Summary: In the first two parts of this series we remembered the 2053 New Zealand floods and the seaquake which preceded them; the divisive choice of New Zealander prime minister Henry Woodburn to appoint the inexperienced Emma Keeler as head of the post-flood recovery effort; and the political crisis that engulfed the Woodburn government due to Keeler’s repeated errors in judgment in her handling of the recovery program. In this chapter, we’ll review the circumstances leading up to Keeler’s resignation and the final collapse of Woodburn’s government.

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The constant murmur of doubt about Emma Keeler’s competence that had been going on almost from the second she was chosen to lead the post-July flood recovery effort had by late August of 2053 become an ear-piercing scream. Print, broadcast, and social media alike were all abuzz with seemingly endless calls for Keeler to step down from her post and make way for someone more qualified to direct the post-flood relief program. The halls of New Zealand’s parliament were witness to a losing political battle by Keeler’s few remaining defenders inside those halls to keep her critics from succeeding in their quest to have her replaced. Even the country’s rugby fans seemed to be getting into the act; at an All-Blacks exhibition match held to raise funds to aid flood survivors, there were hundreds of signs on display in the stands demanding Keeler’s resignation.

Prime Minister Henry Woodburn still stubbornly backed Keeler, but at an increasing cost to his political career. His once bright hopes of becoming New Zealand’s longest-serving PM were all but gone by now, and even his chances of completing his existing term in office seemed to be in question in light of the political firestorm being generated by Keeler’s continued presence as director of the post-flood recovery effort. The extent to which Woodburn’s political stock had dropped in the face of the Keeler controversy was illustrated by an August 29th press release from a group of Wellington business executives who for years had backed Woodburn’s administration; in blunt terms the press release declared the group could no longer support the prime minister due to his “irresponsible” decision to maintain Keeler as the head of the post-flood relief program. All the group’s most prominent figures had worked with Woodburn at one time or another-- in fact two of them had been close friends with Woodburn since they were schoolboys. Their decision to sever ties with him was not only a terrible political blow to the prime minister, but also hurt him deeply on a personal level.

While the country was in somewhat better economic shape now than it had been in the days immediately following the July floods and most of the damage had long since been cleared away, Woodburn’s government couldn’t seem to pull out of the PR quicksand it had fallen into since Emma Keeler’s appointment to run the post-disaster recovery program. If anything, it was sinking further in that quicksand every day at an alarmingly swift pace; most political experts felt the question facing New Zealand voters at that point was less if they wanted to get rid of Woodburn than how quickly they wanted do it or who would move into his office once he was gone. Candidates for prime minister were beginning to emerge from every nook and cranny as it became more obvious exactly how fragile Woodburn’s position was. Some people who in the past were certain the prime minister’s job would forever stay beyond their reach had changed their minds on that score and were lining up support for a bid to unseat Woodburn.

Indeed, Woodburn’s position had so badly deteriorated that he was being aggressively challenged for the leadership of his own party. A young MP representing one of the Wellington districts hardest hit by the July flooding dramatically and publicly broke ranks with Woodburn on September 1st by refusing to appear with the prime minister during a photo op at a Maori refugees’ school. The next day this same MP joined two veteran legislators in calling for Woodburn to resign not only as prime minister but as chairman of his party; that act touched off one of the most bitter political fights New Zealand had seen in at least a generation....

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It is one of the great ironies of 21st century New Zealand history that Emma Keeler, the woman in whose name Prime Minister Woodburn was putting up such a stubborn fight, would end up becoming a casualty of that fight. The strain of dealing with both running the post-flooding recovery effort and the endless criticisms of her performance as head of that effort were taking a severe toll on her psychological health; at the time of Woodburn’s September 1st school photo op Keeler was on three different types of anti-depressants, two anti-anxiety medicines, and two anti-psychotic medications. A political columnist for The Age wrote in a commentary printed on September 3rd that the director of the post-flood recovery program seemed to be teetering on the brink of, in his words, “a full-fledged psychological Chernobyl”.

She would go over that brink less than a week later during a live interview on One News to address charges that she had mishandled funds intended to pay for long-term medical care for New Zealand government workers victimized by the floods. About twenty minutes into the Keeler interview, a One News associate producer noticed that Keeler’s speech was becoming incoherent and her attention seemed to be wandering in a hundred directions at once. Convinced Keeler was having either a heart attack or a stroke, the show’s executive producer halted the interview and called for an ambulance to take Keeler to the nearest hospital. As it turned out he wasn’t all that far off; the cumulative total effects of more than eight weeks’ worth of battles with her critics within the government and among the public had stretched her endurance to a point where she was having an aneurysm and an emotional breakdown all at the same time. That truncated One News interview was her last public appearance as head of the post-flooding recovery effort; three weeks after Keeler was hospitalized, she tendered her resignation from the post in a two- paragraph e-mail sent to Prime Minister Woodburn from her hospital bed and made public by Woodburn that afternoon. Few if any tears were shed over her decision to resign-- if anything, the prevailing sentiment in most corners of New Zealander society(and the Woodburn government, for that matter) was that her departure was long overdue. One Christchurch newspaper headlined its story on Keeler’s resignation with the brusque declaration “GOOD RIDDANCE”. Even Prime Minister Woodburn himself had to eventually concede that perhaps Keeler might have been ill-equipped mentally as well as professionally to handle the responsibilities she had been given as director of the post-July flood recovery program. It was a concession which came far too late to save his political career, as it turned out: by the time Keeler resigned the prevailing sentiment among voters in New Zealand was so overwhelmingly and stridently anti- Woodburn that even the prime minister’s staunchest backers were saying he was finished.

Accordingly, in early December of 2053 general elections were called to decide the fate of Woodburn’s administration. Nearly eighty- five percent of the votes cast in the elections went against Woodburn, a reflection of just how far the incumbent prime minister’s political stock had fallen since the July floods. When Woodburn went on TV to give his concession speech, he looked and felt like a man who’d been sentenced to hang at dawn; becoming prime minister of New Zealand had been the greatest moment of his political career, and it had been his hope to one day be included among the ranks of the greatest leaders in New Zealander history. But the Emma Keeler controversy had destroyed that hope once and for all-- Woodburn’s tenure as PM would instead be regarded largely as a disaster.

The new prime minister, a former army infantry captain of mixed Maori and European descent, was sworn into office two days later and immediately met with the new post-flood relief director, Evan Perkins, to work out what could be done to expedite the completion of the New Zealander government’s work in rebuilding those structures damaged or destroyed outright by the floods. Also on the agenda for that meeting: the matter of financial compensation for the survivors. In very stark contrast to his predecessor Emma Keeler, Perkins had extensive-- and impressive --credentials in supervising post-disaster recovery and aid programs. He’d been point man on the rebuilding effort in Pusan, Korea after Cyclone Gemma devastated that port city; he’d helped to organize rescue operations in the Branson, Missouri area after the New Madrid earthquake of 2047; he’d served as an environmental consultant to the Russian government following the 2039 Siberian wildfires; and closer to home he’d led the medical teams who treated burn victims following the Alastair Rudd School fire. Perkins’ performances as director of the post-flood recovery program would go a long way toward repairing the damage inflicted by Emma Keeler’s hubris and amateurish approach to the job....