Chapter 1. Introduction—The Policy Background and the Policy Framework

Before moving on to investigate recent acquisition case studies, it is important to set the historical background against which more recent policy decisions have been made, and describe the foreign and defence policy framework within which decisions for defence acquisitions are developed and implemented.

Prior to the Second World War, New Zealand defence planning revolved essentially around the expectation that the Royal Navy (RN) and the British fleet would ensure New Zealand’s protection. At the Imperial Conference of 1937 New Zealand Prime Minister Michael Savage was firm in his desire to have Britain promise to send a fleet to the Far East. He received a qualified promise from Sir Samuel Hoare, First Lord of the Admiralty, who indicated that it would be possible in the current circumstances to send the fleet, while still retaining sufficient ships to fulfil European requirements. New Zealand defence planning continued on this understanding.

On 1 September 1939 Germany entered Poland, and two days later Britain declared war, followed almost immediately by New Zealand. On 5 September 1939 Savage broadcast from his sick-bed what was to become an immortal speech:

These sentiments were given substance only a week later, when the New Zealand Government offered an army division for service in Europe, and put over 500 personnel at the disposal of the Royal Air Force (RAF). The Naval Division had already come under RN command. By June 1940 the second echelon of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force was in the south of England, training to repel the expected German invasion. That same month Britain told New Zealand that she might not after all be able to send the fleet to Singapore if Japan entered the war.

This was devastating news for New Zealand, and it became clear that the only nation who could assist in the region was the United States. Peter Fraser, by now Prime Minister, told the British that he wished to establish diplomatic relations with Washington, and in January 1942 Walter Nash arrived there as New Zealand Minister. US support for New Zealand was quick to follow, with two divisions landing in New Zealand in June 1942.^[2]

The US presence in New Zealand, coupled with public sentiment and pressure from Britain resulted in the decision to keep the 2nd Division in the Middle East, where it had been in action since the previous November.^[3] This decision received a less than favourable response from the Australians, who had already moved two of their divisions from the Middle East. Relationships with Australia became even cooler the following year when, in May 1943, New Zealand once more decided to leave the 2nd Division in the Middle East.^[4] The development of the 3rd Division in the Pacific, with postings first to Fiji, then New Caledonia and the Solomon Islands, did not seem to ameliorate the concern.^[5]

Despite the forging of the ANZAC spirit in the First World War, the Second World War saw each country, for the most part, operating in separate theatres. However, as is so often the case between rivalrous cousins, both countries saw advantages in banding together to ensure that a post-war world would take account of them. Each country particularly had concerns about US intentions in the Pacific following the end of the war.

In order to explore closer trans-Tasman relations, in January 1944 Peter Fraser met with the Australian Prime Minister John Curtin, and his Minister for External Affairs, Dr Herbert Vere Evatt. The outcome of a series of meetings that took place during the Canberra conference was the Australia–New Zealand Agreement, which established both a formal treaty between the two countries, and the continuous Australia–New Zealand Secretariat. The document declared: ‘It would be proper for Australia and New Zealand to assume full responsibility for policing or sharing in policing such areas in the Southwest and South Pacific as may from time to time be agreed upon.’^[6]

The Agreement also stressed that the construction of wartime bases gave no basis for territorial claims, and insisted that no change in the sovereignty of any Pacific island territory occur without their agreement. Both the Americans and the British were concerned about the tenor of the Canberra Pact, and Sir Alister McIntosh noted: ‘Care was taken henceforth to exclude New Zealand forces from any very effective role in the fighting against Japan.’ Whilst McIntosh went on to comment that, ‘so far as New Zealand was concerned, it was a diversion’,^[7] John C. Beaglehole thought that in the Canberra Pact New Zealand:

That independent stance was to be to the fore once more during the development phase of the United Nations.