The Government is pouring another $1 billion into the recovery from the cyclone and floods.
It will go towards rebuilding roads, rail and schools, mental health initiatives and $100 million will go to protecting against future floods.
But certainty for Kiwis with red-stickered homes was missing, with our latest Newshub-Reid Research poll finding most Kiwis support some Government payout.
When Cyclone Gabrielle hit, the Pan Pac sawmill in the Esk Valley got smashed.
You can still see the scars and the valley is now even more vulnerable to future flooding because of all the silt. It needs higher stopbanks.
There's still so much to fix in Hawke's Bay.
"We are more than doubling the funding that we've already put into the cyclone recovery with an extra billion dollars of funding," Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced on Sunday.
In the $1 billion pre-Budget package, $475m will go to rebuild roads and rail, $116m to repair or rebuild every one of the more than 500 damaged schools, $35m for rural communities, and $100m for flood resilience, like stopbanks.
"When you look at the best part of a couple of billion dollars that have been allocated just within three months, you can see the level of commitment we've got," Cyclone Recovery Minister Grant Robertson said.
There's also $6m for foodbanks, $6m in extra funding for GPs and $10m for mental health - like expanding the Mana Ake programme.
"The extension of the Mana Ake programme is for primary and intermediate school children because that is a lesson from Canterbury that the impacts might not show up straight away but they are significant," said Robertson.
But for those who've lost everything, whose homes are destroyed and whose lives and livelihoods keep getting flooded as climate change intensifies, there was no certainty in the billion-dollar package.
Most New Zealanders want the Government to help out.
In our latest Newshub-Reid Research poll, we asked whether the Government should pay some compensation to homeowners if they need to move away from coastal and flood-prone areas?
The results show 51 percent said yes, almost 35 percent said no, and almost 14 percent didn't know.
"We've got to make some changes to the way we live and that includes looking at issues around where we are living," said Hipkins.
"That is going to have a significant impact on communities and the Government is going to have to be involved in those discussions."
The Government's committed to working with severely affected communities by early June.
"That's a hugely serious decision and I'm not doing to leap into talking about it until we're confident about the information," said Robertson.
But there will be more to come in the Budget on Thursday.
