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Nelson’s flooded Maitai River from the Trafalgar Street bridge on 18 August, 2022. (Photo: RNZ/Angus Dreaver)
Nelson’s flooded Maitai River from the Trafalgar Street bridge on 18 August, 2022. (Photo: RNZ/Angus Dreaver)

The BulletinAugust 22, 2022

Making room for rivers

Nelson’s flooded Maitai River from the Trafalgar Street bridge on 18 August, 2022. (Photo: RNZ/Angus Dreaver)
Nelson’s flooded Maitai River from the Trafalgar Street bridge on 18 August, 2022. (Photo: RNZ/Angus Dreaver)

As the residents of Nelson clean up after flooding that will take years to recover from, there are questions about how we can help now and what needs to be done to reduce and adapt to more flooding, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in The Bulletin.

 

Widening of Maitai River mooted in 2021

The flooding in Nelson last week was a result of the Maitai River bursting its banks. Flooding is not new to the people of Nelson. This history of flooding in the Nelson Tasman region documents multiple severe flooding events from the time of Pākehā settlement up to last year’s floods in July when the Motueka River burst its banks. A letter to the Nelson Evening Mail on March 10, 1913 addresses the “great question of deforestation” in relation to water volumes in rivers. Flood hazard modelling for the Maitai River was done for the Nelson city council in 2013 and updated again in 2021. A range of options to tackle flooding in the city,  including the widening of the Maitai River, were presented to Nelson city councillors in February 2021,

An alternative to engineering and human intervention

Widening the river is essentially river engineering, or human intervention in the course, characteristics, or flow of a river. For Nelson, these flood reduction interventions would be multi-million dollar engineering projects. There is an alternative viewpoint developing that recommends humans intervene less, and we make room for rivers. It’s the subject of this great piece from David Williams at Newsroom and a conference this year in November. Williams cites a €2.3 billion “room for the river” project in the Netherlands. Thank you to Tom, a regular Bulletin reader, for sharing some of this info with me last week. I’ve recommended this long read before, but a “Slow water” movement based on similar principles, led by landscape architect Yu Kongjian, is being embraced in parts of China.

Land buy back an urgent recommendation of flood inquiry in New South Wales

Looking ahead, these kinds of events are likely to become more frequent and there will be questions about whether people should be living in areas where flooding keeps occuring. The country’s new National Adaptation Plan is designed to address this but is short on detail about who will pay if whole communities end up permanently displaced or insurance won’t cover the cost of damage. In Australia last week, a scathing review into the handling of this year’s floods in New South Wales was released. One of the most urgent recommendations? A phased program to migrate people off the highest-risk areas through a significantly expanded land swap and voluntary house purchase scheme.

Mayoral relief fund open for donations

For the residents of areas hit by flooding last week, there are immediate and pressing concerns. So far, nine homes have been red-stickered, indicating they are uninhabitable, with residents unlikely to be able to return. Another 570 homes have been damaged. The wash-up of the damage caused is incomplete and residents met last night to ask for help. The residents of Nelson have also come together to help each other out, as demonstrated in this story from Stuff’s Amy Ridout. If you want to enter into this spirit of helping out, the Nelson-Tasman mayoral relief fund is open for donations.

Keep going!
The Labour caucus will meet on Tuesday to vote on whether to expel Gaurav Sharma (Photos: RNZ/Angus Dreaver, Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
The Labour caucus will meet on Tuesday to vote on whether to expel Gaurav Sharma (Photos: RNZ/Angus Dreaver, Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

The BulletinAugust 19, 2022

Gaurav Sharma accuses prime minister of lying

The Labour caucus will meet on Tuesday to vote on whether to expel Gaurav Sharma (Photos: RNZ/Angus Dreaver, Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
The Labour caucus will meet on Tuesday to vote on whether to expel Gaurav Sharma (Photos: RNZ/Angus Dreaver, Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)

Following an interview last night where Sharma accused the prime minister of being complicit in a cover up, Sharma has doubled down and accused the prime minister of lying this morning, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in The Bulletin.

 

Sharma breaks silence

“A week is a long time in politics” is attributed to British prime minister Harold Wilson. Wilson is said to have made that quip in the mid 60s, when the world wide web was a mere twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye. A week and two hours after Gaurav Sharma’s online op-ed in the NZ Herald alleging bullying in parliament, he sat down with Newshub’s Jenna Lynch for 36-minte long conversation last night. Following the caucus meeting on Tuesday where he was suspended from caucus, he broke his silence and unloaded several more rounds of ammunition aimed at the Labour party.

Sharma accuses prime minister of lying this morning

Last night Sharma told Newshub that the decision to suspend him from caucus had been made at the meeting on Monday night, the night before the scheduled caucus meeting on Tuesday. “It’s a kangaroo court, it’s a banana republic,” he said. Speaking to RNZ’s Morning Report this morning Sharma said “This is about the credibility of a nation’s prime minister, who every step of the way has been lying.” Ardern has stressed the decision to suspend Sharma from the Labour caucus was not predetermined. The caucus will vote next Tuesday on a motion to expel Sharma. Politik’s Richard Harman writes (paywalled) the result of next Tuesday’s meeting is a forgone conclusion given the unanimous vote to suspend Sharma on Wednesday.

McAnulty rejects any allegations of bullying

Kieran McAnulty also spoke to Morning Report this morning and rejected any allegations that he was a bully towards anyone. He said the Whips’ office kept meticulous records and the question of whether there should be an inquiry into the matters raised by Sharma is a call for the prime minister to make. McAnulty also refuted Sharma’s allegation that the decision around his future was predetermined at the meeting on Monday night, ahead of the caucus meeting on Tuesday, although he did say the mood of the room was clear.

Four days is a long time in politics

As Toby Manhire writes this morning, it’s inconceivable that the caucus or the leadership will do or say nothing between now and Tuesday. Four days is a long time in politics, especially after someone has accused the prime minister of lying and made defamatory claims about a minister and others. That just can’t hang in the air. Sharma was speaking to Tova O’Brien’s on Today FM as I was hitting publish this morning. By the time many of you read this, it will have aired. I am also on Today FM later this morning and multi-tasked publishing this, sending the Bulletin to subscribers and listening to the interview in case the measure of what a “long time in politics” is contracts to mere minutes.

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