New Zealand’s military requires substantial investment as it faces new challenges and greater expectations from regional allies, the country’s new minister of national defence said yesterday.
“I think when you look at the geostrategic situation we have in the Pacific at the moment, I think the longer-term challenge is that our partners and neighbours will say to us: ‘We expect more,’” New Zealand Minister of National Defence Andrew Little said in an interview.
“The frequency of climate change events or weather events will only grow,” Little said.
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“Then there is working with partners to project a posture that is defensive,” he added.
Little said that US National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell this month had raised with him the possibility of New Zealand becoming a non-nuclear partner of AUKUS.
The US is “certainly keen to have New Zealand engaged, but it’s not a decision I get to take alone,” he said. “In the next few weeks, as we start to shape up some of the long-term [defense] questions for us, AUKUS will be one of them.”
New Zealand’s involvement in AUKUS would signal a further warming in relations between New Zealand and the US.
New Zealand in 1987 suspended the ANZUS security treaty with the US.
Little said that whatever New Zealand decides in terms of engaging with AUKUS, it is important that the defense force is equipped to work with its Australian counterparts.
New Zealand, which spends about 1.5 percent its of GDP on its military, is undertaking a defense policy review as the country grapples with regional geopolitics and climate change.
Little said he expects to receive the first results of the review in the coming weeks.
The New Zealand Defence Force has been struggling with record attrition in part because of low pay, which has forced the navy to idle three of its ships and retire its P3 Orion fleet early.
Resources are so thin that if a second significant event had occurred while the Defence Force was attending to the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle in February, it would have struggled to respond, Little said.
Little said stopping people from leaving and attracting former Defence Force members back with higher pay is key.
He said he does not yet know what money this year’s budget might allocate for the military.
Although New Zealand had made some investments already, the government needs to consider more, especially for the country’s navy, he said.
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