Peters Winston: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePeters Winston: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 24 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7060. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]3.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) to the Minister of Defence: Does he regard all expenditure within Defence as being of high value?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Defence): Overall defence expenditure in 2015-16 will be around some $3.2 billion and it has been at that level for some time. So the answer to the member’s question would need a line-by-line analysis which I have not been able to achieve in the time since the question was lodged.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why did the Government sell the 10 Iriquois helicopters plus parts to a US company at enormous disadvantage to New Zealand companies dealing in helicopters and parts and at a loss to New Zealand’s economy and jobs?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: It might interest the questioner to know that the original proposal was to give the helicopters away. I suggested that they might go to a public tender to see what might be realised on behalf of the taxpayer. The details of the tender were published on the Government Electronic Tenders Service website certainly from January of this year and it was a very open tender process. The Minister does not decide who wins a tender. There are always restrictions on whom products can be sold to at the time they are bought. Those restrictions would have been put on during the 1960s. All of that would have been followed through the tender process and New Zealand companies had as much opportunity as anybody else to bid into that tender process.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why should New Zealand businesses dealing with Iriquois helicopters and parts now have to buy those commodities at a seriously inflated price as a consequence of his Government’s decision?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The tender process is a proper process. It delivers a result in accordance with Government disposal rules and the persons who win the contract eventually are able to buy it. What they choose to do with those helicopters is their business clearly stated inside the tender intentions.Rt Hon Winston Peters: In this photograph of the Minister visiting our troops in Taji was he wearing a flak jacket off the shelf or one that was custom-made and more expensive than a normal New Zealand serviceman’s flak jacket?Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I do not know but anybody taking a bit of a glance would know that off-the-shelf is not something I regularly purchase. But what I would say is that there are big flak jackets and there are small flak jackets and then there are flak jackets that are not required. A man of the member’s stature probably does not require one—so small such a little target. Therefore between him and me we balance it out.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is it not true that for this one visit he had a special jacket custom-made costing four times the price of a normal serviceman’s jacket and why does he not save the taxpayers money and just visit troops in a suitable flak jacket namely a tank?Mr SPEAKER: The Hon Gerry Brownlee—either of those two supplementary questions.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The first point is that the member may be a little surprised to learn that he is not the arbiter of how long my career as Minister of Defence is;nor is he therefore the determiner of how often I might visit those troops. But if he would like to come with me next time and not wear a flak jacket then I will welcome him to stand at the front of the parade every day we are there.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I seek leave to table a paper that was handed to us on 23 September online and not published until 25 September showing all the places around this country in respect of defence that the Minister Mr Brownlee has never visited. That is the list there.Mr SPEAKER: No I am not even going to—[Interruption] I will hear from the Hon Gerry Brownlee.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I would be very pleased to get hold of that because I will guarantee that a lot of that is just empty sections and you never know what we might be able to put on them by way of social housing.Mr SPEAKER: I will hear from the Rt Hon Winston Peters.Rt Hon Winston Peters: I would love for him to have a chance to get hold of it because his department wrote it.Mr SPEAKER: If the member is so keen to have it tabled and it appears that Mr Brownlee is also keen to see it on that basis I will put the leave and it is over to the House. Leave is sought to table that particular information. Is there any objection? There is objection.