Roger Sutton can pinpoint the mo-ment he suspected his popularity would inevitably crash back through the Christchurch stratosphere.

It was June 11, 2011, two days before he took over as head of the new Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) and Sutton fever was peaking, the mood epitomised in the weekends Press: HOPE read the headline. Roger Sutton takes charge of Christchurch.

Inside, Sutton saw himself depicted as a knight riding to the citys rescue atop his charger in Canterbury colours, sword raised and red cape flowing. Sutton the Superman. More popular than Jesus. The citys saviour.

Everyone, it seemed, loved Roger Sutton. It was easy to see why. As head of Orion, which supplies power to central Canterbury, hed been a master communicator in the aftermath of the September and February quakes. With his hard hat, work boots, high-

viz jackets and pushbike, he became as readily recognisable as mayor Bob Parker.

Unlike Parker, though, he was getting his hands dirty. He was a doer albeit one who knew the televisual appeal of a good prop, whether it be part of a power cable or an explanatory graphic hastily drawn on a roll of butchers paper with a felt-tip pen.

Despite the horn rims and the lisp, Sutton was a blokes bloke, but one who looked as if he could be equally at home with a chardonnay or a chainsaw. Tall, rangy and charismatic, he seemed the sort of individual who should get changed in a phone booth and fly off to his next mission.

Praise for his Cera appointment was uni-versal. Port Hills Labour MP Ruth Dyson gave him a 12 out of 10 while retiring Wi-gram MP and former mayoral hopeful Jim Anderton described him as a quintessential Cantabrian who understands the ethos of the city the anguish, the aspirations, the

+ Christchurch

donna chisholm is north & Souths editor-at-large. photography by guy frederick.

Grateful Cantabrians once queued up just to touch him.

Now quake czar Roger Sutton thinks some of them want

to lynch him. Whats gone wrong? Donna

Chisholm reports.

Who Tamed Roger Sutton?

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Another described Cera as a useless gov-ernment department, which listened only to itself.

Cera have done as close to zero that you can get without being at zero. Sure they have [spent] a lot of taxpayer money, got them-selves some nice jackets and iPads and a whole bunch of other items that they do not need. When asked for the slightest bit of info, they stand behind the OIA and give feeble excuses as to why they cannot release the info. Cera. Canterbury? Everythings Rooted Actually!

Rumblings about Sutton and Ceras per-formance had begun months earlier.

Whats happened to Roger Sutton? correspondent Judith Asalache wrote to The Press on October 15. Has Wellington hobbled his white charger?

Two weeks later, Christine Connor of Cashmere followed suit: Along with many Christchurch people, I was delighted when Roger Sutton was appointed head of Cera. But since his appointment we have heard nothing. At this time we are sorely in need of able leadership and open communication. We hoped that Sutton would fill that role and he certainly has the capacity. There is a rumour in the town that he has been muzzled. Mr Sutton needs to be free to get on with the job.

The muzzler and hobbler to whom the letter writers obliquely refer, of course, is Suttons boss, Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee. Canterbury-based Labour MPs Dyson, Clayton Cosgrove, Lianne Dalziel and the ousted Brendon Burns all told North & South they believed Sutton was being shackled by the minister, and the fact he had to work within a government department was stifling his natural instincts as a communicator.

Says Cosgrove: Its as if you tied a con-ductors arms behind his back. Hed be squirming and he couldnt do the job.

Cosgrove lost his electorate seat but re-turned to Parliament as a list MP after Can-terburys swing to blue. The results suggest that constituents approve of how Brownlee has run the quake recovery even if the MPs dont.

Roger is cauterised, Cosgrove says. He points to a public meeting at which Sutton told residents of red-zoned Kairaki Beach that there was no reason they couldnt have the geological and technical information on which the decision was based. He goes back to the ranch and Gerry says, Like hell. He was undercutting Roger and saying were not going to give it.

The Sunday Star-Times reported how the mood became increasingly angry, leaving Sutton struggling for answers. He was de-scribed as giving stock replies: Im not the council, Im not the insurance indus-try, I dont have an answer for you.

Residents were worried developers might nab and fix their land to resell it. If I turned up today after red-zoning you and said, We have all these other plans youd bloody lynch me, Sutton told them. I think youll lynch me anyway.

And yet, at meetings just like these im-mediately after his appointment, locals would rush up to him just to touch him as if he was God, said one observer.

Suttons reputation was based on his stellar performance at Orion for communication and prepar-edness. Just minutes after the February quake which killed 181

people, Sutton had sent out his first press release on the disaster to key contacts.

After September, we were the only guys who asked GNS Science about the probability of another quake which was 25 per cent. Knowing this, Id sent Doug Heffernan, at Mighty River Power in Auckland, an email list of all the key people so when the big one hit, I rang Doug at around 1.45 40 minutes afterwards and said, Hi Doug, its Roger here. Can I send you some words to send out for a press release in my name to tell people whats happening?

On Suttons watch as operations manager at Orion in the late 1990s, substations had undergone extensive earth quake strength-ening, which allowed power to be restored in February far more quickly than it otherwise might have been. It was Suttons pragmatic assessments of Orions network problems the earth movement stretched some underground power cables up to a metre and caused more faults than the company would usually see in a decade that captivated Cantabrians when he appeared, as he so often did, on television screens. But now some of them think the master communicator has gone a bit quiet. Even Ceras own Facebook page is attracting venomous comments from disgruntled Cantabrians.

After the residential demolition began in Bexley at the end of January, posters were quick to criticise Suttons response. Must say I thought his response was very cold Roger you need to wake up and smell the roses, dude, and also show some under-standing of the situation! SHAME ON YOU ROGER.

whole works. It was never going to last. And no one knew that better than Sutton. They were, he says, expectations which were never going to be fulfilled. I knew I was only going to become less popular; less well thought of.

How quickly hes been proven correct. Fast forward five months to a public meeting in the Brooklands community hall in early November where locals gathered to question him about the villages red-zoning only months after the Christchurch City Council had given post-quake building consents.

Above: Graham Henry with Roger Sutton at the Christchurch Art Gallery last September. Below: An electrical sub-station threatened by hardening liquefaction after the February quake.

Roger Sutton and Gerry Brownlee survey earthquake damage in the CBD during an earthquake recovery update visit last August.

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Sutton is diplomatically noncommittal when North & South raises the issue. He an-swers, as he does every question that he finds a bit tricky, with a slightly mirthless chuckle and the phrase: Good on you, Donna.

Then he explains the u-turn on the geo-tech reports. My experience up till now is you just give everybody absolutely every-thing and when youre running a monopoly [at Orion] I felt that was the only way... The problem is, we fear if we give them geotech information, armchair engineers are going to start second-guessing land decisions that havent yet been made, which will bring a whole lot more stress.

Sutton concedes though, that at times its been frustrating adapting to life as a pub-lic servant and head of a government de-partment, and all that entails. At times I may have wanted to run an announcement or a decision slightly differently. At the same time, to be fair, when Ive come up with an issue I think we should be bringing up, Ive nearly always got the minister over the line. When we were pulling down the Grand Chancellor, I said, Gosh guys, weve got to get the media in and just show them all this, and they said yes. When Ive come up with my bright ideas for trying to demonstrate things, I havent really had any significant push back. No more than I would have ex-pected from a board.

Brownlee dismisses the suggestions of Sutton being muzzled as politically moti-vated and says his relationship with his CEO

is extremely positive. His styles a little different to a lot of

others but thats something that can be appreciated. Thered be no other chief executive in New Zealand that does weekly talkback radio to say hes somehow media muzzled is absurd.

Its the lack of a layer of board governance between Sutton and his minister that has attracted criticism from Labour MPs and some business observers. Steve Clark, CEO of the Canterbury University-based Centre for Advanced Engineering, a trust set up to develop new solutions to issues of national importance, says while there were benefits in having a close, hands-on minister to cut bureaucratic red tape, Sutton would not have been left to run this as his baby.

If Cera had been set up with the CEO re-porting to the board rather than directly to the minister, the perception of ministerial interference would be less likely.

Clark says the classic Roger style tell it bluntly like it is had attracted comment from one or two government minders who noted it was clear Sutton hadnt come from a government background. You dont want the cult of the individual to be driving this, but I think he has not as much freedom to speak in the way he would as CEO of a private-sector entity.

But Brownlee says the structure is de-signed to get decisions made to speed the recovery process. It feels slow but inter-nationally were moving very quickly.

to engage effectively with it. FCN executive director Francis Wevers

told North & South Cera had done a really good job of communicating important in-formation to the people of Christchurch. However theres a concern about lack of transparency of the organisation and one wed expect them to address.

He says the assessment panel unanimous-ly believed the direct line of responsibility from department to cabinet was the best in the circumstance for Christchurch.

Burdon says the hype around Sutton is legitimately earned. Hes deeply respect-ed and much liked and has come with a very clean pair of hands. Hes not ideological and hes not a party animal.

He says Sutton has been successful not because of the minister but it would be very unfair to say hes been successful in spite of the minister.

Despite some Labour MPs sug-gesting Sutton has already of-fered to resign, the man him-self insists hes enjoying the job, even if sometimes the

sense of progress isnt as fast as Id like. He thinks he will last five years, despite the high possibility of early burnout. It may be that someone [else] will be better at the job.

So what would make someone else better at running the recovery? Im sometimes just impatient, eh? I want stuff to happen. Ive got a bigger appetite for risk than a lot of other people. Obviously if I started run-ning out of energy It depends where the emphasis ends up. Someone might have stronger skills at getting new investment to come to the city, but I actually think Id be pretty damned good at that.

Its a hint of the healthy ego that must have helped carry the Anglican ministers son to the top but which is usually well masked by an even healthier sense of humour.

There are signs of both as Sutton drives around the almost unrecognisable city red zone and points out pockets of survival amid the rubble. Heres some good news for you. Calendar Girls, our premier strip club, is still standing I thought youd be relieved. Amid all that destruction it stands strong and alone, eh.

Why? Apparently the poles are really strong Ive never been in there, but with my powers, I can go in there any time! Now Im no longer being the CEO of a bloody govern-ment department, am I?

The communications adviser in the back seat remains silent. I think I hear her sigh. +

Um. Um. No, I mean I always went into this job knowing Id be working for a minister. The structure and governance arrangements were clear from the very beginning.

And, he adds, it wasnt as if Brownlee was a stranger to him. At Orion, he chaired the Energy Efficiency Conservation Authority, which reported to Brownlee. I understood the final say in a lot of these things is with the minister.

Asked if the reality has been more difficult than he expected, Sutton demurs. You keep chipping away there, before adding, There are times when me and the minister want to do things slightly differently. I also accept that I just have to sometimes be a bit more thoughtful in how I say and present things because while at Orion people wouldnt have gone off and tried to make political mileage out of some misinterpreted comment, now they will and the way the media is, its out there.

Ceras leadership and structure was praised in November by the Future Canterbury Net-work (FCN) chaired by former National cabi-net minister Philip Burdon despite Brown-lee attacking its members as hand-wringing talkers and time wasters. Brownlee re-fused to allow Sutton to speak to the FCN panel assessing Ceras performance.

The minister was extremely suspicious of any external review not within his con-trol, says Burdon. Its... an exceptionally defensive mentality.

While the report was largely complimen-tary saying Cera was performing at or above expectations as a strategic leader and co-ordinator of rebuilding and recovery ef-forts it says some aspects of the evalua-tion were frustrated by Ceras decision not

live to be 110, to be alive when we can sign off and say, Thats it. Weve done it.

Canterbury Business Recovery Trust Fund chair Bruce Irvine says business leaders had all got a lot of time and respect for Roger. The issue is that most of Rogers fo-cus in his first six months has been on wider city issues around residential zonings, whereas in the central city the focus has been on demolition. There is some frustra-tion we havent rebuilt the city but these things take time and we respect that.

But appliance store owner Matthew Carpenter, who set up a small to medium business enterprise network after the quake, says Cera has been impenetrable. Its a government stance keep them as far from the door as we can.

Roger Sutton was brought in as a figure-head. He was welcomed like a Greek god, women were almost drooling over him. He looked like being a man for the people but he has turned into a ventriloquists dummy with very few words to say. The public had an air of expectation and hope and it cer-tainly hasnt been fulfilled. Hes not been the communicator, he hasnt stood on the issues and grabbed them and said this is how were going to do it. Hes constrained and really doesnt have a voice.

While he was originally ambivalent about the Cera role, after 20 years with South-power and its successor Orion, the challenge became one Sutton could no longer resist. Though born in Wellington and schooled in Gisborne and Hamilton, Sutton has be-come a fiercely loyal Cantabrian. He studied mechanical engineering at Canterbury Uni-versity where he met his wife Jo Malcolm, a television journalist, who subsequently became a lecturer in journalism and media contractor for the All Blacks. The couple, who wed in 1996, have three boys aged 11 and under George, Harry and Jim.

Sutton has never wanted to live overseas, hasnt done the traditional OE and took a $200,000-a-year pay cut to go to Cera. He says he took the job because of his strong connections to Christchurch. This is my city. I live here. My children live here, he told TVNZ after his appointment.

Sutton is accompanied during our interview by one of Ceras commu-nications staff, a young woman whos taking notes. Her presence might well remind Sutton of the

tug of the ministerial leash. When asked if his natural instincts are being muzzled or neu-tered, hes momentarily lost for words. OK.

Peter Townsend, chief executive of the Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce, says anyone who criticises Sutton for a lack of visibility since his appointment simply hasnt grasped the enormity of the task he faces.

People think that because hes hard to get hold of and is keeping his head down, that hes been suppressed. But he has a job in New Zealand that is 20 times bigger than any other job in the country. He is funda-mentally trying to run a small state in terms of the recovery. Hes had to set this up from scratch and start this massive machine and oversee the biggest rebuild weve ever seen so hes not as prominent as far as his public persona is concerned. The important thing is that he gets the job done.

Just look at what hes dealing with, Townsend says. Three suburbs have had to shift, 11,000 houses have been destroyed, 30,000 houses have more than $100,000 of damage each. More than 100,000 houses have sustained some form of damage. Its so much bigger than anyone can imagine.

While San Francisco lost 378 commercial buildings in the 1989 quake, Christchurch lost 1250 within the four avenues bordering the central city. It took them 10 years. For us to replace those buildings over 10 years we would have to open a new commercial building every three days.

Last month, the Reserve Bank revised its estimates of the economic cost of the quake to $30 billion up from $20 billion.

Sutton went into the job with his eyes open, Townsend says. He probably didnt realise just how big it was, but he would have assessed the situation because hes a clever guy and if he had any misgivings it would be about the enormity of the task.

Townsend, whos in touch with Sutton twice a week, believes Suttons relationship with Brownlee had been positive, construc-tive and intelligent. They are going to have to make some very hard decisions and they wont always be popular. There will always be niggling in the community and people will try to find fault.

Part of the problem, of course, is the fact that until recent months, Cantabrians have been unable to get into the citys red zone, and witness the incomprehensible scale of the destruction first hand.

Ive been to Hiroshima, says Anderton, and it has this eerie resemblance. Or Dres-den in Germany, which took 60 years to re-cover from the Allied bombing in World War II. Im not saying Christchurch will take that long but I dont expect unless I

Que Cera?What does the Canterbury earthquake recovery authority actually do?

The Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority was established in April last year to lead and co-ordinate recovery efforts. Its working with Environment Canterbury, Ngai Tahu, central and local government and local businesses and organisations to identify priorities, prepare plans and set directions for recovery activities.

Ceras and Roger Suttons main task in the months after the September 2010 and February 2011 quakes has been to decide what happens next to residential land and properties. This has involved complicated geological and technical (geotech) assessments which have taken much longer to complete than originally expected.

Roger Sutton says his predecessor, interim Cera CEO John Ombler, thought final decisions around orange zone properties those which hadnt been given the go-ahead to rebuild or order to abandon would be completed by the time he left in June. The reality, says Sutton, is that the geotech decisions have been much more complex and hampered by ongoing seismic activity.

Sutton says he regrets that more progress hasnt been made in the formation of co-operatives to bring more land to market for displaced property owners. Were dealing with issues that people have never dealt with on this scale before.

Overseeing demolition in the central city has been the other key arm of Ceras work, a job complicated by demands to preserve heritage buildings. Sutton says its understandable Cantabrians have been frustrated at what they regard as a lack of progress in decision-making. Some people come and hassle me and say, Why cant I start rebuilding my house right now? I say, Would you put money into your own house right now or wait for the aftershocks to stop?

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Roger Sutton was brought in as a figurehead. He was welcomed like a Greek god, women were almost drooling over him.

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