The government will spend $1.1 billion in Budget 2023 on flood and cyclone recovery initiatives, in addition to the $890 million announced prior to the budget.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said this money would cover the basics such as rebuilding roads, rail, and schools — as well as setting aside $100 million for future flood protection measures.
These investments would help get communities back to normal, with the same infrastructure as before the extreme weather had hit.
“Cyclone Recovery is a core focus of this year’s Budget, and today’s package adds to the $890 million already provided in a rolling maul of repair works and business support”.
It is only a start on the rebuild, which is expected to cost New Zealand between $9 billion and $14.5 billion. Local and central government assets make up between $5 billion and $7.5 billion of these costs.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson said these costs relate only to damage and does not include the full cost of providing support to affected communities.
“Cyclone Gabrielle hit the country when the Budget 2023 process was relatively advanced. As a result we made the call that the response would be prioritised over other initiatives which were in the draft Budget package at the time,” he said.
Approximately $4 billion of cost savings were found for Budget 2023, largely by canning job vacancies and clawing back unspent funds from the prior budget.
The government will have to provide more support to the rebuild effort, Robertson said, but some would have to wait until recovery plans and land-use decisions were made.
Some of the largest line items in this package are a $275m top up to the National Land Transport Fund, a $160m contingency for damaged rail lines, and a $100m contingency to invest with local councils in flood prevention.
Flood protection money will be spent on stopbanks and future land-use decisions.
There will be $31m available to cover the cost of urgent repairs to the more than 500 damaged schools in the North Island, with another $85m allocated to bring them back to pre-cyclone conditions.
The plurality of damaged schools are in Auckland and another 166 are in Hawkes Bay and Te Tai Tokerau.
A total of $10 million will be spent on providing additional support for community-led mental wellbeing initiatives.
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