£3.5m For Military Activities In East

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30937, 18 December 1965, Page 3

£3.5m For Military Activities In East

(From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, Dec. 17. New Zealand is spending about £3.5 million this year supporting its military contributions to the defence of South-east Asia.

This amounts to about nine per cent of the £4O million defence budget, although not all will come from the defence vote. The Air Force last year

spent £381,071 supporting its forces in the area but made provision in the annual estimates to spend nearly £613,000. Last year it spent £1,199 on ammunition. This year it provided £30,000.

The Army in 1964-65 spent nearly £646,000 on its contributions and this year has budgeted to pay out more than £968,000. The exact cost of maintaining the artillery battery in Vietnam is not detailed but a large portion of the extra money is expected to be spent on it.

The Navy had budgeted to spend about £240,000 on maintaining its continual one-ship contribution to the Far East fleet and its crews manning British minesweepers about the Johore Straits off Singapore.

The total provision in the defence estimates amounts to about £l.B million. The remaining £1.7 million which the Minister of Finance (Mr Lake) said in his Budget would be spent, would be paid out by the Treasury for the New Zealand share of the maintenance costs of the headquarters camp of the Commonwealth Brigade in Malaya, at Terandak, and for other undertakings.