Shipley keen to hand power back to Chch
DAME Jenny Shipley wants a power handover plan drawn up within five months.
Shipley will head a new transition board, announced on Monday, that will advise the Government on how to pass power back to local agencies in Canterbury.
The Auckland-based former prime minister is excited about her new role as chairwoman of the advisory board and is focused on having a transition plan drawn up within five months.
She is confident its advice heeded.
‘‘It was an honour to be asked [to chair the board] – there’s still a huge chunk of ex-Cantabrian in me,’’ Shipley said.
Shipley heads a who’s who of Canterbury powerbrokers providing advice on how to transition the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s (Cera) powers and functions to local agencies ahead of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act’s expiration in April 2016.
The advisory board, whose members include Christchurch mayor Lianne Dalziel and Environment Canterbury chairwoman Dame Margaret Bazley, will meet formally in the last week in January.
Shipley said while Christchurch had been through a huge event and needed a recovery organisation like Cera to help it
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be through the emergency and crisis stage, it was now moving towards a ‘‘steady state’’.
That meant it was time to review the functions and powers still needed and where responsibility for them should permanently rest.
‘‘The key things are to keep momentum and, where appropriate, continuity, but move towards a sustainable, enabled and successful Canterbury,’’ Shipley said.
It would be the advisory board’s job to think through the solutions and develop the details of the transition plan: ‘‘We have been told we can help design new things; we don’t have to be captured by the past.’’
Shipley said the work would be intense, particularly in the first five months, when the board was likely to meet several times a month.
The challenge was to come up with a transition plan that delivered on people’s expectations and allowed Canterbury to prosper, with less government intervention.
‘‘The goal of the process is to find successful, sustainable, durable, embedded and enabled solutions for Canterbury. That will still be a blend of the Crown being involved in part but I would hope we could describe it . . . as being an important rebalancing,’’ Shipley said.
Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee said the advisory board would provide a clear voice for local government and the various sectors of Christchurch as the Government looked ahead to the next stages of the recovery.
‘‘As I signalled from the inception of Cera, there will be a gradual transition of recovery responsibilities, including the removal or scaling back of powers provided for by the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act that are no longer deemed necessary to maintain the momentum of the recovery,’’ he said.
‘‘With this hugely experienced board appointed I’m confident the transition of the Government’s role in greater Christchurch’s recovery will happen in a sensible and phased way to ensure momentum is maintained.’’