023].

 

Some of the expertise now being used in Westport actually came out of Regenerate Christchurch. The work there is based on literally hundreds of conversations with the community, and building social license from the outset. That is probably quite a different approach than what we saw in Christchurch at the outset. So we're already seeing some climate adaptation work in New Zealand being influenced by some of the red zone experience. But there's far more scope for us to do that. One of the things that they're doing in Westport is a master planning approach, which is also out of the Christchurch playbook. And it’s thinking about how you can make sure you're talking to everyone. Because the danger with these kind of engagements is that there's a very small but very vocal group of people that want to have their say, but you don't get to the rest of the population. I think they've spoken to something like a quarter or a third of Westport, which is much easier in a small place.

 

The parliamentary inquiry is very much being approached in a bipartisan way, because we do need enduring and long term solutions. It is about setting out the principles that would underlie any legislation. But lurking beneath all that is who pays for what. And I guess that's also one of the questions that that we have to look at various parts of the country, and always remember that in the case of the Residential Red Zone in Christchurch, there was the EQC and insurance available, and there can be quite different scenarios when it comes to climate.

 

Anything else you'd like to say about our experiences in the red zone and possibilities for the future?

 

I want to see us continue pushing for what really brings benefit to the community, whether that be at the local, the national or the international scale, because it is so important that that is not seen as a scar, but as a living, breathing, integral part of our city. I need to use it more. I’ve resolved to move some of my morning walks from Hagley Park to the red zone in the course of this conversation, because it is a unique opportunity we've been given as a city. It's not one that we would have ever asked for, but fate dealt it to us. And you know that Christchurch can make a difference on a global scale, but I think it does require central and local government to work together really closely on it, and I think that we are probably past the point where there's a lot of friction between central and local government on Christchurch issues. Well, I hope we are. And iwi are really important in there as well. And I think that's something that we did, by the end, get a good partnership through co-governance. I think that’s also probably an exemplar where actually taking a partnership approach to these things isn't that scary.

 

Interview with Eric Pawson in Wigram Electorate Office, 4 September 2024

 

[1] https://ccc.govt.nz/parks-and-gardens/regenerationareas/te-tira-kahikuhiku

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