February 9, 2017 12:00pm by David Farrar

Shooting the messenger again

Tensions between the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) and Christchurch City Council have caused delays during Canterbury’s post-earthquake rebuild, a new report says.

The report, released by the auditor-general on Wednesday, highlights numerous issues with Cera’s performance, including poor communication with the public and a failure to deliver anchor projects on time.

Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister Gerry Brownlee has slammed the report as “unbalanced” and says he remains “proud” of Cera’s work.

There’s an unfortunate pattern here that whenever a report comes out criticising some aspect of CERA, the Minister attacks the agency behind the report – previously Treasury and now the Auditor-General. This is not particularly reassuring that lessons are being learnt.