The Earthquake Commission has been forced into an embarrassing admission that the details of all 83-thousand clients in its Canterbury Home Repair programme have been accidentally emailed to the wrong address.
On the third anniversary of the first major earthquake to hit Christchurch thousands of people with the most badly damaged homes are still wrangling with their insurance companies over rebuilds.
A message in a bottle, hidden under the floor of a Christchurch home for over fifty years, has been discovered during earthquake repairs and its writer's been tracked down.
More now on Canterbury people having to pay an extra 5 dollars 20 on their monthly power bill from next April with the Commerce Commission telling the Orion lines company it can put up prices.
The Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee says officials have tried for months to help the Christchurch City Council but it's consistently failed to make the necessary improvements and is still taking far too long to process applications.
Despite Government pressure on the Christchurch City Council to sell off some of its assets to help fund its 40% share of the city's earthquake repairs, the council has instead decided to raise rates, and rents.
The company that has the main contract for repairing houses in Christchurch, Fletcher Earthquake Recovery, is assuring taxpayers it's doing everything it can to avoid any fraudulent behaviour.
The Earthquake Commission has admitted its privacy breach was almost 10 times worse than it had said, with the details of all 83-thousand clients in its Canterbury Home Repair programme being emailed out.
It is unlikely engineers involved in the most serious building collapse of the Christchurch earthquake will face any external action, with the profession's administrators telling the Government there's nothing more they can do.
The construction of the first bridge in Canterbury to be built to the new earthquake design codes is going to take nearly two years and cost over 30 million dollars.
The Earthquake Commission has admitted the details of all 83-thousand clients in its Canterbury Home Repair programme have been accidentally emailed to the wrong place, not just the almost 10 thousand it said on Friday
The former Christchurch East Labour Party MP, Lianne Dalziel, is now the Mayor of Christchurch and, as such, is set to work much more closely with her former political foe, Earthquake Minister Gerry Brownlee.
The newly elected Christchurch City Council had its first meeting with the Earthquake Recovery Minister last night, and councillors say it was the beginning of a much better working relationship.
Toni Collins is a Canterbury University PhD researcher in law, who is investigating how commercial leases could be written to better deal with the aftermath of earthquakes, and how cases of disputes could progress through the courts.
The Christchurch City councillor in charge of council housing says he accepts trenchant criticism from the Earthquake Recovery Minister that the council has been woeful in fixing its quake-damaged housing stock.
Earthquakes are one of the few natural disasters Australia seldom experiences. We find out from curator Felicity Milburn how our neighbours have responded to an exhibition of earthquake related art direct from Christchurch.
Fiona Farrell has been awarded the $100,000 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer's Fellowship to research and write twin books, one fiction and one non-fiction, inspired by her experiences of the Canterbury earthquakes and the rebuilding of the city.
The Earthquake Recovery Minister, Gerry Brownlee, says he is confident that Fletchers is vigilant about fraud and is doing what it can to prevent it in the Christchurch rebuild after accusations from New Zealand First.
It now seems unlikely that engineers involved in the most serious building collapse of the Christchurch earthquake will face any external action, with the profession's administrators telling the Government there's nothing more they can do.
Overlapping claims and general confusion are delaying money payable to New Zealand for damage from the Canterbury earthquakes. The money involved is payable through reinsurance schemes taken out by insurance companies in this country, with firms overseas.
Nearly two years' after Christchurch's February earthquake and almost 6 months after the blueprint for the city centre was revealed, many questions remain about how much it will cost and who will pay for it.
It's emerged that engineers involved in the most serious building collapse of the Christchurch earthquake are unlikely to face any external action, with the profession's two top bodies telling the Government their hands are tied.
Experts trying to restore Christchurch's busted sewerage system have faced up to concerned residents about what happened when raw sewage was allowed to flow directly into the sea in the months after the February earthquake.
Conversations between one-time residents of an historic riverside community - in the 1970s the late Elsie Locke and Rod Donald helped to create one of Christchurch's strongest riverside communities. The Avon Loop now subject to post earthquake re-classifation and demolition.
It's been revealed earthquake damage was only one factor considered by the Ministry of Education when it decided to close schools in Christchurch and that it was just as much to do with reducing the overall number of schools in the city.
Phil Holdstock, a homeowner; Leanne Curtis, relationships manager for the Canterbury Communities' Earthquake Recovery Network, a network of residents association and community group representatives from the earthquake-affected neighbourhoods of Canterbury; and Jeremy Johnson, insurance partner at Wynn Williams in Christchurch.
Provincial towns and rural communities around the country say they will be financially ruined under proposals to strengthen buildings following the Christchurch earthquakes. Dale Williams is Mayor of Otorohanga, Dave Cull is Mayor of Dunedin and Lawrence Yule is Mayor of Hastings and president of Local Government NZ.
Some Canterbury homeowners say their houses have dropped in value because the damage to their properties was inadequately assessed by the Earthquake Commission after the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. Independent land surveyor, Adrian Cowie, and a Burwood homeowner affected by the quakes, Selwyn Stafford, talk about the issues facing them.
With Adrian Regnault, the General Manager of Building Systems Performance at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; Stefano Pampanin, an Associate Professor in Structural Engineering at Canterbury University and the President of the NZ Society for Earthquake Engineering and John Finnegan - structural engineer, Aurecon.
Ethics in the engineering profession is under scrutiny following the Christchurch earthquakes and Pike River disaster. We hear from Professor John Uff, an international arbitrator specialising in professional negligence. He has led many public inquiries including the Southall Rail Crash in London which killed 7 people and injured 150.