Gerry Brownlee has admitted there are problems with Civil Defence's tsunami alert system.
The Acting Civil Defence Minister told The Nation on Saturday he wants to look at how the system works after it took several hours for the public in some areas to be given information following Monday's magnitude 7.8 earthquake.
While Mr Brownlee says it took under an hour for the 16 local boards to receive information regarding a tsunami risk, some didn't pass that on to public quickly enough.
"That's a problem - that's what we've got to sort out. There's no question about that," says Mr Brownlee, adding that "the Civil Defence bunker in Wellington is concerned about the response".
Mr Brownlee confirmed the Government has looking at a text message alerting system "for some time".
"There is a contingency inside the budget to pay for that, and we would hope to get that up and running as soon as possible."
Mr Brownlee says he was given an 18-month timeline for its implementation, which is "not acceptable".
"That's a little too long."
Yesterday GeoNet said there is a 93 percent chance of a magnitude 6.0 to 6.9 quake hitting central New Zealand in the next month.
Mr Brownlee says he was unaware $500,000 of taxpayer money had been spent on an in-house alerting system called 'Tsunado'.
Tsunado, pitched as a "life-saving technology", is a compact radio alert unit intended to be used in offices and homes.
It has since been shelved, despite Tsunado director John Hamilton saying two years ago it would be a "critical component" in Civil Defence alerting.
"I'm the Acting Minister, I haven't been in the role very long," says Mr Brownlee. "I'm not aware of [Tsunado] - but I will look into it."
However, he added that Civil Defence has been working on an "acceptable and working system" for quite some time, and "it may be that some of the analysis on [Tsunado] did not quite fit the bill".
Newshub.
