National’s deputy leader and former earthquake recovery minister was responding to comments from senior Labour MP Megan Woods where she said the debacle was caused by National when it was in Government. National set up the state-owned Southern Response after the earthquakes as a result of insurer AMI failing.
Earlier this week, the Court of Appeal largely dismissed an appeal from the insurer regarding a previous ruling which found it to be guilty of misleading and deceptive behaviour towards Karl and Alison Dodds who were awarded about $250,000.
This could potentially set a legal precedent that could see the Government fork out up to $675 million to disgruntled claimants.
Megan Woods, who is the Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, has shifted the blame to the former National Government. Brownlee has labelled this criticism as "unreasonable."
Lawyer for the Dodds family Peter Woods told The Star the Court of Appeal’s decision to dismiss the appeal set a legal precedent which could have a significant impact in the future. There is currently a class-action suit with 3000 claims against Southern Response in progress. Woods said with the Dodds case setting a precedent, this could cost the Government up to $675 million in settling thousands of similar cases.
Said Megan Woods: "It remains to be seen what the size of that eventual class will be and how many people do fall within what the court findings are.
"If that is where it ends up then, of course, it is concerning, of course it is something we as a Government would have much preferred the previous Government had dealt with properly at the time, rather than leaving issues and a very messy situation for us to clean up.
"The workings of Southern Response under Gerry’s leadership were also something that was not acceptable to us [Labour]. When I became aware of the use of private detectives within Southern Response, I referred it straight to the state services commissioner because it is not an acceptable way for a Government to be treating its people."
However, Brownlee said characterising the failings of Southern Response to him personally or the National Party would be "unreasonable."
He thought the criticism failed to recognise the situation Cantabrians were in when the organisation was set up in the wake of the 2011 earthquakes.
Brownlee said during his time as earthquake recovery minister he told Southern Response to behave in a "fair and reasonable manner."
"I met with the board quarterly, certainly frequently with the chief executive and was always interested in what their progress was and what their processes were. There was certainly no point when we signed off on any bad behaviour," he said.
He alluded that the decisions like the ones made around the Dodds family were out of his hands.
"They are commercial decisions made by managers inside a company, a Government doesn’t sit over the top of that, we did have the Treasury in there watching it, it would be interesting to know what the Treasury position was all the way through."
