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Chapter 1: What issues does New Zealand's Defence Force face?
When it comes to the New Zealand Defence Force, there's a decades-long list of problems. Barracks that aren't fit for purpose, aeroplanes that keep breaking down, and the big one, a ship lost on a reef in Samoa. And then last year, the government's spotlight fell on our armed forces.
We're back home now and the government has released the 2025 Defence Capability Plan, which sets out a spending blueprint for the next 15 years.
The government set out a goal to increase our defence spending to just over 2% of our GDP within eight years. It also plans to spend $12 billion across the 2025 to 2028 budgets. By New Zealand standards, that's a lot. But by the United States' expectations, that's not enough.
We demand 3.5% from our allies and partners, and we are going well beyond that number.
That's the U.S. Secretary of War, Pete Higsyth.
Listen, I mean, if I'm being honest, 2% is not enough. And so 2% is freeloading. But I don't have anything against New Zealand. I want partners to step up. I didn't intentionally leave it off my list. I look forward to working with the new defense minister there and enhancing those capabilities. I think that relationship has been a very fruitful one for a very long time.
There are plenty of countries on that list that he spoke fairly warmly of that aren't spending 3.5%. So I don't think New Zealand is going to get to three and a half percent and nor do I think it should. But I think what it needs to do is to say, hey, what do we need to spend for our own reasons, for our own interests?
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Chapter 2: What is the 2025 Defence Capability Plan for New Zealand?
And I think that is significantly more than we have been spending in recent decades.
That was David Cappy, the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Later on in the podcast, I'll talk to him about how much we spend on our defence and whether the money is being put in the right places. Kia ora, I'm Shalise Tansey and today on The Detail, we're talking defence spending. How much is our defence costing us? Where is that money going?
And why is it so important? I start by talking to Anna Fifield. She's an independent New Zealand journalist and a non-resident fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. She recently got back from Singapore, where she attended a summit on defence called the Shangri-La Dialogue, where she asked the question that thrust New Zealand's defence spending onto the world stage.
But before we get to that, I asked her about the summit itself.
The Shangri-La Dialogue happens in Singapore every year and it's the biggest kind of regional defence forum and usually the meeting place for the American and Chinese defence secretaries, ministers to get together and have a conversation. So it is in this very luxurious Singaporean hotel. It is bristling with...
military officers in epaulettes and white shoes, diplomats, officials, arms dealers, you name it. And the name of the game is kind of what's going to happen in Asia in terms of the security environment over the year ahead.
But this year, of course, it was very geopolitical, focused on the world as a whole, because as we've seen with the Strait of Hormuz, these big crises are no longer geographically constrained.
At this conference, you asked Pete Hegseth, who is the Secretary of War for the US, you asked him a question which ended up spotlighting New Zealand's defence spending. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
I was in the ballroom as Pete Hegseth gave his speech to the forum, and it was pretty moderate by his standards in terms of the language on China, but it was pretty offensive, frankly, by everybody else's in terms of him standing up there and telling...
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Chapter 3: How does New Zealand's defence spending compare to global expectations?
So they are definitely ramping up their defence spending, but not to the level that Hegseth wants, and many countries aren't. And he didn't include New Zealand. So, you know, being a journalist and asking uncomfortable questions, I raised my hand and asked him about New Zealand and pointed out that we are making a huge change in terms of doubling our defence spending to just over 2%.
And but obviously that's a long way from 3.5. And I asked him, he had referred during his speech that anybody who didn't spend 3.5 was a freeloader. So I asked him if he considered New Zealand a freeloader. So I'd just like to point out, Hegsy didn't proactively single out New Zealand for criticism. I asked him about it and he responded by saying 2% was freeloading.
And so what was it like in the room when Hegseth said that comment, the freeloader comment?
2% is not enough. And so 2% is freeloading.
I think that nobody was surprised because Hegseth is known for his very blunt language and this bombastic kind of tone that he strikes. He'd previously derided European nations in the speech as moralistic and utopian. So this is really kind of par for the course for him.
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Chapter 4: What was the reaction to the US Secretary of War's comments on New Zealand?
If anything, actually, I think he was quite tempered in his language about New Zealand. You know, he said he had nothing against New Zealand and he was looking forward to meeting our new defence minister, Chris Penk, later in the forum. And by all accounts, that meeting was quite warm and friendly.
So there wasn't a kind of shock that he said this, but I think this is the world that everybody knows we now live in, where the US thinks that it can dictate to the rest of the world what the global norms are which is particularly ironic at a time when the US is defying all the global norms, or many global norms, as we've seen with Venezuela and Iran.
Who else was in the room when you asked this question and how did they react?
There were hundreds, maybe more than a thousand people in the room. It was the big plenary address on Saturday morning and everybody was there for that. And there was a mix of reactions around the room. The Japanese are clearly very worried that the U.S. is withdrawing from the region and will leave it vulnerable to China.
The Japanese Defense Minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, asked publicly for reassurance that the United States was committed to the region.
Meanwhile, other countries and the Malaysian defence minister actually said in his speech that it was up to Malaysia to decide how it allocated its funding and saying, you know, 3.5% is not feasible for a developing country and doesn't take into account the domestic considerations and priorities of countries like his.
There was a range of views, including some pushback from countries saying, you know, basically, they may be your standards, but they're not ours. The overall takeaway from his speech was about how he was really trying hard to continue the Trump administration's kind of rapprochement or detente with Beijing and avoid antagonizing China at this time. He was really moderate on China.
He didn't mention Taiwan once in his speech. He didn't refer to the Indo-Pacific, which is kind of this geopolitical construct against China. He simply referred to the Pacific. So he was trying to stabilize relations or continue the stabilization of relations between these two superpowers as the world becomes ever more volatile in other spheres.
Now, when you had asked that question, Chris Pink, who was our Minister for Defence, was also present. How did he react to Hegseth's comments?
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Chapter 5: What insights did Anna Fifield provide about the Shangri-La Dialogue?
And I think, you know, that's not a lot. By international comparisons, that's a low level of defence expenditure.
So for right now, is that enough?
Well, I think to answer that question, you need to look at the world. And I think it's probably something that's come home to every New Zealander in the last five years is that the world is becoming a much, much more dangerous place. We're seeing an international system in huge amounts of flux.
So we've seen, obviously, war return to Europe and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine. We've seen war in Gaza and in the Middle East. And we've seen coercion begin to be much more acceptable for big powers.
And I think there's a sense that the world that New Zealand used to think of its security could be provided by distance and also by the workings of international institutions like the UN. I think there's a real sense that that world is rapidly disappearing in the rearview mirror. And so I think that raises the question of what are we going to do for ourselves?
And what are we going to do with our close partners and our ally Australia? And I think that's why this government and also the government before it has realised that we need to step up and invest more in defence.
How does New Zealand's defence spending rack up against countries, for instance, like Australia or even our other Five Eyes partners?
Australia's spending now higher than 2%, I think around 2.2%, and has talked about going to 3% and possibly even further. Canada, for example, has historically been another fairly low spender on defence, although it in the last...
Year under, new Prime Minister Carney has announced that it will meet the NATO, the new NATO goal of 3.5% on sort of core defence spending over an extended period of time. At one level, you know, these are, they're kind of clunky numbers, 2%. You know, its origins used to be back in the NATO days that that was a sort of a target for for what NATO countries should spend.
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