
TE URUROA FLAVELL to the Minister of Justice: Is she satisfied with the Electoral Commission's engagement with whanau, hapū, iwi and marae around the 2013 Māori Electoral Option; if so, what advice has she received that would explain why halfway through the process there are only 5,000 new enrolments? DAVID SHEARER to the Prime Minister: On what date was he, his office or the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet first informed that David Henry would not meet his deadline of the end of May as set out in the terms of reference for reporting back and what reason did Mr Henry provide for the delay? KATRINA SHANKS to the Minister of Finance: What do recent indicators show about the economy's performance this year and its outlook for the next three to four years? DAVID SHEARER to the Prime Minister: Has he received any information that shows foreign intelligence agencies are routinely collecting emails, other communication or location data on New Zealand citizens and residents while they are in New Zealand; if so, has the resulting information been passed on to the Government Communications Security Bureau? ALFRED NGARO to the Minister of Education: What recent announcement has she made about achievement against National Standards? METIRIA TUREI to the Minister for Economic Development: Will the Government sign the legal contract between it and SkyCity for the SkyCity Convention Centre this week; if not, when will it sign this agreement? JAMI-LEE ROSS to the Minister of Housing: What policy conclusions, if any, does the Government draw from Priced Out – How New Zealand Lost its Housing Affordability and how consistent are its findings with those of the 2012 Productivity Commission Report on housing affordability? Hon ANNETTE KING to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by all his statements on health; if not, why not? NICKY WAGNER to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery: How will the Government support the redevelopment and repopulation of the Christchurch Central Business District following the Canterbury earthquakes? CHRIS HIPKINS to the Minister of Education: Is she confident that the National Standards data being released today gives an accurate picture of student progress; if not, why not? Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Prime Minister: Did he discuss with David Henry the requirement for Mr Henry to see the full unedited electronic record connected with the Kitteridge report leak; if not, why not? JOHN HAYES to the Minister of Customs: What information has he received regarding the success of automated passenger processing systems at the border?
Hon PHIL HEATLEY to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on the economy – and especially on further signs of economic momentum in the regions and among manufacturers? Dr RUSSEL NORMAN to the Minister of Finance: How much did the Government's share sales in Mighty River Power, Meridian, and Air New Zealand raise, given that the Supplement to the 2010 Investment Statement of the Government of New Zealand projected that those sales would raise $5.18 billion? Hon DAVID PARKER to the Minister for ACC: How much did ACC invest in Pike River Coal Limited and in New Zealand Oil and Gas Limited over the last eight years, and how much has it made or lost in total on its investment in each company, taking into account share purchases, subscriptions and sales, dividends, and current share prices? Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Minister of Māori Affairs: Does he stand by his statement "I know Māori want to talk about the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our constitution, and how our legal and political systems can reflect tikanga Māori."; if so, why? Hon SHANE JONES to the Associate Minister of Finance: Is he satisfied with his performance in regard to his delegations as Associate Minister of Finance? JONATHAN YOUNG to the Minister for Building and Construction: What reports has he received regarding the state of the building and construction sector? GARETH HUGHES to the Minister for the Environment: Did the Environmental Protection Authority assess the full version of Anadarko's Discharge Management Plan and Emergency Response Plan as part of its evaluation of the company's Environmental Impact Assessment for the Deepwater Taranaki Well; if not, why not? Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE to the Minister of Finance: When, if at all, did Cabinet approve the timing of the Air New Zealand sell-down and what directions did Cabinet give the shareholding Ministers? NICKY WAGNER to the Minister of Housing: What steps is the Government taking to rebuild Christchurch's housing stock damaged or destroyed by the earthquakes? Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR to the Minister for Primary Industries: Does he stand by his statement "The opportunity, and challenge, for our meat producers now is to add value to different cuts of meat and continue to sell the New Zealand story"; if so, why? IAN McKELVIE to the Minister of Local Government: How is the Government improving councils' financial reporting? DARIEN FENTON to the Minister of Labour: Does he stand by his statement that "I am especially keen to hear what affected parties have to say on the Part 6A proposals in the Bill, and will carefully consider their submissions and the recommendations of the select committee"?
ANDREW LITTLE to the Prime Minister: Does he have confidence in the Minister for Building and Housing given the falling rate of homeownership, especially among young people? RON MARK to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements? MATT DOOCEY to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that “There are more jobs, and people are being better paid”; if so, why? Dr MEGAN WOODS to the Minister supporting Greater Christchurch Regeneration: Does he agree with the Prime Minister, who said with regard to the Canterbury earthquakes, “on behalf of the Government, let me be clear that no one will be left to walk this journey alone”; if so, does he think all relevant information prepared by his Government has been made available to Cantabrians to assist them in navigating post-earthquake decisions? METIRIA TUREI to the Prime Minister: Ka tū a ia i runga i te mana o āna kaupapa here Kāwanatanga katoa, nē? Translation: Does he stand by all his Government’s policies? Dr JIAN YANG to the Minister of Education: What recent announcements has she made about expanding 21st century learning options for parents and whanau? CHRIS HIPKINS to the Minister of Education: How will her Communities of Online Learning (CoOL) proposal differ from online charter schools in the United States, given a study partially funded by a private pro-charter foundation found students attending those schools lost an average of about 72 days of learning in reading, and 180 days of learning in maths during the course of a 180-day school year? CATHERINE DELAHUNTY to the Minister for the Environment: Will he commit to a regulatory regime that includes swimmable rivers in light of the comment from a Havelock North café owner who said that, “we’d trade all the compensation in the world if it would spur the Government into tidying up or cleaning up the waterways”? IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY to the Minister of Immigration: How many of the 209,000 work visas issued last year were for occupations on one of the Essential Skills in Demand lists? JONO NAYLOR to the Minister of Police: What is the Police doing to assist potential victims of family violence? STUART NASH to the Minister of Police: Does she believe that the Police have enough resources to implement their part of the Prime Minister’s 2009 promise to use the full force of the Government’s arsenal to “confront the P problem” given that P is cheaper, and as easy as it was to get in 2008? PAUL FOSTER-BELL to the Minister for Primary Industries: What recent reports has he received on growth in wine exports?
The New Zealand Kellogg Rural Leaders Programme develops emerging agribusiness leaders to help shape the future of New Zealand agribusiness and rural affairs. Lincoln University has been involved with this leaders programme since 1979 when it was launched with a grant from the Kellogg Foundation, USA.At 4.35am on 4th September 2010, Canterbury was hit by an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale. On 22nd February 2011 and 13th June 2011 a separate fault line approximately 35km from the first, ruptured to inflict two further earthquakes measuring 6.3 and 6.0 respectively. As a direct result of the February earthquake, 181 people lost their lives. Some commentators have described this series of earthquakes as the most expensive global insurance event of all time. These earthquakes and the more than 7000 associated aftershocks have had a significant physical impact on parts of Canterbury and virtually none on others. The economic, social and emotional impacts of these quakes spread across Canterbury and beyond. Waimakariri district, north of Christchurch, has reflected a similar pattern, with over 1400 houses requiring rebuild or substantial repair, millions of dollars of damage to infrastructure, and significant social issues as a result. The physical damage in Waimakiriri District was predominately in parts of Kaiapoi, and two small beach settlements, The Pines and Kairaki Beach with pockets elsewhere in the district. While the balance of the district is largely physically untouched, the economic, social, and emotional shockwaves have spread across the district. Waimakariri district consists of two main towns, Rangiora and Kaiapoi, a number of smaller urban areas and a larger rural area. It is considered mid-size in the New Zealand local government landscape. This paper will explore the actions and plans of Waimakiriri District Council (WDC) in the Emergency Management Recovery programme to provide context to allow a more detailed examination of the planning processes prior to, and subsequent to the earthquakes. This study looked at documentation produced by WDC, applicable legislation and New Zealand Emergency Management resources and other sources. Key managers and elected representatives in the WOC were interviewed, along with a selection of governmental and nongovernmental agency representatives. The interview responses enable understanding of how central Government and other local authorities can benefit from these lessons and apply them to their own planning. It is intended that this paper will assist local government organisations in New Zealand to evaluate their planning processes in light of the events of 2010/11 in Canterbury and the lessons from WDC.
This thesis addresses the topic of local bond behaviour in RC structures. The mechanism of bond refers to the composite action between deformed steel reinforcing bars and the surrounding concrete. Bond behaviour is an open research topic with a wide scope, particularly because bond it is such a fundamental concept to structural engineers. However, despite many bond-related research findings having wide applications, the primary contribution of this research is an experimental evaluation of the prominent features of local bond behaviour and the associated implications for the seismic performance of RC structures. The findings presented in this thesis attempt to address some structural engineering recommendations made by the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission following the 2010-2011 Canterbury (New Zealand) earthquake sequence. A chapter of this thesis discusses the structural behaviour of flexure-dominated RC wall structures with an insufficient quantity of longitudinal reinforcement, among other in situ conditions, that causes material damage to predominantly occur at a single crack plane. In this particular case, the extent of concrete damage and bond deterioration adjacent to the crack plane will influence the ductility capacity that is effectively provided by the reinforcing steel. As a consequence of these in situ conditions, some lightly reinforced wall buildings in Christchurch lost their structural integrity due to brittle fracture of the longitudinal reinforcement. With these concerning post-earthquake observations in mind, there is the underlying intention that this thesis presents experimental evidence of bond behaviour that allows structural engineers to re-assess their confidence levels for the ability of lightly reinforced concrete structures to achieve the life-safety seismic performance objective the ultimate limit state. Three chapters of this thesis are devoted to the experimental work that was conducted as the main contribution of this research. Critical details of the experimental design, bond testing method and test programme are reported. The bond stress-slip relationship was studied through 75 bond pull-out tests. In order to measure the maximum local bond strength, all bond tests were carried out on deformed reinforcing bars that did not yield as the embedded bond length was relatively short. Bond test results have been presented in two separate chapters in which 48 monotonic bond tests and 27 cyclic bond tests are presented. Permutations of the experiments include the loading rate, cyclic loading history, concrete strength (25 to 70 MPa), concrete age, cover thickness, bar diameter (16 and 20 mm), embedded length, and position of the embedded bond region within the specimen (close or far away to the free surface). The parametric study showed that the concrete strength significantly influences the maximum bond strength and that it is reasonable to normalise the bond stress by the square-root of the concrete compressive strength, √(f'c). The generalised monotonic bond behaviour is described within. An important outcome of the research is that the measured bond strength and stiffness was higher than stated by the bond stress-slip relationship in the fib Model Code 2010. To account for these observed differences, an alternative model is proposed for the local monotonic bond stress-slip relationship. Cyclic bond tests showed a significant proportion of the total bond degradation occurs after the loading cycle in the peak bond strength range, which is when bond slip has exceeded 0.5 mm. Subsequent loading to constant slip values showed a linear relationship between the amount of bond strength degradation and the log of the number of cycles that were applied. To a greater extent, the cyclic bond deterioration depends on the bond slip range, regardless of whether the applied load cycling is half- or fully-reversed. The observed bond deterioration and hysteretic energy dissipated during cyclic loading was found to agree reasonably well between these cyclic tests with different loading protocols. The cyclic bond deterioration was also found to be reasonably consistent exponential damage models found in the literature. This research concluded that the deformed reinforcing bars used in NZ construction, embedded in moderate to high strength concrete, are able to develop high local bond stresses that are mobilised by a small amount of local bond slip. Although the relative rib geometry was not varied within this experimental programme, a general conclusion of this thesis is that deformed bars currently available in NZ have a relative rib bearing area that is comparatively higher than the test bars used in previous international research. From the parametric study it was found that the maximum monotonic bond strength is significant enhanced by dynamic loading rates. Experimental evidence of high bond strength and initial bond stiffness generally suggests that only a small amount of local bond slip that can occur when the deformed test bar was subjected to large tension forces. Minimal bond slip and bond damage limits the effective yielding length that is available for the reinforcing steel to distribute inelastic material strains. Consequently, the potential for brittle fracture of the reinforcement may be a more problematic and widespread issue than is apparent to structural engineers. This research has provided information that improve the reliability of engineering predictions (with respect to ductility capacity) of maximum crack widths and the extent of bond deterioration that might occur in RC structures during seismic actions.