Estimates Debate — Vote Defence

I want to speak about the Vote Defence budget for 2006-07. I have to say that it is a vast improvement on the level of defence expenditure over previous years. I refer particularly to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, when some of us in uniform were so poorly equipped under previous Governments—and, I have to say, under National Governments—that we were not able to be issued with blank ammunition and we spent our time running around on field exercises saying “bang, bang”, instead. I remember those days very, very well.

Much has been said about Labour’s expenditure on defence, and I have to point out a couple of facts. It was Labour that bought the Mercedes truck fleets, Labour that bought the V8 Land Rovers, and Labour that bought the Scorpion tanks and the frigates. The only problem is that we should have bought more. In the very near future Labour will be introducing Project Protector, which we had a briefing on. I do recall that National gave us the Charles Upham and announced the purchase of heavy machine-guns—the .50 calibre Brownings—that were to be a new addition to our arsenal. The only problem was that those heavy machine-guns had been in service since World War II, having been built in 1942, and had been used in Korea, Malaya, and Viet Nam. Max Bradford’s big hoo-ha that they were new weapons that had been introduced was exactly that—hoo-ha.

Where Labour has got it wrong, though, is in disbanding the air combat capability—New Zealand First has always disagreed with that policy—and, in particular, in introducing the 105 LAVIIIs, which were found to be too big, too expensive, and too cumbersome for the South Pacific. We note with interest that the M113s are still performing admirably in Iraq right now with the United States forces, and that they were the first vehicles of the Australian forces to hit the ground in East Timor recently. They provided good muscle, manoeuvrability, and portability to the forces deployed there to bring peace back into that area.

Where National got it horribly wrong was in pay and conditions. I recall standing in this House and challenging the National-led Government members, led by Jenny Shipley, about pay and conditions for service personnel—a challenge they dismissed. I brought to this House, and tabled, a document that showed that under National’s steerage a recruit soldier in Waiōuru was earning $13,000 a year. Labour, to its credit, took the message on board and, after a lot of pressure from New Zealand First, implemented a number of pay adjustments and adjustments to allowances for the time that personnel were deployed overseas.

But there is still work to be done. I refer specifically to the New Zealand Special Air Service and the pay, allowances, and conditions of service for those personnel. Why is that unit important? It is because, increasingly, internationally it is special operations forces that are the sharp end; they are the point of the spear. In every initiative that takes place internationally in respect of bringing peace, stability, and conflict resolution, it does not matter where we look around the world, special forces are the leading edge. Right now we are finding that our special forces are far more effective in Afghanistan than our trying to deploy and maintain a battalion or a company-sized organisation. In fact, they have been so effective that they have received a presidential citation.

The problem is that we cannot ask questions about those forces. I raised with the Minister of Defence, Phil Goff, at the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee hearing the issue of how difficult it was for the committee and for Parliament to do its job, given the very nature of the SAS, because security-wise it is a very sensitive unit and we cannot ask questions. But serious questions must be asked if we are to get to the real root of the problem in terms of pay, remuneration, and retention of highly specialised, highly sought after Defence Force personnel such as these. The questions I would like to be able to ask publicly and get answers to are questions such as these. What are their numbers? How many SAS personnel do we have? How many Regular Force? How many Territorial Force? What are those numbers in comparison to 2 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago? Does the Territorial Force element of the SAS exist, or has it disappeared or become virtually non-existent? What are the SAS pay rates? What are its rank structures? Who gets paid what level of pay? How many of those people are in that rank structure? What are the problems with promotion inside such a small, tight-knit organisation that is constrained by the very nature of its speciality? How many SAS personnel are badged each year? How many pass selection? How many go through cycle training and come out the other end as effective SAS troopers?

We need to know that if we are to understand the sustainability, supportability, and effectiveness of that unit. But, of course, it is a secret unit, and to give away such information publicly is to undermine its very capability. I understand that, more than anyone else in this Parliament. But by not being able to ask those questions and get honest answers from the Government, we are unable to address the very pressing need to reinforce and support those personnel, and to make sure that they are remunerated appropriately and thereby attracted to stay in the service of the country in the SAS, where we so desperately need them. What is the average experience level of those within the unit? Are we losing senior NCOs, yes or no? How many senior NCOs, on whom we absolutely depend inside the SAS for training the newly badged troops, are staying on purely out of loyalty when they should or could be taking retirement?

All of those questions are important because they help us to understand the specificities of the troopers’ case when it comes to pay and remuneration. I have asked questions of the Minister in the House about pay and conditions for the SAS. Specifically, on 9 May I asked him what the hourly base rate of pay was for SAS personnel. He said that the base pay rate was $39,000 to $93,000 a year and that when deployed overseas they got benefits that kicked up their pay to $80,000 to $140,000 a year. But the truth, I say to the Minister, is that that is not exactly the case. The truth, in overview, is that a trooper gets paid a base salary of $39,000 to $43,000 a year, which is half of what Special Tactics Group police officers receive for sitting on their backsides at home, waiting for a call-out. These SAS people do considerably more. The keynote experience, as I have experienced, is that candidates join the rank at the range of private through to sergeant, and therefore come in and remain on protected pay for some time. Lance corporals are on $45,000 to $51,000, corporals are on $51,000 to $55,000, and sergeants are on $57,000 to $62,000. Very few, if any, of those people get the $78,000 that the Minister was talking about. I hope he is listening because he will have to answer me, but he is talking to Katherine Rich, so how can he possibly know what I am talking about? Very few of those people get even anywhere near what a Special Tactics Group operator gets, and those who do get it have to deploy to Afghanistan, where they get paid exactly the same remuneration rates as someone who is in a provincial reconstruction team and who is not deployed at the sharp end, chasing down al-Qaeda.

I say to the Minister to bear in mind also that when these lance corporals and corporals, who are special in their nature, go into the SAS, they cannot be promoted further, unlike line infantiers who stay in an infantry regiment, who can rocket through the ranks if they are that good—and the SAS guys are; they are better—and get more pay. For the Minister to lump in all of the allowances the SAS personnel would get if they were in Afghanistan, and to have this House believe that that is their base rate of pay, is deceptive, to say the least. I put on notice that I am standing for the SAS. I want its personnel to get a pay review. I want a better remuneration package for them. For us not to give them that is to leave them open to being poached by other armies that will pay them better. We know, from the work they are doing, that we cannot afford to lose these people. Indeed, right now we are in danger of losing them to the police force because they can stay at home, never leave their families, enjoy all the luxuries and perks of life, never get a call out for 6 months, and get paid twice as much.

On top of that, SAS troops do not have just their black operational role—counter-terrorism—they also have conventional warfare responsibilities that entail them getting out with the battalions in normal peacetime and training for conventional war, exercising their speciality, alongside and with line infantry. I have a horrible feeling that in accepting some of the words of the officials, who have had the Minister believe that every SAS soldier is getting paid $80,000 a year, which is rubbish, we are missing the real value of these people. Without us being able to properly scrutinise them we are running for ourselves the risk of losing more of them, and, in time, of their becoming an ineffective unit.

I think many of our thoughts today are with the defence personnel in the Middle East. We have eight military observers as part of a UN force in that region. We have heard some of them speaking from Lebanon recently on the very trying circumstances there. It must be very frustrating, and they must be living in some anguish, because our defence personnel have been trained properly, and have been trained to fight militarily without affecting civilians—to obey the Geneva Convention. Our officers in Lebanon have seen the two combatants, Hezbollah and the Israeli armed forces, completely defy those rules, particularly the fourth Geneva Convention, which has been violated by the sending of bombs and missiles into civilian areas, where they have killed many people and destroyed basic infrastructure such as electricity, sewerage schemes, neighbourhoods, and bridges. The killing of lots of people applies both to the bombs and missiles of the Israeli armed forces and to the missiles that Hezbollah is sending into Israeli cities.

Our military—and our Government, which has sent our military people there—is well placed to criticise the way in which war crimes are being committed by the Israeli armed forces and Hezbollah today. Those leaders could quite easily, in terms of the International Criminal Court legislation that we passed in this Parliament, based on the Rome treaty, be brought before that court for those war crimes. They are just encouraging the cycle of violence in Lebanon and the Middle East. They are not solving anything—just causing more destruction and death.

We can contrast that with the way in which our forces have operated in East Timor and the Solomons—and in very trying circumstances when they first went into both places, most recently East Timor. They must have been confronted with people who were using various weapons and killing other people. Our forces have operated in a very disciplined manner, and I think it is true to say that neither the New Zealand nor the Australian forces have killed any East Timorese. So they have not encouraged the cycle of violence we see in the Middle East. They have not created grievances that can then come back on a peacekeeping force made up of nationals from another country. I think we can take heart from the way our forces have operated, although I would say that in the case of East Timor we have to be a little careful that we do not go exactly the same way politically as the Australians have gone. The Australian Government, in relation to East Timor, seems to have oil on the brain. It has not given the East Timorese people the best deal in terms of the oil resources that lie between East Timor and Australia, and that has been a cause of frustration amongst East Timor politicians of all stripes.

Of course, when we talk about peacekeeping, in some ways the situations that lead to the need for peacekeeping are because Western countries, including Australia and New Zealand, have not necessarily put in enough aid or delivered the aid most appropriately. I think that was a problem in East Timor, in that there was a significant aid contribution from richer countries, but it was not delivered in a way that removed the frustrations that later broke out into conflict in Dili and other places.

Also, to go round the world in review of our defence forces, in Bamian our defence forces seem to have operated in a way that has not provoked a reaction, and some good reconstruction work has been done amongst the Hazari population in a relatively peaceful environment. We could contrast that with the earlier operation of our special forces in Afghanistan with Operation Enduring Freedom. I cannot tell members any detail about how they operated there, because it has been completely secret—overly secret sometimes—but I certainly hope that our special forces operated in a very good and humane way, in as much as they could within those operations carried out jointly with the American and other forces.

What we do see, and it is a parallel with what is happening in the Middle East—in Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories—in the south and east of Afghanistan today is, unfortunately, a resurgence of the Taliban, who are burning down schools and stopping women from going to school. Unfortunately, that is because the way in which the American forces have operated there—and it is parallel to the way they have operated in Iraq—has created more of a reaction amongst the population, and has created the ground for such a reactionary, backward force as the Taliban to stage a bit of a resurgence. I think it is true that, across the region, the way in which the Americans have operated, be it in Operation Enduring Freedom in the south and east of Afghanistan, be it in Iraq, or be it their almost total support for what the Israelis are doing in the Palestinian areas and Lebanon, has only increased the presence of Islamic extremist forces.

We have to take a lesson from that in terms of our emphasising peacekeeping and other things that improve the situation for people, including better aid. Our defence forces are really just a component of how we rebuild nations, which involves getting good governance, delivering aid to get social and economic justice, and ensuring law and order—and not only our defence forces but also, as we have seen in East Timor most recently, our police. We have a very strong role to play through the police. What the Government has been doing with Project Protector, in getting appropriate boats that can play a role in a range of activities in the South Pacific, deserves some praise. The multi-role vessel in particular will be able to trans-ship goods and men to places like East Timor and the Solomons. It will also be involved in disaster relief and civil defence work, and in maritime surveillance work along with the good work that the Orions do in helping to surveil our fishing zone and that of our Pacific Island neighbours. It is a good-news story.

When the patrol boats come on stream they will help us carry out appropriate defence work in our region, in contrast with the previous emphasis of our military, which was more on coalition activities well away from our shores, more on doing the bidding of American, Australian, or British forces, and not necessarily on achieving anything positive in the long term— just as the American forces are not achieving much in Afghanistan and Iraq today.

I thank both Ron Mark and Keith Locke for their comments, and I will talk a little around some of the issues they have raised today. I will start with Mr Locke’s comments, because they are the ones most fresh in my mind. I thank him for his thoughts on our peacekeeping forces. As part of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, a number of our people are in areas that are subject to attacks from either side, because the fire and the rockets are going in both directions. So we have New Zealand Defence Force personnel based in Tyre, Lebanon being bombed by the Israelis, and we have defence forces based in Jerusalem who are under threat of attack from the militants on the other side. I do not think that in the Middle East the situation is so simple as to be able to blame one side, although, clearly, in this case Hezbollah provoked and Israel overreacted.

But our troops remain in the Middle East. Their families are in the process of being evacuated at the present time, as is sensible given the conditions. I am sure all members of the Committee would want to think about the troops’ situation today, and also that of our 26 service personnel based in El Gorah on the Sinai Peninsula. Those personnel have been there a long time now, but the situation there has deteriorated sharply. The Rafah gate has now opened—that means there is movement between the Sinai and the Gaza. Also, this is an area that has been subject to attacks, including a suicide attack aimed at some of our personnel as part of that peacekeeping force in the Sinai. So I think every member of the Committee should acknowledge the work our Defence Force personnel do. We make the easy decision here, sitting in our green chairs. They go off and do the work we require of them, and they do it professionally, competently, and in a way that makes them partners of the people they are working with, rather than occupiers or antagonists to those groups.

Keith Locke, quite rightly, pointed out how well our forces are doing. I acknowledge that Mr Locke supports our forces in East Timor and the Solomon Islands, and I welcome the fact that, I think for the first time, I heard him support the forces in Bamian. Yes, our 122 people in Bamian are doing a fantastic job. I have been in Afghanistan a couple of times and have been hugely impressed with what they have done, and hugely impressed with the relationship between them and the Hazara people. And why would not the Hazara people want them there, when we look at what the Taliban regime did to the Hazara, their culture, and their heritage? The destruction of those 5,000-year-old Buddha statutes was an act of barbaric vandalism that is almost without precedent.

So in Bamian our people are using soft power. I have read the American report on our forces in Bamian that praises what they have achieved with the use of soft power. But I have to say that even if we are exercising soft power, we have to be ready to use hard power, and that is why our people are trained for combat. Our SAS personnel, who have been on three rotations there, have used hard power, but what else could they do, given the nature of the people they were up against—people whose only form of communication is through terror and destruction?

We should remember why our people went to Afghanistan in the first place. They went there because the Afghanistan Government, the Taliban, allowed its country to be used as a host for the terrorist movement that launched the attack on New York and other places on 9/11. One cannot tolerate a Government that allows itself to be used in that way. I say to Keith Locke that we should remember the nature of that regime, where girls were not allowed to go to school, where women were not allowed to go to work, and where the soccer stadium in Kabul, which I have stood in, was used to execute people every Friday. That was the regime we were dealing with. That was not a regime that was going to be brought down by soft power; it was a regime that had to be removed by hard power. Although Afghanistan has a long way to go, we have made some real progress there. Afghanistan still has a long way to go, on the fact that it is close to being a narco-state, on the fact that there are still warlords, and on the fact that there are still Taliban elements, both in Afghanistan and across the border in the north-west territories. But our people are there for a good cause and most people in this Chamber voted for them to be there. We should be very grateful for the job they are doing.

I have had the chance in the last couple of months to visit, along with Ron Mark, our people on the ground in the Solomon Islands and also in Timor-Leste. Once again, I saw our people on the ground welcomed by the people they were working with. They are doing a job in Timor-Leste in a situation that, if they were not there with the Australians, the Malaysians, and the Portuguese, I believe would have degenerated into a blood bath. I have no doubt about that, at all. The job they are doing is necessary. I expect them to be there probably until the East Timorese elections in April next year. Yes, it is a cost to New Zealand, but it is an investment in the future of that country. Investing in the stability of the Pacific is an investment in our stability, in peace, and in the role we can play as a good international citizen in that part of the world.

I now go to the comments made by Ron Mark, and I thank him for his positive comments about the vast improvement in the defence forces. I acknowledge Mr Power’s statement of a couple of years back that the 1990s were hard economic times, but they were hard economic times taken out on the military. We ran down our military for economic reasons, not ideological reasons, but we ran it down to the point where it was not capable of doing the operations we expected of it. When I see our people on the ground now, I see them using light armoured vehicles that are state of the art and that are capable of providing the level of protection that we should have had when we had our troops in Bosnia in quite a dangerous operational theatre. I see our people using the light operational vehicles, the Pinzgauers, in the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste, and our SAS people are returning from their operations using those vehicles. I think those vehicles were a brilliant purchase. They were the best vehicles we could have got. They have served us incredibly well and I am very pleased we have them.

I had the chance, when I was in the Netherlands on trade business in Europe, to see the launching of our multi-role vessel, and I have to say to Ron Mark that this vessel is no Charles Upham. It is no lemon. It is a vessel that will serve us well in the Pacific. It will serve us in disaster relief and in terms of deploying our troops anywhere in the Pacific. It has enormous capacity and it will be a great addition, as will the other six vessels that will be launched over the next 18 months. We will have the biggest increase in our navy that this country has ever seen. The vessel will be multifunctional in its operations, and our people will be proud to be part of the services with the sort of equipment we are giving them.

I am very pleased about what we have been able to do in the area of the Air Force. There has been the upgrading of the C130s and the P3 Orion surveillance aircraft, the modification of the 757, and the—soon I hope—acquisition of helicopters to replace the Iroquois. I love the old Iroquois, but they are 40 years old—a bit like the A4s—

💬 Hon Member: 41.

Yes, 41. The helicopters, if the negotiation is successful, will be expensive. They have high capacity. They will be working for us for 30 to 40 years. They are currently state of the art, and that is the sort of investment we need to make.

I disagree with Mr Mark, of course, about the air combat force. We never used the air combat force in operation after 1945. It was always old. It was old the day we bought it, and nobody—no Minister of Defence in this Parliament—would ever have deployed our people into combat using A4s. The only place in the world I see A4s today is on podiums around air force bases, where they are used as decorative monuments. They were out of date. It would have cost us $800 million to keep them going. We could not have done that and the other very good things we are doing with the Air Force.

Let me come to the staff numbers. I am pleased that in the last year our Defence Force personnel numbers have increased by 500. There will be a 12.5 to 15 percent increase in Defence Force personnel. They have received—thank you, Mr Mark—a salary increase in each of the last 4 years.

If I can mention the SAS in the time I have left, then I will say, yes, I do want to be more open about the SAS. I hope in a few weeks’ time to be a little more expansive about the sort of work those people have been doing but, obviously, not at the expense of their well-being and protection. In terms of their salary, they have had a 19 percent increase. Yes, we cannot compete with the private security commitments in Iraq—we would need to pay our personnel $300,000. But the salary they are getting now, with the increases, is, I think—according to the defence forces—comparable with special forces in other countries. Again, I am very proud of the work the SAS people do. They have enormous competency. They have enormous courage, and I hope that in due course we can share with members the courage they have shown in action.

Vote Defence agreed to.

Vote Defence Force agreed to.

Vote Pacific Island Affairs agreed to.

Vote Food Safety agreed to.

Vote Police