LOS PROGRAMAS PERSONALIZADOS DE INCORPORACIÓN SOCIAL (PPIS)

7.1.1 Central Government Participation Processes

In Christchurch, opportunities for participation and engagement with the processes of recovery were focussed through central government, local government and citizen initiated processes. The

command and control approach of the central government resulted in formal opportunities for participation in some areas being reduced or removed entirely. As introduced in Chapter Five, this is indicative of the foreclosure of many democratic possibilities in the city. The interview data collected for this research suggested that this has been frustrating for many residents and organisations who perceived a huge opportunity for new practices and forms of urban design and community

involvement in the reconstruction of the central city and suburbs.

Despite this frustration, there was still a selective engagement with certain approaches and tools of consultation and participation, which form an integral part of the politicisation of disaster recovery.

Initially, the exceptionality-influenced process to pass the earthquake legislation used urgency to truncate parliamentary democratic procedures. This symbolised the first of many ways democracy was foreclosed in ongoing political processes through the response and recovery to the earthquakes.

In non-emergency times, the main processes for participation and engagement with the public by the government are engaged through the parliamentary select committee process and the

representative electoral system. The select committee process is an important part of strengthening legislation and involving participatory processes in law making. As McLeay et al., (2012, p. 3) state:

The open and participatory select committee process, with considerable revision and amendment powers in the hands of the committees, enhances the legislative process.

The ruling National government has been widely criticised for overusing the process of urgency to bypass thorough select committee scrutiny, particularly for legislation regarding the earthquake recovery and Canterbury water management (Gall, 2012; McLeay et al., 2012; Mueller, 2011).

Urgency is a necessary and important power that allows for legislation to be passed under

circumstances that require either a substantial amount of work to be cleared through extending the sitting hours of parliament or in the case of a timely and necessary response (Gall, 2012; McLeay et

161

al., 2012). Following a major disaster there is clearly a role for the state to take decisive action that responds to the need to save lives, supports those worst affected and enables a response to damage to infrastructure and buildings. In this case the legislation introduced after the September 2010 earthquake was passed with multi-party support through urgency that completely bypassed the select committee process to enable ongoing amendments to the legislation in the aim of supporting recovery (Brookie, 2012). However, because of this legislation and the powers granted to the Minister for Earthquake Recovery, these actions also had wide ranging and ongoing impacts on broader processes for participation and consultation.

Most notably, the Minister for Earthquake Recovery could bypass requirements under the Resource Management Act and other statutory requirements for consultation and public notification (Brookie, 2012; Gall, 2012). These powers were used among other things to fast track land zoning changes by omitting public consultation, something that was later deemed an action outside of the purpose of the earthquake recovery legislation by the judiciary (Berry, 2012b). In contrast to this approach, CERA did, on a number of occasions, carry out public consultation for projects. For example, CERA conducted consultation with the community on the Land Use Recovery Plan, the use of red zoned land in Waimakariri, and the plan to transition from CERA to a new government organisation in 2016. These processes largely involved written and spoken submissions from the public, community organisations and other stakeholders. However, many projects run by the department were not subject to these forms of public consultation. In 2014, The Press reported that their investigation had shown CERA had only consulted with the public on two of the twelve central city recovery anchor projects with officials maintaining that the Share an Idea process run by Christchurch City Council in 2011 was sufficient (this use of the Share an Idea consultation will be discussed in further detail later) (Harvie, 2014).

Regarding central government processes for involving and engaging residents, participants were overwhelmingly negative in their assessment. Of the residents that participated in the e-interviews, the majority expressed feelings of exclusion, disempowerment and marginalisation in the wider processes of recovery. Participants described the government led recovery as dictatorial, autocratic, bullying, disempowering, domineering, exclusive and deceptive (E-interview #5, 9, 23, 36, 70, 83, 93). A significant portion of these participants felt that the government had actively excluded residents and affected communities from the recovery:

[I’m] feeling like a forgotten citizen. Without actively involving myself in activities I would not have known what is going on (E-interview #101).

162

[I feel] absolutely and intentionally excluded from the rebuild process, from a macro to an individual level… everything is top down and no room for community (E-interview #34).

Others said: “the government have failed to involve people in the recovery” (E-interview #30) and that they felt “dismissed” by the Minister (E-interview #32). This perception of active exclusion of residents from the recovery was linked by some to the difficulty of conducting participatory or engagement processes in the city (Interview Participant 15), while others pointed to the time it takes to involve people in ‘democracy’ (Interview Participant 3). As one participant commented, the attitude of government to consultation was “’Here’s your formal consultation process, you only get to do this once every five years”. The interviewee went on to exclaim “Are they fucking nuts?

Consultation is daily… that’s the power of conversation” (Interview Participant 13). There was a significant feeling that the government had missed out on opportunities to understand the unique problems of residents and the possible solutions by excluding so many residents and communities (Interview Participant’s 15, 16, 13 & 25).

In terms of the central government participatory processes that did occur there was a distinct feeling that the government engaged only in tokenistic or shallow consultation. Many of the staff in

organisations such as CERA were noted as supportive of wider community involvement, but that “at the higher level, support is not particularly there” (Interview Participant 18). Similarly, residents described their belief that the government only consulted with communities to give the appearance of engagement, when in fact they “only pretend to have consulted” (E-interview #109). Another resident described this as “tokenism” (E-interview #77). These terms represent the significant feeling of disengagement with the official government recovery processes in Christchurch and show the expanse of emotion behind the opinions of many residents in the city. As one participant described:

There seems to be a façade of asking people’s opinions and taking people’s ideas on board.

But it’s just that. They don’t actually listen (Interview Participant 14).

Others described the predetermined nature of decisions and the use of participatory processes to

‘rubber stamp’ decisions (Interview Participant 3). As one participant said “It’s not consultation. It’s:

‘this is what we’ve got. Shall we put a blue cover on it or a pink cover’?” (Interview Participant 6).

The predominant mode of engagement for the community with central government processes beyond that of consultation laid out in the earthquake legislation, was the creation of a community forum to advise the Minister for Earthquake Recovery. This arrangement was also the focus of similar criticism and concerns. In the legislation, the provision was made for the appointment of at

163

least 20 members of the community by the decision of the Minister to advise on issues relating to the recovery in an ongoing capacity (New Zealand Government, 2011). The committee was not established to advise on the immediate issues facing disaster response, but instead to provide an engagement model for medium to long term issues facing communities, particularly as they emerged through the creation and implementation of different recovery plans. As a result, 39 individuals were selected from across the regions of Canterbury, including Selwyn, Waimakariri and Christchurch, including representatives from business groups, Pacific and Māori communities and residents’ associations. In a 2015 report, a local National Party Minister described the forum as “one of the most important links between the government and the community and has been involved in every major decision about the recovery” (Wagner, 2015, p. 3).

While the creation of a community forum was a welcome attempt to include citizens and

communities in the recovery, participants reported significant problems with this vision in practice.

Issues with information availability were raised due to the extensive redaction of ‘commercially sensitive’ information, as well as how well individuals could represent the diverse views of their communities. According to one participant, the proposed model for the community forum was that the members would discuss the proposals and decisions with their wider communities and then bring back their findings to the forum where they would be discussed and advice given to the Minister. However, when information was frequently and substantially redacted or embargoed this severely affected the ability of community forum members to discuss proposals with their respective

‘communities’.

There are also challenges with this model in terms of the reliability of individual members to feedback the diverse opinions of a wide range of people, as well as the burden of these people as volunteers to undertake this role. Advisory committees such as this tend to be premised on the idea of inclusive representation, to serve as a voice for communities and the public. But as other scholars have noted the reality of representation is not often matched by reality (Barnes et al., 2003;

Skanavis et al., 2005). As Skanavis et al. (2005) describes in relation to environmental disasters, these forms of participation can also represent a non-deliberative and politicised mechanism for a one-way flow of information from the public to the government. This is particularly relevant in this case given the frequent use of embargo and redaction that reduced the ability of community forum members to ‘consult’ with their wider communities. Subsequently, there was a perception among participants that the community forum was not transparent or able to communicate effectively with

164

the wider community, one respondent described the forum as having been “silenced” (E-interview

#18), and another described it as a “secret club that is dysfunctional” (E-interview #70).