Larry Williams Drive

Hopefully one of the lessons we learn from the awful destruction caused by this cyclone is that we cannot do the rebuild from this on the cheap. Too often we do things on the cheap.  Take for example what’s just happened to the electricity; one of the biggest problems right now is a lack of power. At the worst, almost a quarter of a million people had no power, and currently it’s still in the tens of thousands. All over the North Island: Northland, Auckland, the Coromandel, Tairawhiti, Hawkes Bay, and it might be as long as two weeks before some of these people get electricity. Part of that is because we built the electricity network on the cheap. We chose to put our power lines above us on poles—the cheaper option—instead of underground where they would be less likely to be disrupted by weather like we’ve just had. We are now paying for that decision. The same is true of our roading network. We've cut costs there too. Now let’s be fair, the roads were always going to take a hammering. This storm was unpreced