So today I'm asking myself, are we learning the lessons yet that are literally raining down from the sky, flooding our communities and overwhelming the ability of storm-water systems to cope? No I'm not talking about urban planning changes, or Three Waters reforms.
I'm talking about climate change.
No one can refute what some of our Pacific neighbours were forced to grasp sooner than we did – that the climate crisis is no longer standing on our porches, it is knocking on our door. It's coming under the doors! To think that climate change used to be fluffy and woke. Or distant?
It's real. It's here. It's now. It's happening. It's wet. It's wild. It's frightening.
It's making people lose their possessions, their homes, and their dreams. You can't avoid seeing the impact all around us. The damage from these latest storms is immense and the reconstruction period, for some, will be long and hard.
For too long, in politics, the temptation has been to do everything in three-year cycles. From the left or from the right. And so understandably people, tune out.
But it's my job to remind you that policy and legislation and making plans isn't boring or have nothing to do with us. It works. Changes to RMA (including planning for climate adaptation), NPS-UD – and yes the Three Waters, may seem like a jumble of letters, and numbers, and a challenge on the status quo, but they are not. They are ideas that will drag us into the future, and while some people might find these challenging – how else should we prepare for what lies ahead?
Climate change and the wild and weird weather it brings has no politics. It doesn't care whose door it huffs and puffs down. So we must find a collective voice and we must look at Government reforms – not as a loss of control – but as a means of getting our groove back. We need to work together from local communities and iwi, along with local government and central government to get this right.
In the not too far distant future tens of thousands of New Zealanders and Pacific people living on the coastline will be affected by rising sea levels while infrastructure and freshwater sources could be inundated with water from the ocean and up above.
It's not only coastlines, we also know here in Canterbury inland inundation will affect communities. Can we trust our crumbling infrastructure and pipes to cope without sustained and well-planned investment? Do we want politics as usual with the opposition parties slinging mud from the sidelines at measures to prepare for the future?
Can we lift the conversation beyond pitting the infrastructure investment needed against the three-yearly promise to cut taxes?
I'm yet to hear an alternative plan to improve our drinking water, and upgrade our waste or stormwater pipes – how are we going to do this for the many?
• Megan Woods is the Minister of Housing, Minister of Energy and Resources, Minister of Building and Construction, and Associate Minister of Finance. She is a Christchurch local and has been the Member of Parliament for Wigram since 2011.