Prime Minister John Key has announced he has cancelled his overseas trip, in light of the Canterbury quake.
Key and his wife Bronagh were due to visit London and Paris, where Key was to have met Britain's new Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He was also supposed to stay with the Queen at Balmoral.
The prime minister and senior members of his government will fly to Christchurch today to meet local mayors and plan the next vital steps in the city's recovery from Saturday's devastating earthquake.
Key will make a statement to parliament at 2pm and will then head to Canterbury with a group including third-ranked cabinet minister Gerry Brownlee, who has been put in charge of a special reconstruction committee.
The PM will have a briefing with Christchuch mayor Bob Parker at 4.30pm, and tonight will visit the Addington and Linwood welfare centres. He is staying overnight in Christchurch.
Tomorrow morning Key will visit some of the hardest-hit rural areas.
He said Brownlee had been given the task of overseeing the recovery because he could "knock heads together" and sweep away bureaucratic roadblocks.
This is a very sensible decision by John Key, in our always-humble opinion. As each day goes by, the scale of the devastation in and around Christchurch is growing. It is right and proper that he stays here and continues to lead from the front.
Thus far, the response from central and local government has been very good and timely. We did however chuckle at the thought of Gerry Brownlee being able to "knock heads together", given a certain incident on the campaign trail some years ago!!
John Key may not be able to do much directly, but it is important that he is on hand to oversee the government's response, and we reckon that his decision to defer his overseas travel is the right one.
5 comments:
Agreed.
Being around is far better from a perception point of view than not being here. It also avoids the criticism he would have received from the left if he had gone to Europe.
One hopes that, with the exception of Unite, there is a bi-partisan approach to dealing with the disaster by the various pollies who represent Christchurch. Its a case of pulling together rather than pulling apart
Poor Bronagh. She will have spent up large at Postie Plus to look good for the all important smile and wave photo-op with Carla. And been down Michael Hill, Jeweller to the Plebs to buy a decent set of pearls to hob nob with HRH.
Oh, well, dem's the brakes. Probably never really wanted to stay in a draughty castle anyway.
poor Bronagh? Hardly. She could still go. How can she be poor, with all that dosh to play with? Poor no, wnder if she gets tired of JK getting all the limelight?
A good decision.
As far as Brownlee knocking heads together - he could always call on the experienced Mallard and Hodgson to help. Both have form in this area.
PM of NZ - "dem's the brakes".
Absolutely brilliant pun.
David
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