Defence heads face scrutiny week hearing, promise to be fiscally responsible
Photo:
Ministry of Defence
Defence heads have assured politicians their
huge new budget
takes into account soldiers actually having to fire their weapons.
They fronted up to an even-tempered scrutiny week hearing with MPs at Parliament on Thursday afternoon.
Greens MP
Lawrence Xu-Nan
asked whether the budget boost of $9 billion new spending over four years allowed for buying the likes of replacement Javelin missiles, which cost $400,000 each.
Defence secretary Brook Barrington responded that the increased budget meant troops could now move past the approach from the last 50 years of being only partly equipped.
"The defence force is actually being provided with funding to ensure that, if we upgrade the capabilty, we are also able to shoot things with it," he said.
Along with defence force Chief Air Marshal Tony Davies, Barrington laid out a raft of measures they said would enable them to buy weapons and other systems faster and smarter.
"The demand queue is growing," Barrington said. "The longer it takes us to lodge an order, someone else has got their place in the queue before us and some of this stuff takes three years.
"You know, you lose your place in the queue... and you're losing time."
They felt a sense of urgency, but also had to ensure quality thresholds were set, so that in 3-4 years he was not up before MPs again being told, "We knew we couldn't trust you folk to bloody get your way out of a paper bag", he said.
"We've got to find a sweet spot between rigour, confidence and pace."
He added defence had already met with 280 people from 174 companies, both last month and this month, and that an industry strategy would be put out soon.
They would be fiscally responsible with the billions of taxpayer money, Davies said.
Defence Force Chief Air Marshal Tony Davies.
Photo:
RNZ / Ashleigh McCaull
To accelerate, they would drop the old approach of trying to get 30 years of life from gear and retreading it, and instead, look at getting a "minimum viable product" quickly out to the field, he said.
"Simple... quick... lean."
On the personnel front, they had to rebuild forces, he said.
The budget and plan had "buoyed" personnel, but their thinned-back ranks still constrained how much notice they needed to deploy, how long they could deploy for and whether they could mount multiple operations.
Personnel turnover had fallen to less than seven percent, but vacancy rates in February were about 30 percent, an Official Information Act request (OIA) showed.
The army was short 1500 people, Air Force 660 and navy 630.
Defence was "over-training" people to hit 100 percent, when it did not need to, so was reviewing how to speed training up, Davies said.
The 15-year plan was to add 20 percent to combat forces - or 2500 people - and the only way to do that currently was to cut civilian jobs down, he said.
"At the moment, we've got ships tied up that can't go to sea, because we haven't got the sailors. We've got people that are going on their fifth deployment overseas, because we don't have the number of soldiers.
"We've got Joint Force headquarters out at Trentham with watchfloors that can't be filled, because we haven't got the uniformed people with those skills.
"We need those. The money is tight, still, even with uplifts."
An
OIA response
showed that, in March, a hefty 313 positions were vacant at Joint Defence Services, far more than in other sections.
Defence Minister Judith Collins said the point was to be able to defend against anybody who "threatened our people, or our assets".
"Our people are not going to have to wave a white flag anymore. They are going to be able to get out there and protect themselves."
She said she had told "prime" multinational defence contractors their best bet for getting a share of the business was to involve New Zealand firms.
The small firms would not be written "out of the equation", Barrington said.
He added the business cases for two very large projects - replacing the 757s and the maritime helicopters - were well advanced. Other business cases would be made short and sharp.
The fleet renewal planning was by far the biggest job, but the budget gave the ministry a couple of million dollars extra for teams to do that.
"What happens in two years, if the world situation's got worse and we need to step it up again?" Davies said.
"How are we going to accelerate our capability acquisition process. It might be that we need to double our efforts there, so we are constantly looking at ways to fine tune it."
The budget set aside $155m over four years for new military allowances for deployments and hundreds of millions for more operations.
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