Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee has signalled he is losing confidence in the Earthquake Commission (EQC)'s chief executive, demanding a "full inquiry" into how disgruntled homeowners were excluded from satisfaction surveys.

The issue arose after EQC critic and homeowner advocate Bryan Staples provided The Press with a document which appeared to show a system whereby EQC earmarked dissatisfied customers to leave them out of potential survey pools.

Brownlee yesterday told reporters at Parliament he was "quite annoyed" not to have been given information about the exclusions sooner.

The disclosure followed an Auditor-General's report this week which quoted an EQC survey saying 80 per cent of homeowners were satisfied with the Canterbury home repair process.

Brownlee later said EQC was doing "pretty well" and yesterday stood by the comment.

Asked what level of confidence he had in EQC chief executive Ian Simpson, Brownlee refused to comment, but made it clear that confidence was at stake.

"It's one of those things that I think goes to the heart of confidence and I'm very, very annoyed about it," he said.

"I've asked the State Services Commissioner to conduct a full inquiry and he'll be reporting to me in the next couple of days about how that's going to be progressed."

Brownlee said he understood there were two surveys conducted by EQC, and the problems may not have been with the survey on the Canterbury home repair programme.

Simpson had offered "a whole lot of comment" related to the surveys, Brownlee said, but he wanted definitive answers.

The issue was that "there was some information that I should have had yesterday, sooner than I got it" as well as how different surveys worked with each other, he said.

Simpson said it was not appropriate for him to comment on Brownlee's view.

The EQC head offered to resign earlier this year after a nightmare week when an email containing information on Christchurch claims was sent by mistake to Staples.

EQC went on to compound the blunder by understating the number of affected households (83,000, not 9700).

Simpson got a $70,000 pay rise last year bringing his salary into the $400,000 to $409,999 band.

Prior to the salary rise, quarterly surveys showed only 55 per cent of claimants were satisfied with EQC's performance, well below the 70 per cent target.

Labour's EQC spokesman, Clayton Cosgrove, said if the flag issue was not intentional, it was incompetence. "When you spend a lot of money on a polling company you make sure they are getting the right information," he said.

"The Minister has got a 100-page report from the Auditor-General showing massive problems and we need to know what he is actually going to do."

- © Fairfax NZ News

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