While dozens of people are still unable to return home, National and Labour are already hinting at a Climate Adaptation plan that would see impacted communities pay for their own recovery.

“These so-called ‘once in a lifetime’ events are now happening every year. It’s only been one year since Wairoa flooded, and a year before that we had Cyclone Gabrielle” said MP for Te Tai Tonga, Tākuta Ferris.

“Communities need more than short-term fixes. They need urgent, sustained investment in both recovery and long-term climate adaption.

“The corporations who are fuelling the climate crisis should be the ones paying for adaptation and recovery – it’s not the community’s fault that their houses are flooded, why should they have to pay?”

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, MP for Te Tai Tokerau, says the government’s continued failure to resource Māori communities is a symptom of Māori being too resilient.

“What we are seeing today is the perverse consequence of our resilience. When our communities are this resilient, their hardship becomes invisible.

“It is our Māori communities who bear the brunt of these climate disasters-isolated and under-resourced. But despite being the most impacted, they are also the first to respond.

“But this resilience is not new, it is a natural part of our Māori ecosystem, an in-built response born of whakapapa, whanaungatanga, and the knowledge that no one else is coming.”

Te Pāti Māori will empower Māori to implement our own climate adaptation solutions, we will provide funding to impacted communities, and we will ensure that Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Mātauranga Māori form the basis of our climate adaptation strategy.

“Recovery must be driven by those who know their whenua, whakapapa, and communities, not dictated by distant bureaucrats with no connection to the realities on the ground” concluded Ferris.