Quake expert: Move capital north

Governor William Hobson may have made a big mistake when he moved New Zealand's capital out of Russell 164 years ago.

Now a Waikato University earth scientist wants to move it back to Northland - the country's most stable region.

Dr Earl Bardsley said the Indian Ocean tsunami and the recent spate of earthquakes around Cook Strait showed that the country was taking a big gamble by having its Government in geologically unstable Wellington.

"We could install a Canberra-type new capital in Northland, with all the associated infrastructure," he said.

The Dunedin-born hydrologist, 55, is an expert in calculating the probabilities of extreme events.

He said the idea of shifting the capital "just popped into my head when I was doing a little bit of thinking about the tsunami".

"The tsunami is one of those extreme events that happens only once in two or three human lifetimes," he said.

"A really major earthquake in an area is a little bit like that too. The tsunami did give us a timely reminder that these rare things can happen."

Parliament Buildings sits within a few hundred metres of the Wellington fault, where the vast Pacific plate dives under the Australian plate.

The region's last big earthquake, on the nearby Wairarapa fault in 1855, shifted parts of the Rimutaka and Tararua ranges north by up to 18.5m and lifted the land by up to 6m, triggering a tsunami that swept over what is now Wellington Airport and into shops on Lambton Quay.

Dr Bardsley said having the capital in such an unstable place "puts New Zealand at very real risk of major social and economic disruption".

He said maps of past earthquakes showed that most occurred along the plate boundary stretching from Fiordland along the Southern Alps and the main North Island ranges to East Cape.

"Northland stands out like a nice, clean area with virtually no earthquakes, the reason being that it is the furthest away from the plate boundary," he said.

He believes a working party should be set up to investigate possible northern locations for the new capital.

"If you want to be absolutely safe in terms of tsunamis it should be inland," he said. "But I don't see New Zealand as being particularly prone to tsunamis."

Far North Mayor Yvonne Sharp said the shift would validate Governor Hobson's original decision, after signing the Treaty of Waitangi in February 1840, to establish his capital at Okiato, 7km south of Kororareka, now known as Russell.

Hobson later changed his mind and moved to Auckland in 1841. The capital was moved again to Wellington in 1865.

"Becoming the capital of New Zealand again after all these years is something of a new suggestion, but we were before and I'm quite sure we would rise to the occasion again," Mrs Sharp said.

Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast was less amused.

"Moving the capital to Northland would be a bit like America moving its capital to Alaska or Australia moving its capital to Darwin," she said.

"Wellington is centrally located and the weather here has the same number of sunshine hours [as northern regions] and less rain and just a little bit more fresh air."

The director of the Wellington-based New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, Dr Brent Layton, said it would not be the first time a capital city had been moved to avoid a disaster.

The Central American nation of Belize built a new capital, Belmopan, after its former capital Belize City was devastated by a hurricane in the 1960s.

"Belmopan is a complete and utter fiasco," he said. "It's got lots of streets laid out but most of it is vacant. No one apart from the politicians has gone there."

In contrast, when San Francisco, Tokyo and Kobe were destroyed by earthquakes and fires, they were rebuilt on the same sites because it would have been more costly to have moved all their inhabitants and built the cities somewhere else.

Dr Layton said if the Government moved to Northland, Wellingtonians would find other pursuits.

"We'd just take up making movies and become a tourist centre and entertain ourselves with more of our exciting nightlife," he said.

"It would be a bonus.

"The dead hand of bureaucracy would no longer be here to restrain Courtenay Place."

CAPITAL QUAKES

* The Wairarapa fault ruptured in 1855 causing a magnitude 8 (on the Richter scale) earthquake. It lasted 50 seconds and was followed in the next few weeks by hundreds of aftershocks greater than magnitude 5.

* A shallow magnitude 7.4 earthquake along the Wellington fault would cause considerable damage around the region.

* The Wellington Regional Council calculates that if it happened during the day there could be about 500 deaths, 4000 injuries and perhaps 1800 people trapped.

* If the earthquake hit at night, fewer people would be hurt.

* It could cost $4 billion to repair Wellington and the surrounding areas.