Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Defence): I want to respond in a couple calls to a number of comments that have been made this afternoon on this particular sector. The first one I will deal with is the comment from Dr Megan Woods where she extensively went into the deep concerns of the Labour Party which were apparently tested at the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee and I would say answered at the select committee but which still cause her to lose sleep particularly over the $12 million demonstration farm that the Government contributed to in Saudi Arabia. It is worth noting that Dr Woods in saying that the Minister had said it was an arrangement that was entered into to avoid legal action—that it was in fact the actions and decisions of the previous Government that were going to precipitate the legal action in question. The member Megan Woods then went on to ask where the evidence is that there was potential for legal action. The mere fact that the demonstration farm was committed to and there has been no legal action as a result somewhat vindicates the position of the Minister who was actually covering for a very poor decision made by a Minister in a previous Government. The member of course will not remember that because she was not here. She is of a view that all things that happened in the past were so pure that they cannot possibly ever have been wrong or bad. Just reflecting on the contribution by the Green Party spokesman Dr Kennedy Graham the Government has no intention of changing our nuclear legislation. At the start of his speech he made it very clear that there is no need—that successive Governments have over the years on no less than 47 occasions been able to accommodate ship visits to this country inside the parameters of that legislation and there will be no change to that. Some of his comments though I think around nuclear proliferation are slightly troubling. Anybody who watches the goings-on in North Korea would understand that perhaps there does need to be some deterrence when you get complete nut jobs like that threatening the whole of that region with their particularly odd view of how life should be offered to people. The potential that that rocket programme has for destroying a lot of lives—and certainly at the moment—is causing a huge degree of fear in millions and millions of people. Then we come to Ron Mark's contribution which was typically rambling and all over the show. I will try to pick up the threads of it if I can. I would suggest to Mr Mark that some little effort to understand remedial maths and particularly the way in which numbers are added up inside budget columns or sideways columns might be useful. But I would concede to him immediately that this is a problem that all of us have; it is not unique to him. The concentration there on the salary issue—what Mr Mark would say is a disparity between a recruit who is coming into the armed services who earns around about $43000 and the Chief of Defence Force who earns a much higher salary. That higher salary is set by the Remuneration Authority and there is one Chief of Defence Force. But there are many many people who choose to serve in the New Zealand military who come in on that base level. What Mr Mark did not appreciate I suspect is that when someone goes into a theatre of operation there is a military factor applied to the salary which makes that salary a significantly higher salary than the $43000 that he was talking of earlier.The other point I would make is that most of those soldiers who are currently serving in those missions have got more than straight out of Waiōuru or Burnham experience. They are in fact soldiers who have been around for a time and who therefore will have progressed further up that pay scale. I want to say that it is something we constantly look at and Mr Mark will be pleased to know that there is likely to be modest pay increases once again this year for those lower ranks. One of the things that the Government has recently done is publish the Defence White Paper 2016. Mr Mark is right to say that although it talks about a $20 billion capital spend over the next 12 or so years there are not specifics in there about what we will spend on any particular piece of military kit. That is for a couple of reasons. One is that if you go back to 2003 the Government of the day thought a good idea would be to invest in inshore patrol vessels and offshore patrol vessels. There was nothing wrong with that decision. It was probably given everything that they knew at the time the right thing to do. It often happens—it is like farmers who buy a bit of kit to use to work on the farm and find out that it is too light or it is too heavy or it cannot manage the particular job it is required to do. The offshore patrol vessels have proved to be less than optimal for the work that we would require. What we are trying to do now is to ask What is the mix that you might like to have as a capability?" and then consider what would be the best equipment to deliver that capability. The white paper talks about a further offshore patrol vessel. It talks about a tanker it talks about littoral support—and we are talking about only the navy here—and it talks about frigates in the long run. But what it also has in it is a mid-point review in 2018 and an expectation that a future Government will probably do another white paper around the 2020-21 mark. So there are step-off points but there is a clear signal that we are going to continue investing in the capability of the New Zealand military and that we do want them to have the very best equipment. We would expect given our responsibilities in Antarctica that we will have a ship that can go down there. We do not at the moment. We will have a plane that can fly down there safely and return. We have aircraft at the moment that are quite compromised in what they are able to do as far as delivery is concerned. I will go so far as to say that we are being increasingly challenged in a competitive sense to hold on to the gateway role that New Zealand has and Christchurch City has to the Antarctic. We have near neighbours Australia good friends that they are that have eight aircraft that have a fly down and fly back capacity without stopping with huge payload capacity as well. That has to be attractive to the United States which of course is wanting to build a new base down there. We need to put ourselves into the mix around that. An advantage we do have is our proximity: a little closer to Antarctica certainly a lot closer—or several hours closer—to continental USA than Australia. But it means that we should have passenger capacity to the ice and back. It is a long history that we have had. We have the very big Ross Dependency down there.At the other end of the country there is the Kermadecs. I note Mr Mark said that if we turn it into a reserve how are we going to patrol it? Here is a question. It is our territory at the moment. How do we patrol it? Nothing changes effectively but over time we do need to have naval capacity that can run missions through that part of the New Zealand protectorate.Ron Mark: Change the priority.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Yes there will be pirating going on there at the moment. That is why we also want to invest heavily in better surveillance aircraft. The Orions are a great aircraft. They have done marvellous work over a long period of time and the air force has extended that life beyond what might normally be expected. The avionics on them are state of the art and as good as anywhere in the world. But new aircraft—and we want four of them—is what is required and we will be acquiring those in the early part of the 2020s. So there is a combination of things. I simply make the point that in both of these areas Antarctica and the Kermadecs—and the Pacific to add a third one—and then in our interrelationship with other countries we do have to have a defence force that is capable on a number of levels and more important can be interoperable on a number of levels. Although we say that we have what the member might have said are low salaries for people coming into the military as they go through the opportunities to improve on that are quite considerable."