Labour has been quick to criticise Earthquake Minister Gerry Brownlee’s back-down over quake payouts, but can offer no solution of its own for whether improvements made to Christchurch properties since 2007 should increase government offers to purchase those properties from respective red-zone home owners.
Yesterday on TV1’s Q&A programme, Brownlee said he had been wrong to earlier suggest that red-zone homeowners being offered a payout from the government at their 2007 property valuation could have that payout increased if they had renovated their homes since then, raising the valuation of their home.
Instead, Brownlee said that could only be the case if the footprint of the home had increased, meaning homeowners who had made improvements inside without increasing the floor-space of their home would only be eligible for the 2007 valuation if they chose to accept the government’s offer.
“I was wrong. Yeah, I shouldn't have made that statement, because it's too hard in the end to live up to it,” Brownlee said on Q&A.
“The point is I'm not spending my money; I'm spending the money that's paid for by the rest of New Zealand. And when you look at the way the 2007 valuation has held up against what has been market valuation in subsequent years, it's a very, very fair offer,” Brownlee said.
“You've got to be quite harsh about this and say that as of the day the house was damaged, there was a huge loss to those people, and we're trying to preserve that on a very, very broad scale. And, you know, I'm sorry that in the heat of the moment, pressured, I said something that was not able to be delivered,” he said.
'They were wrong...'
Labour Party Earthquake spokesman Clayton Cosgrove, and party leader Phil Goff jumped on Brownlee’s comments on Monday, saying they confirmed Labour's worries.
“It was pleasing that finally, after weeks of prevarication, excuses and denials, Gerry Brownlee admitted he misled people and got it wrong by promising that home improvements - such as kitchen and bathroom renovations - would be included in the Government deal,” Cosgrove said in a media statement released on Monday morning.
“We now know this promise was false and the Government will only recognise improvements that increased a house’s footprint,” Cosgrove said.
Goff followed up on Cosgrove’s statement on Monday afternoon.
“People were led to believe that they would have their equity protected – that as the Prime Minister said, no one would be worse off,” Goff said at his regular Monday afternoon press conference.
“Increasingly people understand that that is not the fact – there are people there that will be considerably worse off,” Goff said.
“Before the government makes promises like that, they should be promises that they know that they’re able to keep. Otherwise you unfairly raise people’s expectations, only to dash them,” he said.
'...but we can't say what's right'
However, when asked what Labour’s position on whether payouts should be increased for homeowners who had made improvements was, Goff told media Labour was still working on its earthquake policy, to be released sometime before the election on November 26.
“The key point that I’ve made is that if you weren’t able to do something, you should never have promised it in the first place,” Goff said.
“That was the unforgivable sin – of promising to do something that subsequently the Minister decided that he couldn’t do at all,” he said.
“Labour will come out with its policy, but it won’t be off the hoof. It will be a carefully thought-out policy that’s both fair to the people, and obviously affordable.”
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