Defence

Generally the right support stronger military with more strike power while the left support a weaker military and where there is a military one that is more peace keeping oriented.

I think we have too many mixed aims in our defence force.
We need to declare exactly the sort of war we would be willing to fight - I suggest if there was an invasion of NZ e would want a highly guerrilla oriented army so that is the first and main type of army we should need. NZ seems to get forced into buying ships and equipment from allies when in a real conflict these machines would probably just have to stay out of the way of their much better fighting equipment. We should this resist such expenditures.

I also see peacekeeping as a role we can serve where required but should not try to take on more than our fair share. NZ is a small country and we can very easily over extend our military in peacekeeping. It could also become very expensive and a defence force designed for peace keeping is really just a police force - one has to wonder why one doesn’t just have a big police force and send policemen overseas.

Basically we need to decide exactly what we want our defence force to do and exactly how much that will cost and how willing we are to pay for it. We also need to consider how important our allies are to us and what sort of support we can offer them. I suggest we can offer support (in many capacities) without offering millitary support and that is somthing to be looked into.

In the end this may seem a bit of a leftist policy but I am actually a somewhat pro american interventionist - I just dont think the expensive parts of our military are much help in this regard.