Wayne Mapp: former Defence Minister on the Government's new multi-billion dollar defence investment

One former Defence Minister has voiced his thoughts on the Government's latest defence spending announcement. 

The Government unveiled the $12-billion dollar plan yesterday - $9 billion of it new spending.

It includes enhancing strike capabilities, replacing Boeing 757s, and upgrading javelin anti-tank missiles. 

Wayne Mapp joined the Afternoons team to discuss.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:17):
So, as we've been discussing, the government has announced the
significant increase in defense spending nine billion dollars of new
money in the next four years, lifting defense spending to
two percent of GDP in the next eight years. To
discuss further, we are joined by former Minister of Defense
Wayne Map Doctor Mapp. Good afternoon to you. How are
you very good?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
So?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Did this government investment go further than you expected in
terms of that funding boost getting it to two percent
of GDP?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
That is significant, it's significant, but they herald it for
you months, to be honest, And what that two percent
means is that we won't just have two frigates in
the future. It'll be three or four. But that's down
the track. We're talking ten years away. Almost Should we
go further?

Speaker 4 (01:02):
America spends what three point four percent makes our push
to two percent seem slight.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
But we're also the most isolated country in the world,
and we've got a massive otion between us and anyone else,
So no, we shouldn't.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Okay, what do you see as you know if you
say we're isolated, as we clearly are. What are the
threats to New Zealand that we're trying to deal with
with this increased funding.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Well, essentially in partnership with Australia. Australia is our only
ally and we have to do things in concert with them.
When the Chinese Task Force came down last month, the
first frigate on the scene was in fact our frigate
to Kaha, and then that was taken over by an
Australian frigate out of Sydney, but both were fueled by

(01:48):
our tanker. So the two countries work in concert, which
is what you'd expect allies to do.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
So, looking at that investment list that's been released off
the map, Javelin missile upgrades and Harn't strike capabilities, improved
drone capabilities, that to me as a layman's appears to
be a new direction in terms of armaments. Is that
a right viewpoint or is that something we've been trying
to improve for some years.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Trying to improve for some years it's sort of incremental.
I suppose of that list, the most significant would really
be putting strike capability on the P eight Poseidon's really
an anti ship muscile of literally hundreds of kilometers range.
Drones's not kind of been planned for a long time,
and I think they're primarily surveillance drones. Makes a lot

(02:34):
of sense. You know, there are a lot of circumstances
where you can send out a surveillance drone rather than
an expense of P eight with eleven crew.

Speaker 4 (02:44):
Now, speaking of the all this, there's a lot of
mentions of uncrude you know, uncrewed aerial systems and such.
Do you see a defense force in New Zealand that
has less humans in it in the future.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
No, All uncrude systems need a fair bit of human management.
In fact, you know there are for instance, take the
the seaborne vi aerial surveillance stro over the sea. You know
you're going to have a crew of sort of three
or four minimum to sort of operate that system. It's
got to be constantly supervised, it's got to be programmed.

(03:22):
It's got to be able to look at targets of
items of opportunity to be a fishing feet or something
like that. So uncrewed systems means no people on the
platform doesn't mean to say no people on the system.

Speaker 4 (03:36):
So what do you say to this text. We're getting
a few things like this through. This is an evil chat.
The army is evil, the military is subscribed tape take sorry,
sub subscribed state murder and sick to say we need
a military at all.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Yeah, well I don't buy that. If you think of
the well, you think of what we did in ease
Temil twenty five years ago and really for the following
ten years. We helped that nation and the people of
that nation have their freedom and their rights. Without us
being there a long with the Australians, that would not

(04:14):
have happened. It took Australia and New Zealand to provide
the security to enable that to happen. You've had the
miners all over the world. You've had people supervising the
peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. So the New Zealand
military is primarily involved about peacekeeping more than anything else.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Doctor Matt, it's been fascinating getting your analysis. Really appreciate
your time this afternoon. No trouble that is former Minister
of Defense Wayne Matt.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
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