Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Daniel Chrisp: Cemeteries and Crematoria Collective Chair on the concern cemeteries are running out of space

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Daniel Chrisp: Cemeteries and Crematoria Collective Chair on the concern cemeteries are running out of space · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Here's a story we should have done on Friday when
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: it was Halloween. Apparently we're running out of room to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: bury the dead. The New Zealand Cemeteries and Crematoria Collective
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: says Auckland and other regions are nearly a capacity, urging
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: councils to snap up land and they plan strategically for
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: local semmetry spaces. So Daniel Crisp is the chair of
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  Speaker 1: the New Zealand Cemeteries and Crematoria Collective and joins me, Now,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: good morning to.
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  Speaker 2: You, Daniel, Good morning Andrew. How are you?
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I'm good. Just how close are we to being full?
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  Speaker 2: Well, like you say, there are a few regions which
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: are nearly there. Unfortunately, so maybe five years or less
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  Speaker 2: or less left of space, so you know that's not ideal.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: You know, we're trying to urge councils to plan proactively.
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  Speaker 2: When they've got about ten years left, they should be
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  Speaker 2: starting to consider it because it takes quite a while
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  Speaker 2: to quietly.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, how did they do it? How do you make
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  Speaker 1: a cemetery?
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's the Public Works Act, which we know is
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  Speaker 2: getting a few tweaks at the moment, so hopefully that
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  Speaker 2: might help a little bit as well. But yeah, it's
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: a public works Act. Under the Burial Cremation Act, all
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  Speaker 2: councils are required to provide burial space, so there's a
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  Speaker 2: couple of legislative ways to do it. And then yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it's got to go through that process, which can take
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  Speaker 2: several years.
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  Speaker 1: And New Zealand is still preferring to be buried rather
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  Speaker 1: than cremated.
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  Speaker 2: Various from city to city based on demographics. Generally speaking,
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  Speaker 2: New Zealanders around to seventy five percent cremation now, but
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  Speaker 2: there are still a lot of communities and cultures which
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  Speaker 2: still prefer burial, which is fine. You know, I don't
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  Speaker 2: think we're ever going to get to the point where
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  Speaker 2: we're going to star outlawing burial. That would just be ridiculous.
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  Speaker 2: So we need to provide these options. So councils need
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  Speaker 2: to think strategically and proactively about this thing.
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  Speaker 1: All right. And this is a bit dark as well.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: If you've ever been to Paris, of course you go
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  Speaker 1: to the catacombs and that's quite remarkable, and that is
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  Speaker 1: basically everybody from a cemetery who were then stored in
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  Speaker 1: a mine. So they have more room for the city
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  Speaker 1: and for more cemetery and for more people. So will
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: we ever get to that state where we might actually
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  Speaker 1: disinter people and put them elsewhere to make more space.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, there's a lot of other countries do that,
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  Speaker 2: and so it's a thing called limited tenure plots. It
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  Speaker 2: is something we're trying to start the conversation on. It's
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  Speaker 2: very foreign to New Zealanders. We're pretty used to having
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: our plot forever. But clearly that's not going to be
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: an option forever to just keep something plots forever. We
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  Speaker 2: need to look at these other options as well.
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  Speaker 1: So, yeah, exactly, your call is we need more symmetries
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  Speaker 1: and we should have started thinking about it five years ago.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, a lot of the councils that are in
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  Speaker 2: this predicament right now, it's not their fault. It's the
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  Speaker 2: fault of senior management or chief executives or councils five
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  Speaker 2: to ten years ago. And now they're stuck with the
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: really crappy situation of running out of space. So I
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  Speaker 2: do feel for them. It is a complex thing to
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: try and find land. But yeah, we're urging councils to
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: pur now so in another five or ten years time,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: they're not in a similar situation.
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  Speaker 1: Hey Daniel, thank you so much for your time. That's
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Daniel Crisp, who is the chair of the New Zealand
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  Speaker 1: Cemetery's and Crematoria Collective.
• 3:10
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• 3:13
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• 3:17
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