Emotional pleas for help to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on visit to flood-ravaged Wairoa

So is Luxon going to deliver for them? Credits: Newshub.

The mayor of flood-ravaged Wairoa has made a plea to the Prime Minister: we've had enough and we need your help.   

Christopher Luxon visited the region on Friday, and he's vowed to all four mayors that he'll speed up progress and turbocharge the recovery.   

Wairoa is a place wanting pledges and promises.  

"We need funding to get it looking like it used... we need things to start moving quicker," said Deputy Mayor Denise Eaglesome-Karekare.   

There's a lot of emotion in Wairoa, but patience - they've run out of.   

"We've just had enough and we've just got heaps of sort of like anxiety now and we don't feel like we're getting anywhere," said Mayor Craig Little.  

The pair sat down with the Prime Minister, the Transport Minister, the Emergency Management Minister and local MPs to make their case.  

"Between all of them, they now know, they've heard us and they'll keep hearing us, believe me," Little said.   

"We've got no river protection for god's sake. One of the only places in New Zealand that hasn't." 

Eaglesome-Karekare said: "We need houses. We need to get our people back into their homes."  

"We need a State Highway 2 that is resilient and is not going to cut us off from the rest of Hawke's Bay." 

So is Luxon going to deliver for them?  

"We want to get an assessment of what's actually needed. Some of it will be money and some of it will regulation and some of it will be frankly actually how do we fast-track consenting so that we don't get locked in a loop of endless conversation and talk and things actually not getting done," he said.   

He said the resilience of State Highway 2 was a "big conversation to happen".   

As for the Napier - Wairoa rail line: "The railway is a low priority and is something we shouldn't be progressing."  

"I'd sooner take the money from that and invest it in roads and making investments in flood protection," Luxon said. 

Luxon also visited Napier and met with the mayors of Central Hawke's Bay, Napier and Hastings District Councils, and mana whenua.  

"I have to say Hawke's Bay is the best in the country in terms of the collaboration that happens between the district councils, regional council and also mana whenua."  

There were no announcements on Luxon's first visit to the region as Prime Minister but plenty of personal assurances of progress, sealed with plenty of hugs.