If nobody is planning to invade New Zealand, why would we need a defence force? So runs the logic of those questioning the decision to increase defence spending.
 
The awkward part: the first half is true. Nobody is planning to invade us.
 
Repelling invasion has never been the job. The NZDF does other work that defends our national interests.
 
New Zealand looks after a patch of ocean fifteen times the size of our land, an area of great interest to many others. We are a trading nation. Almost everything we sell and buy travels by ship; tourism needs open skies; and our internet runs through seabed cables that others pay to protect.
 
We also sit in Five Eyes, the intelligence club with America, Britain, Canada and Australia. That seat is not free, although our Australian mates have long called us a defence free rider.
 
Then the neighbourhood changed. In 2022, China signed a security agreement with the Solomon Islands, a few hours’ flight away. Last year, Chinese warships’ live-fire exercises in the Tasman forced airlines to reroute. Last month, China fired a nuclear-capable missile into our nuclear-free region.
 
Then there is our own Navy. In October 2024, HMNZS Manawanui ran onto the Samoan reef it was surveying, caught fire and sank. The Court of Inquiry found that no one aboard qualified for the survey and listed twelve failings. One was hollowness: a ship and crew, but too few trained people to make either work.
 
Germany managed the same trick on a grander scale. During a 2014 NATO exercise, soldiers stuck black-painted broomsticks on their vehicles. They had run out of machine guns. Germany has since spent hundreds of billions and changed its constitution. Twelve years on, it is still buying back what military capability it threw away.
 
Our Army, including Special Operations, sits at a declared 45% of the required level. We know it; so do those who are interested in us.   
 
The invoice has arrived: twelve billion dollars over four years, taking defence spending to around two dollars in every hundred New Zealanders earn annually. The plan runs fifteen years, spanning three or four governments.
 
Cutting the spend would save little: a hollow force costs almost as much as a real one.  
 
The long and winding road towards strategic relevance starts now, if only we are willing to invest in our national interest.