Anti-War Bill

The military got an increase of $20 billion last year.

No they didn't:

Up to $20 billion will be spent on New Zealand's Defence Force over the next 15 years, the Government revealed today, including a scaling-up of operations in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica and a greater focus on defending against cyber attacks.

The long-awaited Defence White Paper, released at Parliament this morning, earmarked funding equivalent to 1 per cent of New Zealand's GDP for defence - around half the amount spent by Australia and the United Kingdom.

Supperanuation alone is around 5% of GDP. Five times what we spend, even with that announced $20b, on defence.

Colin, you want us to prepare for a war that doesn't exist and and our own defence forces say isn't a threat to us.

The idea is to be prepared for the worst. The old:

Expect the best, prepare for the worst or:

If you want peace, prepare for war.

If you act as if there's no threat at all then the chances are you'll be surprised.

To do so you want to spend 5% of GDP to upgrade the defence force for a war that doesn't exist and that if it did we couldn't win.

With the correct force level we could stop the first invasion. May have difficulty after that but, then, a nation that loses an entire invasion fleet probably isn't about to try again.

Now if you took your 3.9% of extra spending and used it in something like my climate change idea New Zealand could stand as a world leader and an inspiration instead of throwing 3.9% extra money to the weapons manufacturers.

1. It's not one or the other but both. We'd lose unessential services rather than essential ones
2. We make the gear ourselves and not buy it from anyone else. IMO, profiting from war should be illegal

A lot of wars have been illegal. So long as we don't need to start wars we should be fine. The Situation between North Korea and the rest of the world is worrying, but we should be out of the line of fire at the least from the beginning. Perhaps if war does start we should scale up our military but I don't think the $20 billion increase was necessary and should be withdrawn.

Also, if war does break out between the U.S and NK, are we obliged to provide assistance?

Yes, we are. We have a treaty. You can pull out but breaking them when they come into play isn't nice.

Usually i disagree with Colin but with this i actually agree with him. We should be increasing our defence budget and investing in developing more military tech in NZ.

I dont think we need more personnell but we do need the capacity to keep up with overseas developments in the miltech arena and if necessary the ability to ralidly expand our military to meet unforseen events.

As an example it only took ISIL about 800 people to take the city of mosul which had a population of 3 million.

Certainly in the R&D Department so we have the capabilities to produce at a moments notice.

I remember an old Auckland joke “I have just had two air force Iroquois helicopters fly over my house. I wonder who is protecting the South Island.”

We need to keep this in perspective: More people live in Sydney, Australia than lives in the whole of New Zealand. We could not even defend ourselves against Australia.

With what equipment we do have Wiki - List of active aircraft and we still struggle to keep foreign fishing boats out of our waters, what chance do we have of stopping an invading force.

What are we spending on? Military training might be an option but we need to understand the type of threat we will be facing in the 21st century. (Drones, surface to air missiles, nuclear.)

I believe that we will continue to be invaded by stealth. One thing to watch for is with our own space program. They will declare that a military target and then allow the American military to set up around the location to protect the American interests that own the site.

Just consider, how accessible is that site to a Rainbow Warrior type intrusion/attack. That launch facility as it is - is just begging to be used for a "Red Flag" operation.

Maybe "We" should pre-empt with a policy that specifically singles the site for increased surveillance and protection.

The military spending is welfare spending. If you cut the army you would have to up welfare by the same amount.

The armaments could be sourced from New Zealand except people get icky about making weapons.

Our best defenses against being invaded are huge bollocking allies and an armed technically competent citizenry that is to ornery to pacify.

Nobody even invades for conquest any more.

I would argue that military spending isn't a form of welfare seeing as that only physically and mentally able people can actually be selected for military service. If anything it's discriminatory.

I agree that huge allies are a necessity but I don't think an armed populace is a good idea. There are a lot of people I wouldn't trust with a butter knife let alone a firearm. Pus if we look at the US we can see what the result of having an armed populace is. Lots of mental people settling scores, real or imagined, and a militarised police force.

I've literally never met a single person in New Zealand (including National voters) who thought the NZ military should be bigger or have more money or weapons.

In fact, the NZ military has been the butt of constant and timeless jokes as its so blatantly obvious that no matter how much money we give them, our islands are indefensible by NZ military alone.

Time to pull the plug, convert the forces into something useful (i.e. international disaster recovery, civil defence etc) and give up on this dream of being a mini-me in the image of US imperialist Big Brother