New Zealand has joined the arms race – law professor

A law professor says New Zealand has joined the arms race by promising to spend up large on defence.

The 2025 Defence Capability Plan (DCP) outlines $12 billion worth of investment over the next four years, $9 billion of which is new money.

The investment will boost defence spending to more than two per cent of GDP within the next eight years: levels not seen since the early 1990s.

“I think we’ve joined the arms race,” University of Waikato professor Al Gillespie told RNZ.

“We’ve avoided doing it for quite some time but there’s been a lot of pressure on us to increase the amount of money that we spend. The commitment of at least 2 percent within a given time frame of eight years will put us in good favor with our friends and allies.”

The DCP lays out the government’s approach to defence investment over the next 15 years but in the shorter term up to 2028, the bulk of $12 billion will be spent on maritime, aerospace and information capabilities.

This includes extending the lifetime of our aging frigates, replacing the maritime helicopters, replacing the Boeing 757 fleet and upgrading our cyber security capabilities.

The plan also outlines investment in new capabilities to “enhance combat capability, including strike capacity” in a deteriorating security environment.

Gillespie said it was a significant, long-term commitment that demonstrated the coalition understood the global and regional risks, adding it would not come without costs.

“It’s a very difficult choice to make because every one of these dollars has an opportunity cost and all countries are feeling distressed right now because we could use that money for housing, for education or for health.

“What we’re seeing is that the priorities around us are changing and that we accept that and that we need to be prepared for a different world emerging in front of us.”

It was just last week that RNZ’s first Reid Research poll showed about half of voters think New Zealand should increase its defence spending.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Defence Minister Judith Collins said New Zealand may be at the bottom of the world but it needed to be “combat-capable”.

“Distance certainly is no longer any protection for New Zealand, not when we have an intercontinental ballistic missile launched in the South Pacific, not when ships with enormous strike power come into our backyard.

“This reality requires us not only to work with others who share our values and interests to reduce the possibility of conflict but also to prepare ourselves should the worst happen.”

Defence Minister Judith Collins said New Zealand needs to be “combat-capable”.
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon aknowledged the DCP was a big spending plan but said the government had the money to do it.

“We can afford this. We know this is a big step up and a big commitment but in our current fiscal track, we can afford this.”

The coalition has made a concerted effort to cut back on public spending but its operating allowance – the ‘extra’ money it has for new initiatives – is still thin.

Luxon said people will have to wait until May’s Budget to see how the DCP fits into the coalition’s fiscal plan.

It’s an assurance retired lieutenant colonel Hayden Ricketts – from the advocacy group Mission Homefront – wasn’t buying outright.

“We’ve seen this before with DCP ’16, which was a $20 billion appropriation or promise. DCP ’19 had similar volumes of money promised and now to have another $12 billion promised … it’s all good, but we’ll wait to see [if] the proof is in the pudding.

“I’ll be skeptical until we see some positive results coming in from the Minister of Finance in Budget 2025.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the DCP was largely in line with the former Labour government’s track but would come at the cost of other things if it’s being paid for within the existing operating allowance.

“There’s nothing much in the Defence Capability Plan that’s inconsistent with what we were talking about back in 2019 but when it comes to Budget trade-offs, we’ll see those in the Budget and no doubt we will have a very different take on the trade-offs and the decisions that they’ve made.”

Domestic trade-offs aside, AUT law lecturer and Pacific historian Marco de Jong said the DCP risked alienating New Zealand’s Pacific neighbours, who will in September get together to consider delcaring the region “an ocean of peace”.

“I think from the Pacific perspective, it’s clear the coalition government has been keen to downplay any potential criticism that they’re contributing to the militarisation of the region,” he said.

“Despite emphasising their commitment to regional security, things like humanitarian assistance and disaster response … it’s clear that the emphasis across the document is definitely on high-tech war fighting capabilities.”

“There’s a risk that an increasingly assertive New Zealand, and we see that with the Cook Islands and Kiribati, risks further alienating Pacific partners.”

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