Finance Minister says 1-in-100-year climate events now more regular; He wants a long-term infrastructure plan for adaptation; He sees tough conversations about whether, where, how and who pays to rebuild

It's alright for the government to be a bit magnanimous considering the circumstances.



Though, rightly or wrongly there is the perception that Labour rewards poor decision making. Don't let such a perception sour you - we've ALL made bad decisions at some stage.

I would assume that the financial help these people get will be less that what people with appropriate insurance get.

After all the government also helps unemployed people, but they don't give them 100K salaries.

It's a tricky one alright.

Do local and regional councils get to rely on private insurance to bail them out of any liability when as rate payers we rely on them to identify and complete necessary works programs that would mitigate a lot of the damage done? Or enforce the necessary legislation and force businesses to not add risk of greater impact in certain areas?

If you have a mortgage don't the bank require you to carry insurance?

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff 

https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/explore/postgraduate-programmes/master-of-climat…;

Master of Climate Change Science and Policy – MCCSP 

The global threat of climate change is real and urgent. Gain insight into climate change challenges in science and policy-making with this multi-disciplinary degree.

yeah, they become 1 in 50, 1 in 25 year events... 

Yes they can . 1 in a 100 year floods does not mean they only happen once every 100 years.

It's a misleading term, time for it to be replaced.

Geez, you gotta dig deep now for your criticism, don't you?

You should make that into a business plan. "Just make more money". Amazing.

By default, any new bridge will be built better, as standards have improved over time.

Better to change the nature of commercial forestry and stop clear-felling.

Better not leave that to Simon Bridges.

If the weather pattern in coming years allows tropical cyclones to directly hit NZ this is going to become semi annual......    multiple cyclones are formed every year, in the past they have tracked towards Aussie, now they seem to be tracking towards us more....   last year a few slid past east cape offshore.     could be a 1 in 10 year or 2 in a year scenario, who can predict the weather.

To do this, you need to start from a base case as to why and how this pattern will emerge. Like any prediction of future events, it must also include the principle of falsifiability. 

All Robbo has to do is lay it out. It gives him credibility. 

The problem is, not many areas of NZ could have coped with the rainfall that hit inland Hawkes Bay / Gisborne etc....    It would have looked just as bad if it hit most major NZ cities.   We have now had Nelson, Westport, Napier , Hastings, Gisborne, Auckland, Northland all in the last 12 months.

Rural on rolling hills is now probably safer than city or town.   So Powerdownkiwi, what should we do?   Re entropy, are you assuming these chaotic storms produce way more energy then what we are used too?   and this additional energy is a DIRECT result of increased temp so the atmosphere is like a fluid dynamics system where we have turned up the temp?

Might also checkout The Milankovitch Cycle- Nasa have an excellent site that's simple enough for even Grunter to understand with help from Niwa. however like most of Grunters history he's good at identifying problems but useless at implementing solutions that work.

We all know all stars will turn into Iron in 1000 trillion years, but I need to boil my kettle now.

Bureacrats & Politicians know nothing & understand less which explains the vast majority of NZ problems.

Why can't government instruct central bankers to instruct bankers to throttle loan volumes extended to residential property speculators?

On our planet earth – as opposed to the very different planet that economists seem to be on – all markets are rationed. In rationed markets a simple rule applies: the short side principle. It says that whichever quantity of demand or supply is smaller (the ‘short side’) will be transacted (it is the only quantity that can be transacted). Meanwhile, the rest will remain unserved, and thus the short side wields power: the power to pick and choose with whom to do business. Examples abound. For instance, when applying for a job, there tend to be more applicants than jobs, resulting in a selection procedure that may involve a number of activities and demands that can only be described as being of a non-market nature (think about how Hollywood actresses are selected), but does not usually include the question: what is the lowest wage you are prepared to work for?

Thus the theoretical dream world of “market equilibrium” allows economists to avoid talking about the reality of pervasive rationing, and with it, power being exerted by the short side in every market. Thus the entire power dimension in our economic reality – how the short side, such as the producer hiring starlets for Hollywood films, can exploit his power of being able to pick and choose with whom to do business, by extracting ‘non-market benefits’ of all kinds. The pretense of ‘equilibrium’ not only keeps this real power dimension hidden. It also helps to deflect the public discourse onto the politically more convenient alleged role of ‘prices’, such as the price of money, the interest rate. The emphasis on prices then also helps to justify the charging of usury (interest), which until about 300 years ago was illegal in most countries, including throughout Europe.

However, this narrative has suffered an abductio ad absurdum by the long period of near zero interest rates, so that it became obvious that the true monetary policy action takes place in terms of quantities, not the interest rate.

Thus it can be plainly seen today that the most important macroeconomic variable cannot be the price of money. Instead, it is its quantity. Is the quantity of money rationed by the demand or supply side? Asked differently, what is larger – the demand for money or its supply? Since money – and this includes bank money – is so useful, there is always some demand for it by someone. As a result, the short side is always the supply of money and credit. Banks ration credit even at the best of times in order to ensure that borrowers with sensible investment projects stay among the loan applicants – if rates are raised to equilibrate demand and supply, the resulting interest rate would be so high that only speculative projects would remain and banks’ loan portfolios would be too risky.

The banks thus occupy a pivotal role in the economy as they undertake the task of creating and allocating the new purchasing power that is added to the money supply and they decide what projects will get this newly created funding, and what projects will have to be abandoned due to a ‘lack of money’.

It is for this reason that we need the right type of banks that take the right decisions concerning the important question of how much money should be created, for what purpose and given into whose hands. These decisions will reshape the economic landscape within a short time period.

Moreover, it is for this reason that central banks have always monitored bank credit creation and allocation closely and most have intervened directly – if often secretly or ‘informally’ – in order to manage or control bank credit creation. Guidance of bank credit is in fact the only monetary policy tool with a strong track record of preventing asset bubbles and thus avoiding the subsequent banking crises. But credit guidance has always been undertaken in secrecy by central banks, since awareness of its existence and effectiveness gives away the truth that the official central banking narrative is smokescreen. Link

Now is not the time to be rational. We need to let emotion and short term thinking rule 

Very few people seem know about the significant effect the Tongan volcano had. 

Yup, we need out of control forest fires to add to the problems. The terrain is not conducive to collecting slash into tidy little piles to be burnt.

The volcanic eruption did not cause the marine heatwave that added energy to the system. That was La Niña + anthropogenic global warming.

Isnt that why the US just prints and borrows more money to fund its deficit and thus keep spending more. As long as they retain military and commercial superiority it can continue ad infinitum.

That's pretty sad. People should take note of the history of the area they choose to live in. The girls boarding school and holiday park near the Esk Valley did evacuate everyone.

That was an awesome link. Thanks.

Stuff do mention the 1938 flood and 2018 flood in an article today ... https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300810300/cyclone-gabrielle-was-the-ca…

The term 1 in a 100 year dlood actually means they have calculated there is a 1 % chance of that size flood happening every year . Doesn't mean it could not happen next year , or even again this year.

Cool that you are here.. i live in an area prone to 100 year floods. I didnt take out any insurance for any of my cars , house or business. Didnt bother to check risks or pay as labour has my back.. 

Anyway - this weeks 100 year weather event has done everything in. Would you mind to ask grant to deposit a couple of $mill into my account... the same one he used to pay me all the pandemic cash and cost of living payment and where he puts my my benefit moneys.

ps. Please let him know please that I am thinking of getting one of those clifftop houses on the north shore next... the ones with those nice yellow stickers are are cheap at the mo - but i assume he will bail me out when it finally slips in next weeks 100 year weather event.

Pps tell grant i love his work. he is so easy with all the cash.. i guess the kids will just have to graft to pay it back . Lucky it wont affect ne.

ps. Can someone tell me why some peeps pay insurance and work soo hard to fund grands lolly jar... when they could just sit around like all us lot and live on all Grants generous handouts handouts :)

Are you sure it wasn't running off $56b of printed cash during the Covid response, very little of which made its way into productive investment or business lending?