Minister Judith Collins says no allies have put pressure on government to up defence spending

The Defence Minister says no one put pressure on the government to put extra billions of dollars into the military.

A push by the Trump Administration in the US for higher defence spending among its partners preceded the government plan, released in April, that injects $9 billion of new spending into the NZDF.

Defence Minister Judith Collins was asked at a forum if the country was scrambling to keep up - "climbing up a sandhill," was how the questioner put it - and may yet face more pressure.

"I need to say this very clearly: Nobody has put pressure on us," Collins replied.

"No state has. That's really important.

"The last thing you should ever do with a New Zealand government, particularly me, is tell me I have to do something."

This sparked laughter.

"They never have and that's really clear," she said.

Defence is one of the few sectors getting new money in the upcoming Budget.

Collins announced on Sunday the first lot of the new spending will be $2-billion-plus for maritime helicopters.

She made the case for the overall boost on Tuesday evening at the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, with another message for the audience, too:

"This country has to stop buying cheap," she said, citing having to send an air crew flying a 65-year-old Hercules using night-vision goggles into an Antarctica winter last year to save an injured person.

"Do you think I thought about the risk? I certainly did. Do you think that's okay?

"I don't think it's okay when we've got the opportunity to do better."

'Given them this hope'

In the run-up to release of the defence capability plan (DCP) last month, Foreign Minister Winston Peters was in Washington, saying, "we came here to ask them what they want of us."

At the release itself, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, asked if the plan would meet US expectations, gave a one-word answer: "Yes."

The new spending level was a floor, not the ceiling, to be reviewed every two years in case it should rise further, the government said.

On Tuesday, Collins told the forum she had discussed the plan with a number of international counterparts.

"I can tell you it has been received extremely positively by New Zealand's security partners," she said.

For years, ally Australia and the partners had got used to New Zealand "pottering along - doing some things brilliantly, like our special forces, like our engineers, like some of the air work we do... some great work".

"But they just got used to us being what they might have thought of as.... happy to bludge," Collins said.

"So, what this has done, this has actually given them this hope that we're there as a credible partner and that we get it."

Defence personnel having to use old gear, often bought second-hand, deserved it, too, Collins added.

The European Union ambassador Lawrence Meredith told the gathering the EU was a like-minded partner.

"We see these changing realities the same way.

"The first step in [response] is to secure your own defence and to do that, yes, you need to spend money, you don't get 'owt for nowt'," said Meredith, declaring he was an Irishman-Yorkshireman.

"And that's what this government is clearly committed to doing, that's what we're committed to doing in the European Union."

The EU is now targeting three percent GDP spending on defence and its new 'ReArm Europe' plan enables 800 billion euro ($NZ1.5 trillion) spent this way by 2030. New Zealand is at one percent GDP on defence, aiming for two by 2032.

He noted a joint programme, Horizon Europe, that included for research grants for defence industry innovations; New Zealand joined in 2023 and is putting $50m into by 2028.

Collins said local industry would be tapped to build drones.

On Friday, she will be addressing a meeting of the New Zealand defence industry, which is not open to the media.

Last year, she gave a speech to them, released under the OIA, in which she asked high-tech firms for help in the face of a "deteriorating" global security environment.

She promised the DCP would help the industry to plan, and that "given the size of some future investment decisions, having the ability to plan will be critical".

An industry strategy promised in the DCP has yet to be released.

Collins pushed back at the forum at what she said was commentary about the DCP's greater emphasis on deterrence.

"It really shouldn't be controversial that defence should be able to defend," she said.

"The DCP recognises the increasing importance of building greater lethality into the force to be able to achieve deterrent effects."

New strike capabilities would include missile systems, perhaps on the Poseidon P8 planes or on frigates or land based, she said.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of cyber and space spending feature in the plan. These were increasingly being used to "infiltrate" commercial or government data and deals.

"It is something that defence does need to be able to deal with... particularly the space area of it.

"So, you're going to see more connection between our space agency and defence," said Collins.

Space systems enable over 90 percent of NZDF capabilities, and space was recently added as a core issue to the national security strategy.

Yet "New Zealand is unique in being a launch state with no non-experimental sovereign assets in orbit", a 2024 briefing to the Ministry for National Security and Intelligence said.

The reliance on US assets and its space security activities and agreements is clear in various official briefings.

One in late 2023, it gave two examples of initiatives and both are US-led: One called Combined Space Operations, and a second, which is a US-funded hub in Auckland for monitoring commercial satellites in the first place for the Pentagon.

The 2024 briefing to Luxon said the current focus was on "understanding" problems of space security and it listed five activities: One was blanked out, one was the Auckland US satellite hub, and another was taking part since 2015 in the US Schriever war games - a space attack simulation - which the NZDF is helping plan this year.

The national space agency at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, has about 10 percent of its staff focused on national security, the ministry told RNZ.

"For MBIE, work on space security will come at the expense of a focus on economic development objectives for space," the 2023 briefing said.

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