Prime Minister Luxon Decries Racist Rhetoric Over Role Of Iwi After Mt Maunganui Slip

Russell
Palmer, Political Reporter

Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon says those sharing racist rhetoric about
the role of iwi in caring for the maunga where six people
remain missing after a landslide should keep it to
themselves.

Luxon was
on Monday at He Maimai Aroha, where a community care
centre has been set up in Mount Maunganui to support those
grieving after last Thursday’s landslide at Beachside
Holiday Park.

Recovery efforts were paused on Sunday
because of the risk of further slips at the site, but
resumed Monday.

Questioned
about comments circulating online, the prime minister said
he was aware of misinformation but the focus needed to be on
recovering those still missing in the
landslide.

“There always is, in circumstances like
this, and that’s why we want to make sure right here right
now we are doing everything we can in recovery mode to make
sure we recover six people,” he said.

“Right here,
right now we need to stay together and support each other
and come together in unity – which is what this community
has done by the vast majority exceptionally well.

“And
the people on the margins with their rhetoric, they need to
just frankly keep it to themselves.”

Iwi had been a
critical part of the response to the recent storms, Luxon
said.

“I’ve
been so impressed by how everyone has worked together and
iwi have been a critical part in the conversations about how
we do response and recovery, and need to be at the table
going forward bigtime – and we’ve made sure that’s the case,
that will happen,” he said.

The government was working
on providing what support it could, he said, but regional
authorities needed to stay focused on the immediate recovery
efforts.

“We’re a government here that wants to help.
We will help but we need the assessments to come back to us
really quickly, and in fairness while we’ve got response
going on it’s really unfair to ask a region ‘what else do
you need’ because they don’t know what they need at this
point in time,” he said.

“But we’ve spoken to all the
mayors multiple times, we have very dynamic relationships,
we all have our numbers, we talk very dynamically with
everybody and we will pull together a plan and a support
package.

“We have incredible weather events and
natural disasters that hit this country, we’ve got to
control what we can control. What we can control is our
response to these events and our recovery from these events.
And ultimately how we build more resilience into our core
infrastructure is ultimately what we’ve been
doing.”

The Hawke’s Bay Expressway was being built to
withstand twice the level of flooding that the previous road
had been, he said.

“So there’s some big questions that
we’ve got to do about risk management, about adaptation,
we’ll have a national flood plan in place by the end of this
year, we’ll have more resilient roads and
infrastructure.”

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