First they'd heard...

Sam Johnson critiques Christchurch City Council for impeding the Student Volunteer Army's post-quake recovery work:

Speaking at the Emergency Management Conference in Wellington yesterday, Johnson said some officials had shown a "lack of respect" towards the thousands of students he had harnessed to help quake-hit residents.

"There was this large divide between paid salary employees and the volunteers, almost like they were doing us a favour to get us a little bit of information," he said.

Apparently this is new news to City Council:

Council city environment general manager Jane Parfitt said she was surprised to learn of Johnson's comments.

"This is the first we've heard of Sam's issues ... We'll be getting in touch with Sam to discuss this."

Hmm. Here's Sam Johnson making exactly the same point in the NZ Herald last December.

Some senior city council staff and Army personnel were also "particularly 'anti' it". Mr Johnson was told he could be held personally liable if something bad happened to any of the volunteers.

"Certainly there were times when I thought, 'Why are we bothering to do this, if we just hit roadblocks the whole way through?"'

And when I'd posted on it, a pretty strong defender of Council showed up in the comments section.

I guess information disperses slowly through different parts of Council.