Mark Ron: General Debate 
Mark Ron: General Debate 
[Volume:650;Page:18712] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 When I came into Parliament in 1996 one of the issues that I was determined to fight for was the New Zealand Defence Force. It was natural for me to want to do that because I had 20 years’ experience in the military—15 years with the New Zealand Army and then as a result of being recruited by British officers 5 years serving in the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces in the Middle East. 
When I came into Parliament I took part in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee Inquiry into Defence Beyond 2000. I undertook to fight for extra pay and extra resources for defence and I can say proudly that I forced the then National Government by embarrassing it to increase immediately the allowances paid to our Defence Force personnel who were deployed to East Timor. I pointed out that the allowance those troops were getting per day was less than the allowance MPs were getting per day for coming to Wellington. 
In 1998 I asked the National Prime Minister about pay rates. Jenny Shipley’s reply was that Defence Force personnel are given free dental care. I was able to focus National members’ minds when I tabled a payslip from a junior soldier in Waiouru which revealed he was getting only $13000 per annum. In 1999 we had a change of Government and over a period of about 5 years there was a change in the direction the Defence Force was taking and we saw about four small increases in pay. 
New Zealand First does not agree with everything that the Labour Government has done with defence forces. We were always opposed to the purchase of 105 light armoured vehicles. We were always and still are—unlike the National Party—opposed to the disestablishment of the air combat wing and we want to see it reinstated. National has flip-flopped on that issue and turned its back on the air force personnel whom it promised would get back their air combat capability. We saw a number of things change for the good but recently with the release of the Ministry of Defence annual report some issues of concern have been raised. They were headlined by the media as “Can’t sail can’t fly can’t fight”. It was quite humorous to listen on the radio programme  
Morning Report 
 to the Minister of Defence Phil Goff fighting National’s “Mr Mainwaring” its spokesperson on defence Wayne Mapp—he is widely known throughout the country now as National’s “Mr Mainwaring”—because it was a bit of a one-sided battle. 
Some things that have happened in defence are not wrong—they are good. The long-term development plan is a good plan. The Defence Sustainability Initiative gives surety and security to defence funding. But the issues that fundamentally underlie the problems the Defence Force faces today are around one simple area: attrition and retention—the loss of highly experienced personnel. New Zealand First has consistently said for a long time now that the only way we can solve these problems is firstly—obviously—to recruit but also more important to retain the high-calibre highly qualified highly experienced middle-management personnel that we are bleeding. But still we do not see a serious addressing of that issue. 
On 28 August I had a briefing from the Defence Force in regard to the new military remuneration system. New Zealand First says it is a good system. The problem is that it has taken us 12 years to get to this point that this remuneration system will not be fully implemented for another 5 years and that unless we see a massive injection into the Defence Sustainability Initiative that allows the Defence Force to boot up pay and salaries—in the same way that teachers have had a kick-start and nurses and the police have had an increase—we will not stem the bleeding. It is no good for the Minister of Defence to tell everyone that our recruiting targets are up and we have an extra 1000 people in the Defence Force; we cannot say we have seriously addressed the attrition problems by recruiting 1000 new people who do not necessarily have experience and who in the main are raw recruits. 
The Defence Force is doing some good things. It has recruited from the UK some good highly experienced people. But the only way that we will stop headlines such as “Can’t sail can’t fly can’t fight” is to put extra funding into the Defence Force pay system in order to give our Defence Force personnel a substantive increase to stem the outflow now. 
I am proud to be standing as the candidate for Rimutaka and I pledge to those Defence Force people at Trentham that New Zealand First stands with them that we will always stand with them and that we will fight for a substantive pay increase for them. We pledge that. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.