Water infrastructure failings highlighted
OPINION: As the ground dries and emergency repairs get carried out, some knottier issues are coming to the fore. When natural disasters spread havoc far and wide, what economic assistance should the authorities be expected to provide to people who, for one reason or another, were uninsured?
Responsible governments don’t have the luxury of taking a ‘‘that’s their problem’’ approach to their neediest citizens.
Inevitably, some flood victims will have lost everything. For many people living on a shoestring, putting money aside each month to pay insurance premiums (for house contents and the car) would have seemed an unimaginable luxury. As a result, there will now be hundreds of people – thousands even – who won’t have the same platform for recovery supposedly available to the paid-up customers of the insurance companies.
If anything, that social disparity is only likely to get worse.
Given the outlook for climate change, the cost of insurance seems bound to rise, even beyond the levels reached after the Canterbury earthquakes. As the weather gets worse, it is reasonable to assume that fewer and fewer people will be able to afford to insure themselves against the potential scale of damage.
Hardliners of course, would say that helping out the uninsured would be unfair to the people who did pay for insurance. Yet there is a precedent for taking a more realistic and compassionate approach.
After much deliberation about fairness and the precedent being set, the Labour/NZ First coalition government chose in mid-2018 to make payments of around $12 million in total to 103 owners of uninsured and underinsured properties located in the Christchurch ‘‘red zone’’.
The over-riding factor, the government explained at the time, was to enable people to finally get on with their lives, seven years after the earthquakes had turned everything upside down.
This time in Auckland and elsewhere, far more than 103 people appear likely to be lining up for assistance. The task of evaluating genuine need, and of setting a ratio of compensation that’s feasible, would be no easy task.
On one point though, the uninsured and insured victims of the floods could find themselves in agreement. Arguably, central and local government had left everyone in peril thanks to decades of inadequate investment in water infrastructure, even after it had become apparent that more frequent and intense storms would be occurring, thanks to climate change.
On that score, it will be fascinating in the months ahead to see what role the recent storms will play in the ongoing political debate over the Three Waters scheme. Evidently, many major cities and towns around the country require extensive investment in the systems that manage the nation’s stormwater, waste water and drinking water facilities.
For months, a vocal combination of councils, farmers and politicians have been trying to stop the Three Waters scheme in its tracks. If not Three Waters though, then what?
In short, the recent floods have spotlighted the need to find solutions for how to finance and manage the crucial investment required to bring New Zealand’s water infrastructure up to scratch.
Those aged and decaying systems are being tested by climate change. Last week, they were found wanting.