8. Question No. 8—DefenceGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) to the Minister of DefenceQuestion No. 8—Defence8. GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green) to the Minister of Defence: What actions is the New Zealand Defence Force taking to reflect its shift in focus to addressing climate change?Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Firstly I want to acknowledge all of the first responders and the families of the victims of the terrible tragedies unfolding at White Island and also the Defence Force personnel who are deployed right now in support. Yesterday the Minister for Climate Change the Hon James Shaw and I announced the release of Responding to the Climate Crisis: An Implementation Plan by Defence. This plan outlines a series of recommendations based on the climate crisis defence assessment released last December to assist the Defence Force in preparing for the effects that climate change will have on their activities and the expected increased tempo of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations that we see coming down the pipeline. Actions Defence will be taking will include the deployment of capabilities to boost our regional response capacity and bringing in technology to help measure and reduce our own emissions positioning New Zealand as a global leader in the military response to climate change.Golriz Ghahraman: What impacts of climate change are members of the Defence Force reporting while carrying out their work?Hon RON MARK: That's a good question. The Defence Force are uniquely placed to observe the impacts of climate change. They operate in the natural environment at the rawest of levels on land on the sea and in the air and they are very good at keeping records over many many decades. They have observed the thinning and retreating of ice in the Antarctic continent been exposed to increasing sea states and wave heights never encountered before in the Southern Ocean and been responding to more frequent and more destructive weather events in the South Pacific. At home sea level rises are increasingly affecting our coastal facilities in Auckland such as at Devonport North Yard and at Ngātaringa Bay. On operations—be that Operation Wasawasa in Fiji; patrolling the Southern Ocean; monitoring illegal unregulated unreported fishing; or in responding to bushfires internationally—our soldiers sailors and airmen and women of our armed forces are encountering the changes in their climate and the effects on the environment every day they operate.Golriz Ghahraman: How will Defence's actions help address the humanitarian implications of climate change in New Zealand's Pacific neighbourhood?Hon RON MARK: The countries most vulnerable to the change in climate are those especially in the Pacific. They are often the least well-equipped to respond to those events and are not just vulnerable physically but they are vulnerable economically and financially. Reinforcing the Pacific Reset the coalition Government has recognised our humanitarian obligation to assist our Pacific partners and to respond in the same way we would respond to similar activities in our own country. Under our Defence Capability Plan we will make enhancements to the Defence Force that will boost our capability and our capacity to respond in the Pacific including by increasing the army strength to 6000 by 2035 to handle multiple operations simultaneously; by bringing on board enhanced sealift and airlift capabilities so we can move supplies personnel plant and machinery for rescue and recovery operations; and we will be providing improved aerial surveillance and maritime domain awareness so that we are able to give more accurate timely information reports so that those who are responsible for planning Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief (HADR) responses have accurate detail from which to do so.Golriz Ghahraman: How does this shift in focus by Defence support the Government's commitment to tackling climate change?Hon RON MARK: Defence acknowledges that the impacts of climate change are accelerating and supports the work of wider New Zealand Government agencies in mitigating climate change. Defence aims to support the Government's commitment in two ways: one by ensuring that we have the capabilities required and the capacity to respond to an increasing number of search and rescue and HADR operations of increasing frequency and increasing destructiveness and in particular ensuring that we can respond to concurrent activities as we already have been doing. The second way is that Defence will undertake to use technology and to be more specific when it comes to drafting up specifications for platforms to ensure that for example platforms are able to run multi-fuels; that any barracks and facilities and bases we build will have a reduced if not a neutral carbon footprint; and that we operate in such a way as to minimise emissions ourselves.Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is the Minister saying that with vision and leadership recently with respect to the Pacific Reset and Defence our Defence Force will be at the front line in meeting climate changes going into the future?SPEAKER: Leaving aside the additional material at the beginning the rest of the question is fine.Hon RON MARK: I'm very proud to be able to report back to the House that New Zealand has—since I've been in the chair we have been asked to chair and lead defence discussions on climate change and the consequences of it. What Singapore Holland France—just to name a few—have said is that the New Zealand Defence Force seems to understand clearly the correlation between climate change environmental change the consequential impacts on society and from that particularly in nations where governance might be weak or tenuous the propensity to create security problems be that intra-State or inter-State. I think we should actually take some pride out of that.