The Government’s given Auckland’s Mayoral Relief Fund another million dollars to help with the flood cleanup.
The Prime Minister has also created a new Auckland Minister job - trying to rebuild the love lost between Labour and our biggest city.
As heavy rain continues to fall on the city, they'll stay shut until February 7.
Still baffled over the decision to shut down all schools even if they’re unaffected by the floods, National leader Chris Luxon told Tova O'Brien the decision should have been flexible.
"The local principals who are very plugged into their local communities and are getting all that information are best placed to make that decision," Luxon said.
"Yesterday [Tuesday] was a classic example, out in East Auckland, which was largely unaffected by the floods, would have been a perfectly good day for kids to go to school.
"When we've got a major challenge with our kids who are well behind on academic achievement and attendance with respect to schooling, this is the year we've really got to back them and make that happen."
Luxon said National is keen to work with the government to draw up a national emergency plan for future weather events, saying Kiwis were let down by the slow response to the crisis on the weekend.
He used the US as inspiration.
"Having lived in the States after Hurricane Katrina and seeing the serious upgrading of emergency responses across the US to extreme weather events… I am very comfortable working with the government to actually get a New Zealand response that is actually right for us."
Luxon said its obvious mistakes were made but is hopeful this unprecedented weather can make for solutions for future weather events.
"There was a leadership and communications vacuum from either the central government or local government in that first 24 hours.
"You can go back and criticise the process… we should understand exactly that, and make sure we've got the powers and the structures and the processes and the legislation that supports it."
Listen to the full interview between Christopher Luxon and Tova above.
You can also download the full interview on the Tova podcast, and listen on the go.
