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Further to our exposé of the dire staffing situation within the NZ Army, the government has revealed it is pumping millions of dollars into increasing the pay scales for NZDF personnel in a bid to stem the flow of experienced troops into other more lucrative careers.
The Government will spend more than $400 million on boosting defence personnel’s wages in the coming for years, as it battles record-high attrition in the armed forces.
After a week-long trip to London for the King’s Coronation, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was back in Wellington on Monday to give a pre-Budget announcement on defence spending.
Hipkins said the current wages of defence personnel were “unfair” and leading to attrition.
“It’s also putting at risk our ability to make necessary deployments whilst also responding to events such as Cyclone Gabrielle,” Hipkins said.
The Defence Force has lost 30% of its uniformed staff in two years, amid a tight post-pandemic labour market. Wages paid to many personnel are considerably lower than that in the private market – most defence jobs are at least 5% below their civilian equivalent, some as high as 18%.
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The attrition is perilous and to such an extent that the NZ Army would be unable to field a battalion of infantry anywhere. The other corps are also in dire straits. This will be too little too late. There are currently fewer than 1400 privates in the Army across all corps.
The Army is top-heavy, with 31 full colonels for just 3,373 non-commissioned soldiers. Our army is now a joke and we are being looked at scornfully by our allies, who know that, unless defence spending is lifted substantially, we cannot and will not be relied upon in any meaningful way.
The attrition levels are appalling:
This package is not going to solve the structural and cultural issues that are besetting the Army. It will merely slow down the slow death of a once-proud army.
The loss in terms of real value is staggering:
The total package to be allocated to defence at the May 18 Budget would include $243m for defence assets and infrastructure, reported by The Post earlier on Monday, as well as $419m for wages, and a further $85m for housing on defence bases.
The $243m the Government will allocate to defence capital spending will be for improvements to the Navy’s two frigates, which have in recent years been overhauled; upgrades to 43 recently acquired Bushmaster vehicles; and the construction of a new refuelling facility at the Air Force’s Ohakea base.
The $419m, four-year boost to defence wages effectively boosts the Defence Force’s annual $1 billion wage bill by 10% each year.
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It beggars belief that the Army has bought 43 Bushmaster vehicles from the Australians, when more than half of our LAV vehicles are still wrapped in plastic slowly rusting out unused because we have neither the personnel nor the skills to operate them.
The premise behind buying these vehicles is to replace some of the LAVs and a lot of the Pinzgauer fleet. It makes you wonder at the wisdom of buying both of those when they are now being replaced, unused and un-deployed.
The army’s procurement is a joke, as is most defence procurement. The extra $400 million will not improve defence readiness in any meaningful way. Our total defence spending is already far below what is considered the bare minimum, and the additional $400m will barely raise that.
Unless and until New Zealand gets serious and starts spending two per cent of GDP on our Defence Force, we will be considered defence bludgers relying on Australia in the first instance, and the United States as backup.
When Fiji has a military of a similar size to New Zealand, you know, without a shred of doubt, just how far we have sunk. We are no longer credible.
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