The Press SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1971. Defence cuts

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32524, 6 February 1971, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1971. Defence cuts

The pruning of expenditure on defence reported by our Wellington reporter this week must have a drastic effect on the efficiency and morale of the armed services. The largest part—s 6 per. cent, in 1969-70—of defence expenditure comprises pay and allowances, in which the only feasible economies are the postponement of recruiting and the hastening of retirement The 7 per cent cut in over-all expenditure must consequently bear more heavily on the remaining 44 per cent of defence spending—particularly on stores and equipment, which make up 16 per cent of the defence budget. Our Wellington reporter’s forecast that the main cut will be directed at training and operational expenses is consistent with this analysis.

Some of the specific items and projects mentioned in his report are ammunition for range practice, shells in training manoeuvres, aviation fuel, training cruises and patrols in overseas waters, and overseas missions by Royal New Zealand Air Force aircraft. The savage reductions contemplated in this expenditure will severely limit the value of training imparted this year. “ You can’t exercise ships, “planes, or land fighting formations without the “expenditure of fuel and ammunition”, one officer said.

Recruits take a much more lively interest in a lecture on hand grenades when they know the lecture is to be followed by range practice using live ammunition; without that incentive they may find the lecture of somewhat academic interest. An officer planning a training exercise with insufficient vehicles, or vehicles restricted by a fuel ration, knows the full benefits of the exercise cannot be achieved. In countless other ways, putting the armed services on a shoestring budget undermines efficiency and morale. The latest cuts, three years after the last economy drive in the services, must be a grievous disappointment to the career men in the services. They had been promised only last year that they would be able to plan their training activities five years ahead, and that the expenditure for these activities would be provided. “With the Govem“ment’s adoption of planned programmed budgeting”, says the 1970 report of the Ministry of Defence, “ the Ministry . . . has accepted the “ requirement to prepare a five-year forward budget “ which relates over-all functions and objectives to “financial and resource costs and which can be “ translated into firm annual budgetary and staffing “ requirements ”.

The sendees’ grievances cannot be silenced by talk of national stringency or the need for Government economies to restrain inflation. The defence budget is little more than 6 per cent of total Government spending, or 2 per cent of gross national product; and about a quarter of the Ministry’s expenditure is incurred overseas. The state of the economy certainly calls for restraint in Government expenditure—within New Zealand. A postponement of building plans or recruitment drives in New Zealand would have been consistent with this restraint, but the abandonment of so many training schemes and exercises involving the expenditure of overseas funds is not. Indeed, a forceful Minister of Defence should have seized the opportunity to expand, not contract, these activities. The more troops posted abroad and the more training done outside New Zealand, the less inflationary is the impact of the defence budget on the New Zealand economy. By accepting the ill-advised cuts in his Ministry’s expenditure, Mr Thomson has struck a blow at the morale of the services in New Zealand and at the credibility of New Zealand’s commitments abroad.