NewstalkZB Transcript first recording starts at 14:40
Mike:
David Parker, when he turned down this West coast dam, I know why he did it and yet he seems to be the only person, I assume, apart from Eugenie Sage, who isn’t in favour of it, because no one else on coast is.
Jacinda:
Sorry, did you want my opinion on this?
Mike:
Yeah, why did he turn it down?
Jacinda:
Ah… well I think Minister Parker talked to those individual’s reasons.
Mike:
What, you don’t know?
Jacinda:
Well, I haven’t got his application in front of me or his consideration…
Mike:
Everybody on the coast – Iwi, DoC, the three councils, 90% of the population wanted it – he didn’t. How come he wins?
Jacinda:
Of course, of course what he has to be guided by is a… a pretty strict set of criteria so he doesn’t have a… he doesn’t have the ability to just take into account public opinion, he has, of course, a set of ah… criteria that he makes a judgement call off the back of. So does every minister, you know, we’ve had cases before if ministers don’t stick to that criteria then it ends up being judicially reviewed so they have to be pretty… pretty clear cut.
Mike:
So, the council says they are back to square one. They spent two years on this with the Department of Conservation. This would have powered 12,000 homes on the coast. What’s wrong with hydro now? We don’t like coal, we don’t like fossil fuels, now we don’t like hydro.
Jacinda:
Again, of course we like hydro but Mike there will be individual circumstances for every case that’s taken… that’s considered. Um…ah… and this isn’t a blanket statement about hydro generation. We have hydro generation, obviously that’s something that by and large we want to move towards. We are moving towards 100% renewable; we are at 85% now so that shows that of course that’s what we favour. But of course, there are always individual circumstances that will be taken into account with each project.
Mike:
The three… the $300M that you announced a couple of weeks ago with the Christchurch… these are the people who bought homes post the insurance and the homes weren’t repaired properly, is the $300M tagged specifically to repairs or can they spend it on what they want?
Jacinda:
Ah… no my recollection on that… because keeping in mind Mike, just in context for listeners, this is cases where someone’s purchased a home um and there’s been an inadequate repair by EQC, now it could be actually that there is a statement that the repair had been done and it hadn’t. Um… or it was just a… a completely inadequate repair.
Mike:
Exactly, I understand that… I get that part of it, but I’m worried it’s not tagged to the repairs, so they go oh no, I don’t like that, I’ll leave my house and go on holiday.
Jacinda:
It was a focus that I’m trying to recall from our conversation was how we’d done that. Yes, we want this absolutely to be about restoring and actually undertaking the work that was meant to be done, so that was a focus for us. Um… and that is what the money is intended for. You’ll forgive me for trying to recall the mechanism for that.
Mike:
All right. Appreciate your time. Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, every Tuesday morning.