Hayden Ricketts: Retired Lieutenant Colonelon the almost 400 Civilian Defence roles to be cut

Almost 400 civilian New Zealand Defence Force jobs are set to go as part of a major restructure.

NZDF staff were informed of the cuts today.

This comes after 145 civilian workers took redundancy last year. 

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Hayden Ricketts says workload will increase for remaining staff, and the growing need for a strong defence force. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, as mentioned in the intro, the Defense Force is
reportedly planning to cut three hundred and seventy four civilian roles.
The Public Service Association says its members have been told
about the cuts, but the Defense Force is yet to
confirm them. One hundred and forty five civil civilian defense
workers took redundancy last year, and uniform staff had to

(00:20):
work over Christmas to fill in for striking civilian staff.
Hayden Ricketts, he's a retired lieutenant colonel from Mission Home Front,
and he joins me, now, good afternoon.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Mean tim, thanks for having us on.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah, thank you. If all these jobs are cut, how
will that affect uniformed staff, Well, I.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Think the media commentary so far has been that there
will be an increase in workload on the uniform staff,
and I think that's dead right. The Defense Force staff
at the moment are well and truly overworked, understaffed, and
quite poorly paid, and this is just going to add
more pressure to their workload as the force is going

(01:00):
to be asked to do likely to be asked to
do more tasks around the world. Now we're seeing if
you look around the world, we've got the US drawing
down from security provisions in Europe. In a NATO, we've
got the Prime Minister and Ministry Defense talking about deploying
additional people to peacekeeping force potentially in the Ukraine. Combats

(01:21):
just ran or started again in Ghazan, and we've had
Chinese warships closer to home in the Tasman Sea. All
of those indicators point to the fact that we're likely
to need our defense force more and more often, and
this would seem a strange time to be doing personnel cuts.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Do we have any idea how many? Because they're cutting
the roles, they're often roles that aren't filled. Do we
have any idea how many actual people are going to
disappear as a result of this, rather than just the
number of roles.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
So I've got no detail on exactly how many actual
people are being cut. But this is this decision was
announced in September last year, and my understanding is that
this is the tail end of the consultation processes, and
now they're deciding which role is exactly going to be cut.
But the situation in September last year, as you recall,
was vastly different to the one now, and this looks

(02:08):
like last year's solution for tomorrow's problems.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Is it just that announcements like this just undermine morale
or is it because we think a bit further and think, well,
this is just going to mean more work for me,
or is it just the announcement. Look, there's more roles
being cut and it sucks.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
So if you cast your mind back to twenty eleven,
when the military is asked to provide a whole bunch
of savings around the military workforce, it was identified that
military people were quite expensive in comparison to their civilian counterparts.
And you know that's true. So they reduced the numbers
of uniform personnel and increase the numbers of civilians. And
now in the stage we are in order to afford

(02:45):
more cuts into the realms of cutting the defensive lielings
that they defining, the plan is now too expensive to enact.
What it boils down to is the fact that the
defense force is not resourced to do all of the
things the government wants it to do.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
What are you looking for yourself in terms of the
announcements that would start to boost your confidence.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
I would like the Defense capital plan that's been announced
very shortly to be a balance of investment into more
military capability to replace the aging gear that our soldiers, sailors,
and air men and women have, investment in the infrastructure,
which a lot of it was built in World War Two,
and a significant investment into our people's pay because without

(03:29):
the people to crew those systems, the defense force is
not going to be there when the government asks it
to go and undertake these tasks.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Well, the fingers crossed, I guess, and at least there's
been some signs that we're all talking about up hanging
our defense spending. So I really appreciate your time this afternoon.
That's Hayden Rickett's retired lieutenant colonel.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
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Speaker 1 (03:49):
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