Nathan Smith: Politics As Usual In An Unusual World

It’s a tired cliché, but this election feels a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. In a post-Covid world, “politics as usual” comes across as just wrong, so hyperreal.

How can we still be talking about tax rates, defence spending and free speech? Have we forgotten what happened a mere five years ago? I suppose forgetting is a superpower. After all, as the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran said, “without the faculty of forgetting, our past would weigh so heavily on our present that we should not have the strength to confront another moment, still less to live through it.” If only Cioran could see 2026.

David Farrar: Woke Wellington strikes again

The Herald reports:

A bicultural overhaul of Army doctrine that features Māori cosmology at its core has led to a Government revolt, with the NZ Defence Force putting on hold part of the controversial programme.

The NZ Army’s new “general orders” to soldiers uses a pantheon of te ao Māori gods as guiding influences for its strategy “to achieve a bicultural status by enabling the recognition of Māori cultural interests as they are guaranteed within Te Tiriti o Waitangi”.

Dr Peter Winsley: Developing New Zealand’s advanced technology industries through Defence Budget appropriations

War is terrible, costly, and achieves nothing that could not be done more cheaply by peaceful means.

Yet world military expenditure reached US$2718 billion in 2024, an increase of 9.4 percent in real terms from 2023 and the sharpest year-on-year rise since the Cold War.

David Farrar: New helicopters for NZDF

Judith Collins announced:

The Defence Force’s ageing maritime helicopters will be replaced to increase the defensive and offensive capability and surveillance range of New Zealand’s frigates, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today.

“The replacement of the Seasprite helicopters will also extend the Navy’s ability to support non-combat tasks such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief,” Ms Collins says.

John McLean: Supreme Court endorses defence force covid vax compulsion

New Zealand’s Supreme Court has decided that the New Zealand Defence Force can lawfully force its personnel to be vaccinated against the COVID virus. The Supreme Court’s 11 April 2025 decision means the Defence Force can expel personnel who are not COVID vaccine jabbed, and refuse to employ those odious unjabbed New Zealand citizens. All while the Defence Force constantly laments its struggles to attract talent.

Karl du Fresne: The soldier whose heroism the NZ Defence Force strangely refuses to recognise

I wrote this post for my blog last week, then decided it was an issue of public importance that deserved a wider audience. I shared it with the NZ Herald, which published its own story by David Fisher today.

A New Zealand Army hero has been denied proper posthumous recognition for reasons that are bafflingly unclear. The most plausible explanation is that the NZ Defence Force wanted to be spared further embarrassment over a shameful episode from its past.

John Moremon: The ‘Number 8 Wire’ Days for NZ’s Defence Force Are Over

New priorities will demand bigger budgets

New Zealanders have been put on notice that defence and security are among the bigger challenges the country faces this century.

The assessment earlier this year by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Navigating a Shifting World-Te whakatere i tetahi ao hurihuri, warned “the future looks grim” geopolitically. The release last week of a new national security strategy and defence policy strategy statement underscored the urgency of the required response.

John Moremon: Cutting-edge new aircraft have increased NZ’s surveillance capacity

But are they enough in a changing world?

New Zealand’s national security was strengthened this month when the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s newest Boeing P-8A Poseidon aircraft became operational.

A cutting-edge maritime surveillance aircraft, the P-8A is also operated by Australia, India, Norway, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States. It is now the New Zealand Airborne Surveillance and Response Force’s primary asset.

The NZ$2.436 billion order of four P-8As allowed the retirement of six ageing turbo-prop P-3K Orions. The P-8A’s cruising speed of 470 knots (903km per hour) is 40% better than the P-3K’s, and its 1,200 nautical mile (2,222km) range nearly double.

Cam Slater: Defence Force Bleeds Staff, Govt Attempts Bail Out

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.

Tim Dower: What kind of money compensates for the sacrifice of our Defence Force?

A pay rise for the Defence Force, which has lost about about 10 percent of its personnel over the past year.

That works out to around 800 people leaving.

What would be really interesting to know and hopefully the Defence Force does know this - is where they're going and why they're going.

Cam Slater: The Defence Force Is Bleeding Out

The Defence Force is in crisis. It’s actually worse than that: if it were an accident victim being triaged, it’d be classified as unlikely to live, regardless of what care it received. That’s how bad it is, as we will demonstrate to readers with leaked internal documents from the NZ Army.

The NZ Herald discussed how parlous the situation is in a recent podcast:

Point of Order: Mahuta was finding a job for Goff and keeping miners off the seabed

So what does she make of further dismantling of our democracy?

The news we expected to hear from Nanaia Mahuta, as Minister of Local Government, was not to be found on the Beehive website when we checked around noon.

We refer to the far-from-surprising but nevertheless deeply disturbing news that the Government-appointed review of local government is recommending the further dismantling of democratic governance in New Zealand

Point of Order: NZ-Aust defence agreement draws attention to the need for strengthening our military capabilities

Facing what they say is a growing threat to regional security, Defence Minister Peeni Henare and his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, (who is also Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister) have agreed to explore strengthening the “joint operational capabilities of our forces”.

For NZ, trying to rebuild its defence forces which were run down during the Covid pandemic, and now losing personnel, this is particularly significant.

Derek Mackie: Terms of Engagement

The recent jolt to World security and peace, caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, got me pondering how NZ would react to an aggressor if our armed forces were subjected to the same insufferable woke treatment being administered to every other area of public life. 

 With that in mind, what follows is a scenario that NZ Defence Force personnel may very well face in the near-future before engaging an enemy, and reflects the current obsession our Establishment has with co-governance, positive discrimination of minorities, cultural awareness and inclusivity across NZ society as a whole. 

    A: Captain H’Ardern-up 

   M: Sergeant “Nine Lives” Mahuta

    J: Corporal “Talk ‘em dead” Jackson 

A: Right squad, gather round and pay attention. 

M: You heard the Captain. Come on you lot, kia tere!