Bleak City (62 page)

Alice had spent a lot of time thinking about what he had said. He was right, there didn’t have to be just one thing she chose to do, but what she needed to decide was what was important to her and take that first step towards building her life around it. There was one thing she knew for certain: If the next big disaster happened in her lifetime, she didn’t want to feel as helpless and overwhelmed as she had for the last five years.

She was going to leave Christchurch, but not forever. She needed to be away for a few years, and studying law at the university in Dunedin was a way to recover and build on what she already knew about the law. There might not be another big disaster in New Zealand in Alice’s lifetime, but there were always people exploiting other people and there was a need for lawyers who cared about people and seeing that the right thing was done for them.

Alice wanted to be able to help people, because it was people who were the most important thing in her world, and that was the ground on which she would build a good life.

I’m really sorry for you all, but it is an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances.

— W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado

It is often said that disasters bring out the best in people. That was certainly true in Christchurch, with the Civil Defence response, the Farmy Army, the Student Volunteer Army and the many other people and organisations who pitched in to help in the immediate aftermath of Christchurch’s largest earthquakes. As time wore on and as the recovery dragged, however, another truth about disasters started to emerge: that they bring out the worst in people, holding a mirror to a place’s underbelly, bringing to light any systemic failures, greed and corruption that were already there. The disaster amplifies these things, giving them the space to thrive.

There have been winners and losers.

Those who have done best are undoubtedly those who worked out a way to exploit their fellow man, to recognise the opportunities the systems put in place presented and to make the most of them. Invariably these are people who are willing to put aside their conscience for their own gain. People who believe in karma believe that willingness to do wrong will come back on the corrupt one day, whereas those who believe in no such thing can take small comfort in the fact that the insides of those people’s heads is probably not an attractive place. How do such people sleep at night? caring people might ask. The awful, uncomfortable answer is that they sleep just fine, because they don’t care about the harm they do. They are not like us, they see other people as resources, simply a means to an end.

Those who have kept their heads above water throughout the recovery are probably those who accepted that the bureaucracy existed and wasn’t going to become more efficient. These people found ways to keep out of its way, people who opted out of the Canterbury Home Repair Programme and managed their own repairs, people who had little damage and so were paid out, people who had the financial and mental resources to fight a shoddy assessment and escape the clutches of the EQC or their insurer’s Project Management Organisation.

Those who have done poorly are those who have not been able to escape the bureaucracy, who are now finding their repaired houses are worth less than they were before the quakes started or who are still waiting for repairs to their failed repairs.

But by far the ones who have fared worst are those seeking help from the bureaucracy, trusting in EQC and the insurers to do the right thing. For some, pre-quake issues such as the ravages of old age, poverty and mental health problems have been exacerbated by the quakes and by the bureaucratic nightmare that followed. Health authorities are struggling to get the region’s mental health problems acknowledged, for any increase in funding that would truly help these people depends on admitting that the problem exists.

In 2015, Prime Minister John Key visited Lloyd’s of London and was congratulated on how well-managed the earthquake recovery was. Around the same time, the chairman of Southern Response, the Government entity set up to manage failed insurer AMI’s earthquake claims, was appointed as chair of the Government entity that would replace the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority when its founding legislation expired in 2016. This was in spite of the fact that, next to EQC, Southern Response is the most heavily criticised rebuild entity, one that was taken to court in 2015 in a group action alleging misrepresentation of policy entitlements, delays in claims handling and the systematic misrepresentation of the true costs of repairs and rebuilds. Whether that action will get any traction in the courts remains to be seen.

The leaders, the businessmen and the legislators have earnestly worked at their desire to not let this enormous disaster adversely affect the country’s bottom line. They have wrapped it all up and moved on, patting themselves on the back and lining themselves up for well-paid directorships. They pay no heed, except in speeches, to the Maori proverb that underpins the lives of so many of us:

He aha te mea nui o te ao

What is the most important thing in the world?

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata

It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

Before 2010, ask anyone what part of New Zealand would have the unwanted honour of hosting New Zealand’s next big natural disaster and the answer would not have been Christchurch. Common answers would have been Wellington (quake), the West Coast of the South Island (quake) or Auckland (volcano). These disasters are still to come, and they will be larger in both human and dollar terms than Christchurch. What will happen next is that the Christchurch model for disaster recovery will be deployed and the bureaucratic disaster that has unfolded here will unfold there, all over again.

What of the people?
What of the people?
What of the people?