Evening Business for 6 September 2013
Audio, Radio New Zealand
Christchurch airport's annual profit has fallen 6 per cent after losing nearly half a million passengers following the earthquakes.
Christchurch airport's annual profit has fallen 6 per cent after losing nearly half a million passengers following the earthquakes.
Topics - The Mayor of Christchurch says he's confident the city council will speed up the processing of building consents and won't lose its authority to grant them. Are Christchurch's frustrations with the Earthquake Commission a result of some kind of misunderstanding. Media hype's being blamed for skyrocketing house prices in parts of Auckland.
A property manager has been questioned at the Royal Commission investigating the Canterbury earthquakes about why he didn't tell tenants the building they worked in was unsafe.
The Royal Commission investigating the Canterbury earthquakes has heard that the premises where a man was killed by a falling concrete wall was not inspected by structural engineers between the September and February quakes.
The head of the Earthquake Commission is questioning why some Christchurch people are living in dire straits when there's help available.
The Earthquake Commission has agreed to meet with the Institute of Surveyors next week over concerns about how assessments of earthquake damaged Christchurch homes are being done.
Male mammals don't stay monogamous to produce fitter offspring, instead they do it for love and to protect their partner; Edward Snowden granted temporary asylum in Russia; Parking companies in central Wellington increase fees after earthquakes; and tours of Christchurch's Red Zone started this week.
Topics - Hundreds of people have lost their lives in Egypt overnight, and it's expected the death toll will continue to rise. This comes after the military over threw the democratically elected leader last month, and has now forcibly closed down protester camps. Power company Orion - owned by Christchurch City Council and Selwyn District Council - is looking to hike its prices until 2019, to help recover revenue lost because of the Canterbury earthquakes.
The head of the Earthquake Commission Ian Simpson says the claims from Friday's and July's earthquakes are being handled differently from the approach taken in Christchurch.
The number of fraud cases referred to the Christchurch police by the Earthquake Commission has doubled in the past five months.
A new exhibition is simply called " 37". The show is by the photographer Doc Ross, features 37 Christchurch people captured on film using a 37 second exposure. The aim: to reflect the length of time their city shook during February 2011's devastating earthquake. Katy Gosset hears some of the stories behind the exhibition and hits the streets to record her own take on the 37 second concept.
The Earthquake Commission has brought forward its deadline for repairing thousands of earthquake-damaged properties in Canterbury by 12 months.
Tower Insurance has increased the amount it is willing to pay towards repairing an earthquake-damaged Christchurch home, but is still refusing to pay for a more expensive rebuild.
Andre Lovatt grew up in Christchurch and completed a masters degree in Civil Engineering at Canterbury before taking up a position in Singapore working on, among other things, the $6.7 billion Marina Bay Sands waterfront resort. After almost 10 years in Southeast Asia he has returned to his earthquake ravaged home to take on a project with a much smaller price tag. Andre is the new CEO of the Christchurch Arts Centre and his job is to oversee the $290 million dollar project that will, if it's successful, return the centre to its former glory by the end of 2019.
The Insurance Council has shot down criticism the industry may be delaying earthquake claims for financial gain.
In a serious privacy breach - the addresses and earthquake claim details of almost ten thousand Canterbury people have been mistakenly emailed by Earthquake Commission to the wrong person.
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.
The Earthquake Commission has been granted an interim injunction stopping a blogger sharing details from a leaked email with Canterbury home owners.
Earthquake engineers working on the rebuild of Christchurch have been told they are in the most painful part, two years on.
A forum's heard from older people in Christchurch saying they feel vulnerable, misled, and left out in the cold when it comes to earthquake repairs and payouts.
Specially designed sleeping boxes originally made to keep babies safe during the Christchurch earthquakes are now being used for vulnerable infants in South Auckland. The little beds are called "Pepi-Pods" and they're being given to families with babies that might be susceptible to cot death.
Two former Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority officials attempted to use their positions for their own financial gain and their actions will now be referred to the Serious Fraud Office.
A villa built on the Sumner Esplanade in Christchurch early last century has been saved from demolition and given a new lease of life. A Queenstown couple couldn't bear to see the beautiful home demolished after the earthquakes, so they bought it, had it cut into two pieces and trucked the 500-kilometres south to the Gibbston Valley near Queenstown.
An audit of the Earthquake Commission's quake repairs in Christchurch has found many dissatisfied home owners and others being left in the dark.
Voters in Christchurch East say many are still suffering - three years on from the devastating earthquakes and want a new MP who will breathe life into the electorate.
Topics - Katy Perry opened the ceremony in Los Angeles with a Japanese-themed performance of Unconditionally, dressed as a Geisha. Within minutes, fans and viewers were accusing her of racism. A citizens initiated referendum on the sale of state assets is in full swing. The referendum isn't binding on the Government, in fact the Government has already promised to ignore it. Newly published research shows that the Canterbury earthquakes were even more unusual than first thought, with such a sequence unlikely to occur anywhere else in the world. The research, published this week in Nature Geoscience, challenges the common assumption that the strength of the Earth's crust is constant.
Topics - Twelve charges laid against the former Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall in relation to the 2010 disaster at the mine have been dropped. In a shock development in the Christchurch District Court today, the Crown said that after an extensive review it was "not appropriate to continue with the prosecution against Mr Whittall''. More than half of the 2.15 million KiwiSaver members are either not contributing to the retirement scheme or not saving enough to collect the $521 annual tax credit from the Government, according to the Inland Revenue Department. The number of people with dire needs on Housing New Zealand's waiting list has tripled since the Christchurch earthquakes.
A book written by two Christchurch women to help the region's children deal with the stress of the earthquakes has been endorsed by the director of Civil Defence, John Hamilton.
Three years on from the earthquakes of 2011, Census data now confirms massive changes to the face and shape of Christchurch.
Topics - A big study from Harvard and UC Berkeley has looked back into family trees, over centuries, to determine how social mobility has changed. The "Moon man" has used his claimed Christchurch earthquake predictions to defeat an Advertising Standards Authority complaint over his weather forecasting website. The Prime Minister John Key says Labour's flat performance in recent polls is because it's focusing on the wrong issues.