Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern

Prime Minister

23 May 2018 MEDIA ADVISORY

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed the release today of further information on where NZDF personnel are deployed overseas, in the form of an updated website.

“The Coalition Government is committed to being as open and transparent as possible about where we are playing a role internationally,” Jacinda Ardern said.

“While the new information released today by Defence is relatively minor, I’m really pleased with the way they’ve taken on this challenge, and today’s updated website is a great resource.

“In the past information has been updated on an ad hoc basis. Now, deployment information is easier to access and consolidated in one place.

“Defence is a specialist area, and not all information can be released to the public because of security concerns, sometimes in order to keep NZDF personnel safe from potential threats.

“However, Minister of Defence Ron Mark and I challenged the Ministry of Defence and the NZDF to examine what could be released to give New Zealanders as much information as possible about our overseas deployments.

“Defence will also be proactively releasing their advice to Cabinet following future decisions on deployments and mandates and at those points the website will be updated accordingly,” Jacinda Ardern said.

The new webpage can be found at https://defence.govt.nz/what-we-do/diplomacy-and-deployments/deployment-map/

Future Cabinet papers being released will be advertised on the homepage: https://defence.govt.nz/

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