On the lawn of a suburban home in Coromandel, the prime minister’s dress shoes have been scuffed ochre by a softened bed of clay. Chris Hipkins stands in front of the house, perched atop a tide of packed earth. It has been carried about 15 metres downhill by a landslide, walls crunched and bowing. The buckled porch has come to rest halfway across the lawn, flattening a well-tended hibiscus shrub.
“We’ve got a long journey ahead of us,” he says.
