Goff Phil: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Goff Phil: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4169] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Defence) 
: 
 I thank both Ron Mark and Keith Locke for their comments and I will talk a little around some of the issues they have raised today. I will start with Mr Locke’s comments because they are the ones most fresh in my mind. I thank him for his thoughts on our peacekeeping forces. As part of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization a number of our people are in areas that are subject to attacks from either side because the fire and the rockets are going in both directions. So we have New Zealand Defence Force personnel based in Tyre Lebanon being bombed by the Israelis and we have defence forces based in Jerusalem who are under threat of attack from the militants on the other side. I do not think that in the Middle East the situation is so simple as to be able to blame one side although clearly in this case Hezbollah provoked and Israel overreacted. 
But our troops remain in the Middle East. Their families are in the process of being evacuated at the present time as is sensible given the conditions. I am sure all members of the Committee would want to think about the troops’ situation today and also that of our 26 service personnel based in El Gorah on the Sinai Peninsula. Those personnel have been there a long time now but the situation there has deteriorated sharply. The Rafah gate has now opened—that means there is movement between the Sinai and the Gaza. Also this is an area that has been subject to attacks including a suicide attack aimed at some of our personnel as part of that peacekeeping force in the Sinai. So I think every member of the Committee should acknowledge the work our Defence Force personnel do. We make the easy decision here sitting in our green chairs. They go off and do the work we require of them and they do it professionally competently and in a way that makes them partners of the people they are working with rather than occupiers or antagonists to those groups. 
Keith Locke quite rightly pointed out how well our forces are doing. I acknowledge that Mr Locke supports our forces in East Timor and the Solomon Islands and I welcome the fact that I think for the first time I heard him support the forces in Bamian. Yes our 122 people in Bamian are doing a fantastic job. I have been in Afghanistan a couple of times and have been hugely impressed with what they have done and hugely impressed with the relationship between them and the Hazara people. And why would not the Hazara people want them there when we look at what the Taliban regime did to the Hazara their culture and their heritage? The destruction of those 5000-year-old Buddha statutes was an act of barbaric vandalism that is almost without precedent. 
So in Bamian our people are using soft power. I have read the American report on our forces in Bamian that praises what they have achieved with the use of soft power. But I have to say that even if we are exercising soft power we have to be ready to use hard power and that is why our people are trained for combat. Our SAS personnel who have been on three rotations there have used hard power but what else could they do given the nature of the people they were up against—people whose only form of communication is through terror and destruction? 
We should remember why our people went to Afghanistan in the first place. They went there because the Afghanistan Government the Taliban allowed its country to be used as a host for the terrorist movement that launched the attack on New York and other places on 9/11. One cannot tolerate a Government that allows itself to be used in that way. I say to Keith Locke that we should remember the nature of that regime where girls were not allowed to go to school where women were not allowed to go to work and where the soccer stadium in Kabul which I have stood in was used to execute people every Friday. That was the regime we were dealing with. That was not a regime that was going to be brought down by soft power; it was a regime that had to be removed by hard power. Although Afghanistan has a long way to go we have made some real progress there. Afghanistan still has a long way to go on the fact that it is close to being a narco-state on the fact that there are still warlords and on the fact that there are still Taliban elements both in Afghanistan and across the border in the north-west territories. But our people are there for a good cause and most people in this Chamber voted for them to be there. We should be very grateful for the job they are doing. 
I have had the chance in the last couple of months to visit along with Ron Mark our people on the ground in the Solomon Islands and also in Timor-Leste. Once again I saw our people on the ground welcomed by the people they were working with. They are doing a job in Timor-Leste in a situation that if they were not there with the Australians the Malaysians and the Portuguese I believe would have degenerated into a blood bath. I have no doubt about that at all. The job they are doing is necessary. I expect them to be there probably until the East Timorese elections in April next year. Yes it is a cost to New Zealand but it is an investment in the future of that country. Investing in the stability of the Pacific is an investment in our stability in peace and in the role we can play as a good international citizen in that part of the world. 
I now go to the comments made by Ron Mark and I thank him for his positive comments about the vast improvement in the defence forces. I acknowledge Mr Power’s statement of a couple of years back that the 1990s were hard economic times but they were hard economic times taken out on the military. We ran down our military for economic reasons not ideological reasons but we ran it down to the point where it was not capable of doing the operations we expected of it. When I see our people on the ground now I see them using light armoured vehicles that are state of the art and that are capable of providing the level of protection that we should have had when we had our troops in Bosnia in quite a dangerous operational theatre. I see our people using the light operational vehicles the Pinzgauers in the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste and our SAS people are returning from their operations using those vehicles. I think those vehicles were a brilliant purchase. They were the best vehicles we could have got. They have served us incredibly well and I am very pleased we have them. 
I had the chance when I was in the Netherlands on trade business in Europe to see the launching of our multi-role vessel and I have to say to Ron Mark that this vessel is no  
Charles Upham 
. It is no lemon. It is a vessel that will serve us well in the Pacific. It will serve us in disaster relief and in terms of deploying our troops anywhere in the Pacific. It has enormous capacity and it will be a great addition as will the other six vessels that will be launched over the next 18 months. We will have the biggest increase in our navy that this country has ever seen. The vessel will be multifunctional in its operations and our people will be proud to be part of the services with the sort of equipment we are giving them. 
I am very pleased about what we have been able to do in the area of the Air Force. There has been the upgrading of the C130s and the P3 Orion surveillance aircraft the modification of the 757 and the—soon I hope—acquisition of helicopters to replace the Iroquois. I love the old Iroquois but they are 40 years old—a bit like the A4s— 
Hon Member 
: 41. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Yes 41. The helicopters if the negotiation is successful will be expensive. They have high capacity. They will be working for us for 30 to 40 years. They are currently state of the art and that is the sort of investment we need to make. 
I disagree with Mr Mark of course about the air combat force. We never used the air combat force in operation after 1945. It was always old. It was old the day we bought it and nobody—no Minister of Defence in this Parliament—would ever have deployed our people into combat using A4s. The only place in the world I see A4s today is on podiums around air force bases where they are used as decorative monuments. They were out of date. It would have cost us $800 million to keep them going. We could not have done that and the other very good things we are doing with the Air Force. 
Let me come to the staff numbers. I am pleased that in the last year our Defence Force personnel numbers have increased by 500. There will be a 12.5 to 15 percent increase in Defence Force personnel. They have received—thank you Mr Mark—a salary increase in each of the last 4 years. 
If I can mention the SAS in the time I have left then I will say yes I do want to be more open about the SAS. I hope in a few weeks’ time to be a little more expansive about the sort of work those people have been doing but obviously not at the expense of their well-being and protection. In terms of their salary they have had a 19 percent increase. Yes we cannot compete with the private security commitments in Iraq—we would need to pay our personnel $300000. But the salary they are getting now with the increases is I think—according to the defence forces—comparable with special forces in other countries. Again I am very proud of the work the SAS people do. They have enormous competency. They have enormous courage and I hope that in due course we can share with members the courage they have shown in action. 
Vote Defence agreed to.