A high-powered advisory panel headed by government fix-it man Sir Brian Roche will help set the course for a major review of New Zealand’s defence strategy.
Defence Minister Peeni Henare announced the members of a ministerial advisory panel for a defence policy review on Friday.
Roche, chairperson of the panel, will be assisted by David Gawn, former army chief and head of the National Emergency Management Agency; Don McKinnon, former deputy prime minister; and Christine Stevenson, chief executive of Customs.
Professor David Capie, director of Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Studies, and Pania Tyson-Nathan NZ Māori Tourism chief executive, will also be on the panel.
“While the review will be led by Defence officials, this panel will provide me invaluable independent advice and critical scrutiny throughout this two-year process,” Henare said in a statement.
The Government asked the defence agencies to lead a review of defence policy in July, saying a rewrite was required in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, intensifying great power competition and escalating climate change. The review was expected to product numerous strategy documents and conclude in half-way through 2024.
The first product of the review, a “defence policy and strategy statement”, was due in October. Henare’s office has yet to confirm when exactly this statement may be produced.
Roche said the panel did not have a “firm view” on how New Zealand’s defence strategy needed to change, however a loss of “people-power” at the defence agencies and major defence “platforms” – such as the incoming P-8 Poseidon surveillance and replacement Hercules aircraft – would be a focus.
"We have to sort of assess what the operating environment looks like ... then look at what is the capacity and capability required to credibly respond, and then say, if that's what's required, how does it fit to what we've currently got?” he said in an interview.
"It's a very important part to the [country's] geopolitical place in the world, as well as our place in the Pacific.”
Roche was involved in a defence policy review in 2015. He chairs Antarctica NZ and Waka Kotahi-NZTA, and was appointed by the Government to panels tasked with scrutinising the handling of Covid-19 in both 2020 and 2021.
