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Sunday, August 13, 2023

Mike Hosking: We need to keep focused on moving forward


I've been thinking about the human condition and the way we prioritise things. Or don't.

The Hawkes Bay buyout deal is sorted, sort of. It's August of course, and the others like Auckland, allegedly, are almost done.

I assume the others will match the Hawkes Bay one, which has the Government paying half and the council paying the other half.

In Napier they are not happy, but I can't work out why. They sight the Christchurch earthquake where the Government stepped in, which is not an unreasonable starting point.

But the Christchurch earthquake, fingers crossed, was a one-off. The weather isn't.

The weather isn't anyone's fault and if you believe the climate warmers, there is plenty more where that came from. So, the rules have changed.

I would have thought a 50/50 split deal was not only fair, but obvious. You can't get any more even than an even split.

Here is the next bit - lets not turn this into a scrap.

In most deals in life the trick is that not everyone gets everything they want. But you need to work out how much energy you want to spend not accepting it and not getting on with your life, which brings us to the bit about the human condition.

The vast majority of us have forgotten about Hawkes Bay, and the East Coast, and Northland, and bits of Auckland and bits of the top of the South Island.

Why? Because that’s how life works.

For many, the silt is still there, the home is still wrecked and the crops are still not going to be harvested.

But once the cameras and the media hysteria that lasted a couple of weeks died away, that was that.

It does seem an astonishing amount of time to get to where we are though, and I can fully understand the anger last week in Gisborne over that forestry slash meeting where Peeni Henare turned up with a few papers and thought bubbles and not a lot of action.

Seven months for hot air? No wonder they walked out.

If the climate drama is real then we need to get a lot better at this and a lot faster.

We need insurance decisions, planning decisions and fall back positions from councils and Government.

But what places like Hawkes Bay need is the desire to suck it up, accept it and get on with it.

Stewing in disappointment and anger gets you nowhere.

Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.

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