Close Ties With Aust. Desirable—Mr Eyre

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 3

Close Ties With Aust. Desirable—Mr Eyre

(From Our Parliamentary Reporter)

WELLINGTON, August 6.

The Minister of Defence (Mr Eyre) favours “as much as anyone in New Zealand the closest possible association with Australia.”

He said tonight: “My personal opinion, which I have expressed frequently in public, is that we must eventually form some type of federation.”

He was commenting on criticism which suggested that he had too airily dismissed Opposition suggestions that New Zealand should seek closer military integration with Australia.

“What I did in the debate in the House on Wednesday was to dismiss integration as a means of economy,” he said. “1 said that complete integration sounds good and it would be good, but we must remember that we have two sovereign Governments and there are bigger problems than just the integration of defence forces to be solved before we could entirely integrate our forces.

“Sovereignty is involved, taxation, and the amounts we spend on defence. In the ultimate, I think everyone with logic would agree that it would be good to have complete integration.”

Few realised the extent to which Australian and New Zealand services worked together, said Mr Eyre. The two countries exchanged details of every major purchase of equipment they contemplated, with a view to achieving economies through common orders. As an example, a joint evaluation team had recently travelled extensively overseas looking at training aircraft for both countries. An overwhelming proportion of officers of New Zealand’s three armed services were trained in Australia as were many specialist service-

men. Personnel were exchanged and there were frequent exercises. “We are constantly examining ways of achieving closer co-ordination and 1 will be discussing these with Australia’s Minister of Supply (Mr Fairhall) next week,” said Mr Eyre. | “We are also making ser-vice-to-service standardisation agreements, which will facilitate further exchanges of information on many topics with Australia and our other allies. "In spite of this very real progress, I must emphasise that in my opinion integration is quite another matter. Constitutionally, this must be linked to New Zealand’s sovereignty and the whole question of our existence as an inde-

pendent member of the British Commonwealth." Services were basically an instrument of foreign policy and as long as there were separate foreign policies there must be separate services. What would have happened, for example, if New Zealand and Australia had completely integrated services and either country had decided not to send troops to South Vietnam? asked the Minister. “Finally," said Mr Eyre, “there is the inescapable fact that complete integration of defence would mean that New Zealand would require to spend half as much again on defence as it does at present." The defence vote for the current financial year is £4O million.