BUILDING A NEW DEFENCE FRAMEWORK.

• Author: Burton, Mark

Defence Minister Mark Burton discusses the government's approach to defence policy as set out in the new plan announced in May 2001.

The last 18 months have been significant for New Zealand defence policy as the government has moved to implement the Labour and Alliance 1999 election promises on defence. Both parties accepted the general thrust of the report from Parliament's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee, Defence Beyond 2000, and acknowledged the need to prioritise expenditure and properly equip the defence force.

Much of the government's approach to defence policy and defence expenditure has required it to re-think some basic premises about defence and the security of our country. This means, of course, that the topic of defence has engendered much public debate in the last twelve months.

Defence is a central role of government. This article will consider the development of the government's defence policy, the Defence Policy Framework(1) announced in June 2000, the decisions made public in May 2001 and other developments that are shaping the New Zealand Defence Force to confront the challenges of the new century.

Watershed report

The 1999 report of Parliament's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee, Defence Beyond 2000, was a watershed. It was the first time that Parliament had conducted such a detailed look at New Zealand's defence policy. It was also the first time that defence policy had been formulated with so much public input, in such a transparent manner and where there was a substantial degree of agreement among most of the political parties and the general public with the final report. That inquiry attracted 68 submissions, involved 25 hours of public hearings and nearly 36 hours of deliberations, and entailed 51 meetings of the committee.

Both the Labour and the Alliance parties went into the 1999 election strongly supporting the direction on defence policy and the role of the Defence Force set out in Defence Beyond 2000. Both parties agreed that the Select Committee report provided a sound basis for the general thrust of future defence planning. The report identified a requirement to prioritise strategic interests and defence tasks, and to derive from them the most appropriate force capabilities.

These election policies should be kept in mind when one considers the actions taken by the Labour-Alliance government since it took office in late 1999. It is carrying out what it publicly said it intended to do on the basis of the Select Committee inquiry and its own stated policies.

The three months that led up to the 1999 general election coincided with the commencement of the INTERFET deployment to East Timor. This period saw New Zealand forces confronted with their greatest challenge for thirty years. New Zealand's contribution, on a pro-rata basis, was the greatest of the 22 participating nations, and one that vitally assisted what is arguably the most successful peacekeeping mission ever conducted.

The Parliamentary debate which preceded the commitment to East Timor in September 1999 showed the unanimous support of all political parties for deploying the NZDF, alongside the Australian Defence Force, to secure and maintain peace there. Awareness of defence and defence-related issues was arguably never more prominent in the last thirty years in New Zealand than in the months leading up to the 1999 election.

New framework

In June 2000 we released the Defence Policy Framework. The culmination of several months of careful consideration, it outlined the government's over-arching strategic direction for defence policy,

* emphasising that defence is one aspect of New Zealand's foreign and security policy that is aimed at securing New Zealand's physical, economic, social and cultural well-being, and meeting regional and global responsibilities;

* spelling out the future direction New Zealand's defence policy would take;

* outlining the government's goals and priorities for defence;

* providing an established structure for future decisions about military capabilities, resources and funding; and

* pointing to the government's defence spending priorities.

The release of the Defence Policy Framework was accompanied by two...