Q + A
Episode 914
GERRY BROWNLEE
Interviewed by JESSICA MUTCH

GREG First, here’s Jessica with Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee.

JESSICA Thanks, Greg. And thank you for your time this morning, Minister. I want to start off by asking you how would you describe this White Paper? Is it bold? Is it far-reaching?

GERRY I think it’s very realistic about the likely capacities that New Zealand can afford and the way in which those capacities will interact with our closer allies and the fact that we also recognise the world is changing quite significantly, so in the five years since the last White Paper, a number of different—the word ‘threats’ is used. I prefer to use ‘situations’ – have developed that we have to be mindful of and prepared to defend against.

JESSICA $20 billion sounds like a lot of money. Doesn’t go very far when you come to things like Defence. Did you want more?

GERRY The sky’s the limit. If you look at other countries that bigger, other economies that have a much higher GDP, then the percentage spends are pretty much bigger in all those countries, and therefore the amount they spend is massively bigger than what we can reasonably afford. So I think this strikes a pretty good balance.

JESSICA In terms of lobbying for this money, we all know that that goes on. Is that a hard sell for you – for this $20 billion for a country like New Zealand? Was it tough to get it across the line, and why were you prioritised?

GERRY We have a system that we use in Government that most ministers and former ministers will be familiar with. And that is that you always have to bid against other priorities, and you have to have good reason for wanting to get this sort of commitment. But remember that any successive government after this, other than a National Government, would probably make changes to it.

JESSICA Was it a hard sell for you? Did you really have to lobby and prove yourself in that system?

GERRY You’ve always got to deal with the situation. Minister English is a very very competent man, as you know, and has a full understanding of across all government priorities.

JESSICA Did you have to battle with him, though, on this one?

GERRY I would say in any of our spending commitments, it’s never a battle. It’s a robust discussion. And at the end there you all agree, and away we go.

JESSICA How robust was it? Were you fighting for more?

GERRY I think the way in which a government works should be the way in which a government works and not really dissected. The fact is that this paper is very very strongly supported by the whole Cabinet and the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister.

JESSICA You’ve been criticised for not putting a lot of detail into this White Paper. Was this on purpose?

GERRY Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you think about New Zealand’s past record, particularly procurement, around bits of military equipment, we haven’t been that good at it, and we haven’t maintained or even achieved complementarity that you’d like. So we’ve now got helicopters that can’t fit in an aircraft and struggle to be carried on a ship. We bought 105 armoured vehicles. You can go through all the procurements and always see levels of compromise that are a little unfortunate. What this White Paper does is sets out a statement about expected capacity, and that capacity is assessed at the moment relative to the environment we live in, and then a funding track that enables both the Ministry of Defence and the Defence Force to very constructively go out and look at what particular kit inside those restraints and inside those requirements can be acquired in a complementary way.

JESSICA So behind closed doors, does that shopping list have a figure, have a price tag on it that those people can work with it? Is it just keeping it away from the public eye? Away from the people you’re looking to purchase this equipment from?

GERRY Well, much more the latter. I mean, we’ve said that we’ve got the money out there. That’s part of the $20 billion that we’ve been talking about. The commercial negotiations around exactly what you spend on what are way down the track in many cases, so the frigates are right out the end of the period. More closely is the armoured vehicles and one or two other bits and pieces, but it’s really in that 2020s that there will be the equipment coming on line, so it’s the next two or three years that the negotiations will take place.

JESSICA In terms of New Zealand, a lot of the criticism on social media is that this money could be spent in other areas, on things like social housing, on health. Do you see that argument, and what was your argument that we need this money in Defence?

GERRY I think you can make that argument about almost everything that we spend on – that there is something else that could take the increases that you’ve got in expenditure. But remember, the last two Budgets from the Government have put significant extra money into low-income families and this time put significant money into health. We’ve done that previously in education. So we do look at everything in a whole… in a wide breadth, if you like, and try over a period of time to get the right balance. But protection of New Zealand’s interest, both territorial and economically, ultimately give you the capacity to deal with some of those other problems by virtue of the strength of your economy.

JESSICA I want to talk now about the issue of the South China Sea. In the White Paper, you do a diplomatic dance, not really taking a position on this. Australia came out on their White Paper and took a very strong position. Why didn’t we?

GERRY Well, I think the issue here is there are a mixture of historic claims, and then very countries’ individual claims in the South China Sea. It’s a very very important sea lane, so we take a simple position that we want to see freedom of navigation maintained, freedom of overflight maintained and lines of communication running through there kept open. We don’t take a view on whose claim should be or shouldn’t be to the fore.

JESSICA Why not, though, when Australia has?

GERRY Well, we do say that we think that the rule of law should prevail. And remember that this situation is particularly challenging because where those atolls were once below the high-tide mark, the high-water line, they’ve been built up, and they’re now effectively land masses. And so how you apply territorial sea, how you apply exclusive economic zone to those I think is a real challenge for the whole world.

JESSICA Aren’t we going to have to take a stance on this, though, at some point? Because The Hague decision with China vs the Philippines is coming out soon.

GERRY And that will be a document or a decision that leads to a bilateral discussion between the Philippines and China. The new Philippines president has already said some interesting things about that. I think when we say the ‘rule of law’, we do expect that there would be a reasonable adherence to it. But in the end, it will be—

JESSICA China said that they won’t, though. So are you saying that they need to? Is that your message?

GERRY Well, we’ve always maintained that, and we’ve always said that to them directly. But in the end, any country makes its own decision. Can I just say, though, you’ve got to be careful that we don’t see this issue as being something that is particularly divisive in the old terms that we might have understood about your friends and your non-friends. In a couple of weeks’ time, the big RIMPAC exercise – naval exercise – starts out of the navy base in Hawaii. It’s run by the United States. A number of countries are invited to join that. New Zealand is one of them, Australia is another, and so is China.

JESSICA You mentioned ‘friends’ there, though. But in the White Paper, you say ‘For Australia, we have no better friends, no closer ally’. And yet we’re not following them on this position, and I’m just interested in knowing why we’re not and why we seem to giving a little bit more wriggle room to China on this one.

GERRY Well, if I was to agree with a position that said we should do what Australia do, we may as well not have a separate New Zealand Government. We are a sovereign nation. We make our own calls on these things. But in many defence situations through the last… however long you want to mention, New Zealand has had a long association alongside Australia, and that continues today in Iraq, with the training mission in Taji.

JESSICA If push came to shove, though, where would we sit?

GERRY Well, what is push coming to shove? I think that is the real question that is not answered.

JESSICA When the decision comes out, I guess.

GERRY Well, when the decision comes out, our position won’t change from what it is now. But as I said before, there are six countries involved in the claims over the South China Sea and East China Sea, and there will be bilateral discussions between those countries. My understanding is that Brunei has reached an accommodation with China. As I said, the Philippines President has said some interesting things – new president coming in – in the last few days, so we’ll just see how things go.

JESSICA When you talk about that friendship with Australia, will we be working with them to buy some of this defence equipment? Will there be some information-sharing with them? Will we actually go in and bid with them for things?

GERRY I can’t speak highly enough of the complementary nature of the relationship between Australian and New Zealand Defence Forces. The Australians are very generous to us, and we do appreciate that a great deal. But when it comes to procurement, we don’t always follow the same path. What is important is that we have interoperability, in that our systems are, particularly communications and those types of things, ways of operating, etc, are complementary.

JESSICA We’ve seen the Prime Minister in Fiji this week. And we’ve seen Russia and China extend their influence, extend their tentacles into the Pacific. Russia even gave arms to Fiji. Are you concerned about that?

GERRY No. Fiji obviously has quite a large military for its size, a very competent, capable military. And they provide peacekeeping services to the United Nations and a number of places around the world. And it is a big part of the remittance that comes back into Fiji. I went there soon after the 2014 election – I was the first minister to go there to establish connection between our military and theirs. They do send senior officers to Staff College, and they do take positions in our officer-training school. And we will soon be discussing with them some additional training exercises between us on peacekeeping matters. So we have a strong and once again growing relationship based on the traditional connections that we’ve always had with Fiji.

JESSICA Have you seen that growing influence, though, of China, of Russia?

GERRY All I would say is that in the recent Cyclone Winston devastation, Australia and New Zealand responded very quickly. It was our biggest deployment post the Second World War. We didn’t hesitate to go and help. We didn’t see the Russians there.

JESSICA We’ll leave it there. Thank you very much for your time this morning. Minister Gerry Brownlee.

GERRY Thank you.

ENDS

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