ANZAC Day

ANZAC Day is a timely reminder of the importance of working together with our friends and neighbours to ensure peace and security, writes Defence Minister Max Bradford.

Anzac Day this year saw thousands of New Zealanders, old and young, gather around the country to commemorate the brave young servicemen and women who have given their lives in wars past.

It should be no surprise that a growing number of New Zealanders, including a new generation, make time to remember and show their respect. The past few years we have seen an increasing awareness by young people of the meaning and relevance of ANZAC Day.

We do not observe Anzac Day merely for formal or official reasons, but for reasons of genuine importance to all of us. We remember the courage and sacrifices made by people like Doug Dibley - the last of the New Zealand Anzac veterans, who died last year.

He was just 19-years-old when he served at Gallipoli in 1915. Of the 11,600 New Zealanders who served with him at Gallipoli between the April and December of that year, 2,721 were killed and 4,752 wounded.

Doug Dibley came home absolutely against war. It was he who asked us to remember that war is not to be glorified, but rather, is a waste of human life and effort, and that we should be able to resolve our differences amicably. I'm sure we all agree with these sentiments.

Our country, and our world, has suffered much from war. Although we are at peace today, not all people are so fortunate. To me this means pledging ourselves to work for the peace, security and the well-being of all people so that the sacrifice of those we commemorated on Anzac Day will not have been in vain.

Today, New Zealand has about 250 Defence Force personnel serving in 20 countries, many of whom are there because of New Zealand's commitment to international peace-keeping operations.

This includes the 150 unarmed (115 Army and 35 Air Force) New Zealanders in Bougainville at the time of the historic permanent cease-fire agreement signed on April 30. This number is being scaled down to 30, as Australia prepares to take the lead in the Peace Monitoring Group.

Earlier generations of New Zealanders earned our reputation as a country that will carry its share of the burden of upholding the rule of law and the protection of others to live free from coercion.

But it continues to disturb me that we ask the ultimate of our servicemen and women, yet have been expecting them to work with out-dated equipment and without the preparation they deserve.

Just recently, I saw first-hand around me in the tussock at Waiouru evidence of the current state of much of that equipment - obsolete radios, armoured personnel carriers that date back to Vietnam and show it, machine guns no longer up to the job of protecting New Zealand troops in a real firefight.

These deficiencies will be remedied over the next few years with new or upgraded armoured fighting vehicles, new Landrovers, communications gear and machine guns for the Army; upgraded avionics equipment for the Air Force's P3 Orion patrol aircraft; and potentially a third frigate ordered for the Navy.

This year has also seen the largest Air Force-led Defence exercise we have mounted since our forces last exercised with the Americans in Exercise Triad back in 1984. Exercise Matakiri was a "war game" with a difference. It was planned as a United Nations peace enforcement operation based on the tactical use of air power, and involved a coalition of New Zealand, Australian, French and Singaporean forces - about 3000 personnel.

The selection of the exercise scenario was driven by the increasing focus of the NZ Defence Force on peace support and peace enforcement operations, and the realisation that there is a need to bridge the widening gap between our defence forces and those of our allies.

This gap is particularly important to issues such as "interoperability" (the ability to effectively integrate with allies while not necessarily having the
same equipment), and "command and control" (delegation of authority in the field) which have arisen since the ANZUS rift.

Matakiri drew in units from all three of our services - Navy, Army and Air Force. Geographically, it ranged from Great Barrier Island, Waiouru and New Plymouth in the north to the high country of the South Island. In co-ordination with Matakiri, our Navy also exercised in the Bay of Plenty and the Army in Wairouru.

Most significantly, Matakiri was a test of the skills those combined forces will need in peacekeeping operations of the future. It was about our land, air and sea forces learning to work together at a tactical field level with our allies.

The logic of better equipment and more training opportunities like Matakiri for New Zealand's Defence Forces is obvious - without them, we risk high casualties in combat, whether in the cause of peacekeeping or otherwise, and we become a liability to better trained and equipped allies. We went down that disastrous path in the early years of World Wars I and II and thousands of our young men paid the ultimate price.

Our world is still an uncertain and sometimes dangerous place. The best way we can ensure war never happens again is to work with our friends and neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region to be prepared.

Defence costs New Zealand taxpayers just seven cents a day - barely 30 days of the amount we spend in 365 days on social welfare. Defence is an insurance policy well worth the price to secure and promote peace.