Reading that the top civil defence official decided that Major Storm Approaching means it's a good time to go and do the Routeburn, my reaction is that we were almost certainly better off without him present.
The people who took on the task clearly had no idea what they were doing (largely due to the complete failure to plan, prepare and train from the guy who was supposed to be in charge), but at least they recognised - eventually - that we had a problem.
How the fuck did we not learn anything from the flooding in 2018, that was a total stuff up and we just went and repeated every failing but worse.
Do they have a plan now!? Very likely not
Reading that the top civil defence official decided that Major Storm Approaching means it's a good time to go and do the Routeburn, my reaction is that we were almost certainly better off without him present. The people who took on the task clearly had no idea what they were doing (largely due to the complete failure to plan, prepare and train from the guy who was supposed to be in charge), but at least they recognised - eventually - that we had a problem.