Groser Tim: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Groser Tim: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 24 October 2007. Volume:643;Page:12717. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 As we reach the end of this very long process this is a chance I think to reflect on the overall debate. This is the first time I have looked at defence issues through the prism of legislation that is a very comprehensive part of the New Zealand armed forces. It was a very interesting way to look at the evolution of thinking politically about defence. 
Quite clearly discipline in the armed forces is an absolute integral element in the overall picture. Without a comprehensive military justice system that keeps up with the realities of maintaining discipline in a military environment and up to date with social changes and other legislative changes we cannot have confidence that New Zealand has the armed forces that we need. 
This has been an extremely detailed exercise. As we have said on frequent occasions we have been extremely well served by the professional legal services of the New Zealand Defence Force. But I would also like Dr Mapp like to hark back to a very interesting speech Ron Mark made at the second reading I think it was. It is always interesting to listen to somebody—whatever the subject of the bill may be—who actually has some genuine personal or professional experience in the topic of debate. The burden of his remarks was that politicians have not at all times served the men and women of our armed forces properly. Yes there has been lip-service but when we come down to the stories that Ron Mark told the House about some of his training experiences members would be hard-pressed if they could keep a straight face through some of those stories to argue that we—or our predecessors in some cases—not only talked the talk but walked the walk. 
 My sense is that this legislation has come into the political process at a time when quite genuinely I see a new political basis for defence moving forward in a very interesting and sustainable way. We ask a great deal of the men and women of our armed forces. I do not have in mind the normal issue when I say that—the issue of the literally supreme sacrifice. I am thinking about the highly complex role that our modern defence force has to play and the way in which it is really closely integrated now with what we on the National Party side have accepted is an independent foreign policy. The role of our defence forces—and I do not suggest this is an original way of characterising it—requires a political role in terms of providing governance in gravely weakened States in our region. 
The role of discipline and thus the purpose of this legislation—and there is a huge technical exercise that we are bringing now to a successful close—is absolutely central. We do ask a lot of these generally young men and women to go off into unfamiliar societies play these roles and maintain internal discipline. We know that in certain highly publicised cases peacekeeping officers from certain other countries have not maintained discipline and that that has been absolutely lethal to the underlying purpose of their being there in the first place. It is more than lethal; it is totally counter-productive. They are exposed to unfamiliar situations and different cultures. We in the National Party take the criticism that Mr Mark made but I think today we fully recognise that in these complex roles the multicultural aspect of our armed forces particularly our army is of immense political benefit obviously to New Zealand but also to our other partners. I would not want to publicly refer to some conversations I have had recently with some very senior foreign policy strategic figures in Australia but I have had conversations. In one of those conversations one particularly noted strategic thinker in Australia came up to me and said quite bluntly: “Your guys are actually much more effective than ours for that very reason.” I think he is absolutely right. 
This is an important thing to consolidate politically. Closely associated with that aspect of the wider environment within which we have been looking at the role of discipline and thus military justice has been the slow coming together of a view—which we can describe in various ways—about the future of our armed forces. Some people describe this future as being in a niche role with higher specialisation and a focusing on core strengths. Whatever phrase we want to use there is a germ of a very shared view here that in a country of our tiny size the three constituent groups that literally in numerical terms are the largest contributors to this multicultural society—the English the Maori and the Scots—each have a warrior tradition that has come together to form what is “New Zealand Inc.” 
Martin Gallagher 
: What about the Irish? 
TIM GROSER 
: The Irish? I stand to be corrected if the Irish are numerically of equal importance to our population base but I do not believe that is the case. I think the Irish too probably also have a warrior culture. Whether or not the member is correct in terms of the arithmetical point I take his point. In any event coming together now is a distinctive warrior culture that has been part of our past. 
We cannot do all things; we know there are some things historically that the New Zealand armed forces have been extraordinarily good at. They clearly centre in part on the army and I think that this new consensus that has emerged is that we have to put the resources and the other efforts into building up those aspects of our armed forces that can make the biggest bang for the buck. I think this is quite a profound change. I do not want to take that too far. I entirely lack the expertise to explore the limits of this policy—I say “limits” because I am quite sure that if we took this to an extreme it would collapse. We need for example facilities for training our army with strike-force aircraft which is a sort of sub-theme in the whole issue of the Aermacchis debate. I do not have the expertise to take that analysis. That is one of the reasons why the National Party in its recent discussion paper has foreshadowed a white paper—as a means of consulting both within New Zealand and with countries we work closely alongside to try to put some flesh around some of these new ideas. 
It is about large money. We all know the political cliché of the senator saying: “A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money.” and concerning the armed forces we are talking very large sums of money. They are modest by international standards but significant by our standards. The over-expenditure on the NH90s between the actual cost and the upper-bound estimate given to the Government of the day was enough to build the Auckland City Hospital. Those are the sorts of hard policy issues that have to be dealt with in the future. 
All of this really comes down I think to a new basis in which this country can move forward on defence. Military justice and the maintenance of discipline is a unique problem in the armed forces. We have brought this up to date I think with the aid of our expert advisers in a way that I believe will serve the test of time. We certainly all know that although this is an issue that will not engage the public interest much at this point behind this was always the historical reality that when military justice goes wrong the public reaction will be immensely strong and can literally last a hundred years or more if a grave injustice has been seen to be done. 
So we have worked through these issues. We have established I think a far more independent justice system and I hope that somebody in 20 years’ time when he or she next comes to have a look at this space will say that we have done a reasonable job for the beginning of the 21st century.