At first blush, the government’s plan to buy out homeowners affected by this year’s extreme weather events makes a lot of sense. It would be the absolute height of stupidity to be rebuilding houses in places that are inevitably gonna’ be hammered again the next time there’s a significant rainfall or storm.

Everyone is desperate for certainty but the real test of the scheme will come down the line. I want to know how the split is gonna’ work for properties in Category Three, where it doesn’t make sense to rebuild, and homeowners will need to be bought out. The houses in Category Three were consented by local councils, and if you were making an argument over liability, there’s good reason to think local councils bare the majority of it. But in some cases, consenting decisions were made decades ago, and you needn’t look too deeply into local government finances to appreciate that most councils don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing around.

I think it’s inevitable much or most of the burden for funding those buyouts will fall to central government and to taxpayers. And keep in mind it’s highly likely that this process will work as a blueprint of sorts for even greater managed retreat in the next few years.

There are all sorts of other tricky details that will inevitably lead to conflict. How will disputes work for homeowners who don’t agree with their homes new category? How will insurance payouts work? And what about places that weren’t insured in the first place?

As swift as the process has been so far… the detail will be the hardest bit.

And I’m reminded of something my Dad said in the years after the Christchurch earthquake. Ultimately, even for those homeowners who could claim EQC payments, those people who didn’t end up financially any worse off than before the quakes, despite the damage to their homes, these kind of events still take something from everyone affected. They rob you of time.

And for that, there is no recourse.