Politicians urge those affected by weather to listen to official information

Politicians from a variety of political parties have been urging people to heed official communications about the weather.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the national coordination centre had been activated to support the locally led response in Auckland.

"We will get through this, we will support Auckland through it, we know that it's tough coming on top of everything else that they've been dealing with - but right now my request to people is just keep yourselves safe, keep yourselves physically safe, we will support you through this.

"Waka Kotahi have a team on hand regularly updating travel information so before people undertake travel within the Auckland region I'd encourage them to make sure they're up to date with the latest.

"I would ask people to follow the guidance that's being issued. We do want to keep people safe through this and as updates are available they'll be provided.

"It is a serious situation in Auckland and we are encouraging people to make sure that they're keeping up to date with information being issued by the local emergency management team there."

It was difficult to tell at this point whether the event was expected to be as severe as the flooding in January, Hipkins said.

"But we certainly are getting reports that there's some serious weather there, and the flow-on effects of that could be quite serious."

There was already evidence of a faster local response than in that event, he said.

"A local state of emergency's been declared quite early. We're seeing more regular communication. We're absolutely doing our bit at our end to support that communication at a national level - obviously it'll be locally led but we're doing everything we can to support it."

National Party leader Christopher Luxon was also keen to advise people to follow official advice, but had little more to say on the matter.

"It's an evolving situation, my advice to everybody is please just follow the advice of civil defence and obviously Aucklanders will be on edge given what they've recently gone through."

ACT leader and Epsom MP David Seymour said there was a lot of flooding in his electorate now.

"I've had my electorate office out and reviewing the situation," he said. "My advice is to call the emergency number if absolutely necessary but otherwise do what you can to get home and be safe.

"Reports I'm getting is that a lot of parts of Epsom have become impassable or clogged with a lot of traffic so the message is right now be safe and it looks like unfortunately we're going to have another tough night and a tough few weeks dealing with the damage."

Green MP for Auckland Central Chloe Swarbrick said she had heard that while weather may be clearing in parts of Auckland, people should not take it as a sign things had stopped.

"Obviously have just heard a state of emergency's been declared and emergency powers offered to the deputy mayor Desley Simpson, so the situation we're in is still one of immense vigilance.

"I definitely think that in the wake of the Auckland Anniversary flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle that there were definitely lessons that were learnt."

She said she had notified the Minister of Internal Affairs about Fire and Emergency having requested their heavy rescue team to be stood up at 8am, with requests issued since last night.

She said the team was stood up this morning, but the delay would be frustrating for people on the front line, and based on that experience not enough had been done to prepare for repeat events after the anniversary floods.

She had also sent a text to Auckland mayor Wayne Brown, she said, urging him to delegate emergency powers to Simpson while he was overseas.

"Not quite sure what's happening within Auckland Council at present but in speaking to those at MetService, within Auckland Emergency Management, and talking to our frontline firefighters I know there are a lot of people working really hard but there still seems to be some of those structural barriers in place as identified in Mike Bush's independent review."

She rebuffed reporters' questions about Elizabeth Kerekere's decision last week to leave the Green Party, saying she was focused on Auckland right now.

Green co-leader James Shaw - asked separately about the same matter - also quickly turned attention back to the weather and climate change.

"We're just currently in a state of emergency for the third time this year on an extreme weather event related to climate. I think people are focused on other things," he told reporters.

He called for more and faster action on climate change.

"I am the first to say that whilst I am very proud of the work that we've done over the past five and a half years we are only at the start of this journey and we need to pick up the pace rapidly and urgently."

Co-leader Marama Davidson said they were focused on those matters.

"Just today the minister had an amazing announcement on climate and actually my head is in the space of my mokopuna who are having to be collected from their ECE in Auckland, my three children are having to be collected from their school college in Auckland.

"That's what I know people are caring about right now is keeping themselves safe and doing the things that are going to help communities."

She said marae needed to be thought of as a key part of the emergency response and civil defence infrastructure.

"They know how to do this mahi, they've had to prove time and time again, they should be seen as absolutely essential to help people keep safe."