The Ministry of Defence has halted the acquisition of a Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel, as the Government reviews its military spending plans and the Defence Force struggles to retain soldiers.
The ministry had been seeking tenders from companies to build of Navy vessel for patrolling the waters between New Zealand and Antarctica, a purchase that would boost an already stretched Navy’s ability to monitor fisheries during the busy summer fishing season.
The Government had planned to buy the vessel, expected to cost between $300 million and $600m and be built by 2027. But ministers have since signalled the Government’s spending priorities were shifting, as the Defence Force faces major staff losses due to the pandemic.
Ministry of Defence deputy secretary Michael Swain on Tuesday confirmed further work on purchasing a Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel had been “deferred”.
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“The project has not been cancelled and the future of the Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel project will continue to be considered in the coming months,” Swain said in a statement. “Due to the impact Covid-19 has had on the fiscal environment and emerging personnel pressures from other projects, this work has been deferred.”
The deferral comes as Cabinet reconsiders the Government’s Defence Capability Plan, a sweeping spending programme drawn up by the prior Labour-coalition Government in 2019 that included the Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel.
The Navy’s existing vessels did not “provide the optimal fleet for our maritime domain”, the plan said, and a Southern Ocean Patrol Vessel was needed to meet the demand of the summer fishing season, which coincided with the cyclone season in the Pacific.
The Government has given little detail about its planned rewrite of defence spending. Defence Minister Peeni Henare has said the Labour Government wanted to push planned purchases of ships and planes into future decades, and instead work to “regrow” defence infrastructure.
Henare has been contacted for comment.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Monday said the Defence Force faced a number of pressures, “particularly around the Defence Force estate, around retention of workforce”, that Cabinet was considering for the upcoming Budget.
The Chief of Defence, Air Marshall Kevin Short, told MPs at a select committee hearing last month that the Defence Force had a climbing attrition rate, which had increased month-by-month to 11.4 per cent.
"We've had 1556 resignations for people choosing to leave the force from the end of January, last year to the end of January this year.”
Of these resignations, 499 had been part of “Operation Protect”, which had staff guarding managed isolation facilities throughout the pandemic.
“It is also in part due to the function of an extremely strong labour market and the demand out there for skilled people,” Short said.
But, Short said, a more pressing concern was the “maintenance of the force”, or the re-training of soldiers who had for been without usual training schedules and deployments throughout the pandemic.
The Defence Force earlier this month announced it would sell two inshore patrol vessels, the HMNZS Rotoiti and HMNZS Pukaki, to Ireland, after the vessels had been decommissioned. The pair were sold for $36m, on the condition that $16-$19m was first spent on modifying the vessels in New Zealand shipyards.
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