The re-worked defence capability plan went to Cabinet at the end of last year. It’s still unclear when the plan (and associated spending) will be revealed.

Judith Collins says this year will mark a major investment in defence spending, as the geostrategic environment is “shifting rapidly and significantly”.

But the defence minister is being cagey about when the 15-year plan for defence capabilities and spending will finally be revealed.

As tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific Region and Budget Day creeps ever closer, questions are being raised over when the Government will reveal its long-awaited defence capability plan.

The defence capability review started under the previous Government, but when the coalition Government came into power, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told his new defence leadership group to go back and “start from a blank piece of paper”.

Earlier last year, Collins brought the review forward to be finished by June. She then pushed it back to September.

In August, the Prime Minister told the Lowy Institute in Australia he expected the defence review and the related capability plan to be completed “towards the end of the year, maybe early next year”.

At the time, Luxon told Newsroom it was important to put “good money into a good strategy”.

Newsroom understands that strategy – the defence capability plan – went to Cabinet at the end of last year. And that is where it remains.

Now, the minister is refusing to publicly say when that plan (and the associated funding) will be announced.

Late last year, Collins said the plan would be released early this year. Then in January, she told The Post it would be released before the end of March.

Now, with that deadline creeping closer, Collins has told Newsroom the plan will be released “this year”. When asked to specify when this year – presumably ahead of Budget Day when the likely multi-billion-dollar spend will be revealed in Budget documents – Collins’ office just said the plan would be released “soon”.

“As I have said, this is a significant piece of work and it is important we take the time to get it right,” she said.

While both the defence force and New Zealand’s international partners will be keen to have a decision on hardware, personnel and spending confirmed as soon as possible, the Government is also taking into account the current geopolitical environment in the Indo-Pacific and further afield.

“The events of the past few days illustrate perfectly what I mean when I say the geo-strategic environment is shifting rapidly and significantly, and we have had to take that into account,” Collins said in a written comment.

One of these events is the Chinese warships carrying out live-firing exercises in the Tasman Sea.

On Monday, Collins said while the presence of the ships was unusual, they were complying with international law and not something Kiwis needed to worry about.

However, the minister’s comments to Newsroom implied this move by China was significant enough that the Government needed to take this into account before releasing its plan.

At the same time, China – New Zealand’s chief strategic competitor in the Pacific region – has been expanding its influence in the region.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has been calling on Nato members to raise their defence spending from 2 to 5 percent.

Currently, New Zealand spends just under 1.5 percent of its GDP on defence. Some experts see this as an arbitrary figure, but one that had risen in recent years, from 1 percent of GDP spent under National in the mid-1990s.

Following Trump’s comments, Luxon said the Government would be “getting as close to 2 percent as we possibly can”.

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Meanwhile, Collins told Newsroom the defence capability plan would mark a “major investment” in defence until 2040. She also told 1News earlier this week the capability plan would be a “big budget item”.

The minister said the plan would detail what was required to modernise the NZDF to operate now and in the future, “in what is an increasingly unstable world”.

This meant the plan would specify which resources and equipment would be needed through an integrated plan that looked at investment opportunities across different platforms, as well as the defence workforce and infrastructure.

“It will cover existing domains such as maritime, land, air, information and also identify opportunities for the space domain,” Collins said.

The minister – who is also the Minister for Space and the spy agencies – has an eye for joining planning and investment in her related portfolios.

Collins was making a case for spending that would modernise the defence force.

“It will not only be about replacing existing equipment but will also look at opportunities provided by new military technology, such as remote and uncrewed systems, and working more closely with partners,” she said.

The minister did not specify what types of drones would be purchased as part of the capability plan, but advanced technology such as drones, and technology in areas of information and intelligence gathering and space, were costly.

The last big-ticket items purchased by the Government were the “submarine-killing” Boeing P-8A Poseidons, which replaced the old P-3K Orions at more than $2.3 billion.

The defence capability review started under the previous Government, but when the coalition Government came into power, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told his new defence leadership group to go back and “start from a blank piece of paper”.

But this time, it was the Navy’s turn for a big spend, Victoria University of Wellington’s director of the centre for strategic studies David Capie told Newsroom’s The Detail.

“One of the areas that clearly is going to get attention is New Zealand’s maritime assets,” Capie said. “Every ship in the Royal New Zealand Navy apart from the tanker Aotearoa needs to be replaced by the mid-2030s.

“That’s pretty confronting for a country that has something like the fifth or sixth largest exclusive economic zone in the world.”

Beyond geopolitical tensions in the Pacific and through New Zealand’s main trading routes like the Taiwan Strait, NZDF was also responsible for search and rescue and everyday policing of a huge body of water, which stretched from North of the Equator, all the way to the South Pole, halfway to Australia, and halfway to South America.

As former defence minister Ron Mark told The Detail, this area of responsibility equated to 11 percent of the surface area of the planet.

But for years there had been “penny-pinching” in defence when it came to personnel, their standards of living, and equipment, he said.

This sustained underinvestment had real-world consequences, he said, referring to protecting freedom of navigation and important trade routes, as well as the security of New Zealand and other partner nations.

“You’ve got to invest money and if you don’t think it’s worth it then think about what other people think of you when you are asking them for free trade agreements and for better concessions and better access to their markets.

“Why would they want to help you if you’re not particularly concerned about their safety and security.”

Another issue the Government would be looking to address was interoperability, and being able to work with close partners like the US, Singapore and Japan, and European nations. But most importantly, they would be aiming to enhance interoperability with New Zealand’s only formal ally.

“We must be able to operate seamlessly with our only ally, Australia, and our friends and partners in the Pacific and further afield, to add value and be innovative,” Collins said.

This interoperability was something that would be front-of-mind as New Zealand moved closer to its traditional partners, as geopolitical tensions rose in the region, and as the Government continued to mull options presented by Aukus Pillar II.

Collins refused to say how much she expected to spend to implement the 15-year plan, or how long it would take to get to that 2 percent mark that Luxon had set as a target.

But while it was always hard to justify significant spending on defence – particularly when the Government was operating in a fiscally constrained environment – the rising Indo-Pacific tensions, coupled with more public focus on New Zealand’s foreign policy, could help the Government make its case to write a sizeable cheque.