Our 2011 election manifesto - Labour Party

DEFENCE
Our vision
New Zealand is rightly proud of its military and of our ability to contribute to international
efforts to bring stability to volatile regions around the world, to support our Pacific neighbours
and to defend our own territory.
Although New Zealand is not directly threatened by any other country and is not likely to be
involved in widespread armed conflict, non-conventional threats such as terrorism and
instability caused by failing states in our region pose new challenges for our defence force.
Maintaining a Defence Force that can be deployed overseas on peacekeeping,
reconstruction, disaster relief and, where necessary and UN mandated, full combat missions
is vital to our security.
Other functions such as protection of our borders against drug and people smuggling,
surveillance over and protection of resources such as fisheries in our exclusive economic
zone, search and rescue and civil defence, are further roles for our Defence Force.
New Zealand has shared alliance commitments with Australia, responsibilities to our
neighbours in the South Pacific and roles in promoting security and stability in the Asia-
Pacific region and beyond under mandates provided by, or with the agreement of, the United
Nations.
To carry out these functions, New Zealand needs an effective, efficient, focused and
sustainable defence force which has sufficient personnel and is equipped to undertake the
tasks required of it.
Personnel
In order to have an effective, deployable force, the NZDF must recruit, train and retain
personnel of the highest quality.
Recruitment must be sustained at a level that ensures a full complement of personnel is
available at all levels of the organisation. At times, recruitment rates have been drastically
reduced and this has later resulted in under-staffing amongst some cohorts. Those gaps
have been filled through costly recruitment drives for experienced personnel from foreign
forces. All efforts should be made to avoid this situation in the future.
Retention of NZDF personnel relies on both job satisfaction and proper remuneration. When
last in Government, Labour implemented changes to remuneration that increased wages by
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