Finance Minister Grant Robertson at a pre-Budget cyclone recovery announcement in Taradale. Photo / Warren Buckland
Finance Minister Grant Robertson at a pre-Budget cyclone recovery announcement in Taradale. Photo / Warren Buckland
EDITORIAL
Three days ago, Cyclone Mocha made landfall, causing widespread destruction along the coasts of Myanmar and Bangladesh, endangering millions, and displacing an estimated 400,000 people.
The powerful cyclone inundated the Myanmar port city of Sittwe but largely spared a densely-populated cluster of refugee camps in low-lying neighbouring Bangladesh. Theoutcome could be described as miraculous, given the UN described the category-five cyclone as one of the strongest storms to hit Myanmar this century.
The “miracle” was the meteorological phenomenon of wind shear rising to prevent the storm from strengthening shortly after it made landfall. Mocha then weakened into a depression as it tracked east-northeastward towards Bangladesh.
Still, at least six people have been reported dead in Myanmar, and up to 90 per cent of the western Rakhine state’s capital city Sittwe has been destroyed, residents told the BBC. The Burmese military declared the whole of Rakhine a natural disaster area.
Relief food being prepared for distribution from warehouses in Rakhine State as a severe cyclonic storm hit the Bay of Bengal. Photo / World Food Programme via AP
We know this experience too, as we are still picking up the debris and counting the costs from cyclones Hale and Gabrielle. Only this week, State Highway 2 from Napier to Wairoa was reconnected, albeit with a dozen lights and stop-go controls along the essential link with the East Coast.
And we know there will be continued events. New Zealand’s cyclone season lasts from November 1 until April 30, six months of the year. Hopefully, this means we have endured the worst of this season. The heavy rains associated with La Niña are predicted to flip to drier conditions of El Niño in our spring and summer.
During this respite, however long it may last, we need to be laying down plans and making preparations for the next cyclone season. Tomorrow, Finance Minister Grant Robertson will deliver his sixth Budget, one he says he has themed on recovery and resilience.
“The severe weather events are a significant part of the backdrop to Budget 2023,” he told a BNZ breakfast last Friday. “Along with a deteriorating global economy and high inflation driving cost of living pressures for so many New Zealanders, they have made for a set of difficult decisions and trade-offs.”
Among the rhetorical questions Robertson has reportedly asked himself in preparing the Budget was: “How do we handle what the world and the weather and the ground beneath us throws at us with increasing frequency and intensity?”
He has indicated close to a billion dollars will be spent helping cyclone-ravaged and flood-hit communities in the North Island, and futureproofing against new disasters.
Inevitably, much of the commentary from the Budget will focus on the winners and the losers, sectors that have gained or missed out on funding. Many such concerns will be entirely justified. But it would be prudent to bear in mind the big picture, our dynamic and threatening world.
New Zealanders have suffered debilitating blows from recent weather events and are warned these will become less isolated; more common.
As we reel under these blows, the global perspective tells us that we are not the hardest hit. But nor will it be long before we are challenged again.
