Mark Mitchell

It's awful.

The people that are impacted.

But if we're talking about weather, the whole horticultural and agricultural sector there have just been affected.

It's been astounding the way they've recovered after Cyclone Gabriel and come back online with their products.

So, you know, I hope that everyone's working together to sort of try and find a solution.

I think somewhere, now where was I reading yesterday?

It could have been, was it Cheese, was it Tupuki or was it Hawke's Bay?

It could have been both.

Oh, Kiwifruit was too.

So Bay of Plenty, the unscathed bite, which is encouraging.

Do you want a bit of back and forward, Mark?

I'm a bit sick of the build-up.

Let's try and differentiate the state of emergency from the media build-up and the hysteria.

I don't know if you saw it from Bali, but the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of last week was just BS.

It was just, you know, duck now, tie stuff down, run for your life.

I mean, come on.

Surely something needs to be done about that.

I hear what you're saying, and I did watch for three days the initial build-up and watching the emergency management system activate, which quite simply was outstanding, and we have come a long way.

When I became Minister, I had several reports sitting on my desk, including the one from Sir Gerry Mataparae, saying that we lose property, we lose lives, and it costs us billions of dollars because we're not that good at responding.

And there's complacency sitting inside the system.