Gordon Campbell on Army Base Privatisation

Gordon Campbell has an excellent post on the issue of selling off defence bases and land.

Campbell sums up the issue well – “Any wishful thinking that such a sale and leaseback operation would not impact on the effectiveness of the armed forces is dreaming. Any short term gains from the sale would be more than offset by the costs of renting (otherwise, where’s the profit incentive for the landlords?) and those costs would eat into the money available to equip, pay and recruit our defence personnel.”

Campbell asks – “how will the contract protect our defence forces from having their premises re-sold out from under them in mortgagee sales, and their tenancy reviewed upwards by the new landlord? Do we really want our armed forces to have the same security of tenure as a flat-ful of university students?”

Indeed, the government is floating a number of ideas publicly to see what sort of reaction they get. On this issue there must be strong opposition. I see on Kiwiblog, DPF is floating another idea for the National Party – scrapping the Air Force and incoporating its units into the Army and Navy. This is obviously a concerted series of floats by the nats to remove the shock value of the white paper review when National/Act get their hands on it.

It is a pity as Campbell points out that this comes at a time when we have come a long way in sorting out the issue of Defence in New Zealand –  “Hopefully, the upcoming defence review will not also jettison the perspectives that were set out in the Quigley Review, called Defence Beyond 2000. One of the great advantages of that review was that it sought to put defence procurement decisions on a rational footing. Rather then being driven by inter-service rivalry or the latest toys for the boys brochures, or by the desire to keep up with the Joneses in Canberra and Washington.”