Ships stuck at docks, around a third of uniformed staff leaving since 2021 and a plane more often infamous for breaking down than its politician cargo.
The New Zealand Defence Force is in crisis.
Evidence of just how dire things have become was laid bare earlier this week when Herald reporter David Fisher revealed special payments of up to $30,000 would be offered to experienced troopers in a bid to stem NZSAS staffing losses.
“They’ve left because the opportunities that the military promised of travel of deployment to some of the world’s hotspots hasn’t really been there over the last handful of years. And they can go do more exciting things in the civilian world, and have somewhat of a family life to go with it.”
He said documents showed some of the staffing issues even impacted roles like plumbers, who were essential for sending personnel offshore.
“They referred to the lack of plumbers in the Army as having strategic implications and that’s because we can’t send people overseas. We can’t send a significant deployment of people overseas without having plumbers to make sure that they’re going to get good drinking water when they get there, to make sure that waste water is able to be disposed of.”
Fisher told the podcast it was “highly unusual” for NZDF to offer its personnel money to stay and it was an illustration of how parlous a state the NZDF was in.
“We do need to look at exactly what our Defence Force is meant to be doing and then to fund it accordingly and unfortunately, given the state that it’s in now, it’s going to need quite a bit of surge funding, I think, to get it back to a point where it can stand on its own two feet.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more from David Fisher on the state of the NZDF and what he thinks it will take to fix the crisis.
