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Andrew Dickens: Defence spending is necessary, but expensive · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So the news that New Zealand is going to spend
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: twelve billion dollars on defenses not news to welcome, and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: yet it is also welcome news, and this is because
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: it highlights the state of the planet. It's an unsettled world,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and in an unsettled world, defense is essential and the
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: equation for a credible defense is spending two percent of GDP. Now,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: within eight years we'll get to that target. It's a
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: doubling of the budget. And the question is why are
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: we only just doing this now. We've been spending close
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: to that for the past thirty years. We wouldn't be
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: facing so dramatic a spend today, but we didn't. We
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: were fat and complacent in a mistaken belief that we
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: were safe and sound and if something went wrong, our
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: friends would come and save us. Now we have China
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: knocking on our door and sailing in our seas. For
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: as long as I've been in the news business, which
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: is over thirty years now, Australia and the States have
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: warned that our coat tailing did not cut it, and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: we had to do our bit, maybe not have fighter jets,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: but at least something. So fair play to Judith Collins,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: she's finally accepting the responsibility that we've always needed to take.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: But this comes at a difficult time. Firstly, of course,
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: the world has become more dangerous, so time is of
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the essence. And secondly, we're broke, and it comes at
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: a time when barely reported mass redundancies are actually happening
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: in defense to meet government spending targets. So with this
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: move they have announced. With this move, basically they are
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: firing at the moment on one hand, and yet they're
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: going to employ with another. Now on it, you can
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: argue that both the firing and the spending are both necessary,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and they're necessary because we've sat in our hands for
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: so long, and they're necessary because we have spent irresponsibly.
• 1:44
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• 1:47
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• 1:50
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