The latest batch of New Zealand Army recruits has been warned to prepare for the possibility of combat as the world faces its most complex and volatile global environment in decades.
Minister of Defence Judith Collins weathered bitter gale-force winds to attend the graduation ceremony for 153 new soldiers who had completed an intensive 15-week training course at the Waiōuru Military Camp.
In her address as the reviewing officer last week, Collins told the troops that despite our size, New Zealand’s contribution matters in a time of such strategic uncertainty.
“Conflicts are escalating, the rules-based international order is under pressure and great power competition is reshaping the world around us,” she said.
“We may be a small country, but we are a principled one. We know that might is not right. We stand for peace, for co-operation and for the protection of those who cannot protect themselves.”
During the ceremony, Collins – New Zealand’s first female Minister of Defence – was seated next to the Chief of Army Major General Rose King, the first woman to lead New Zealand’s armed forces.
The parade concluded with a stirring rendition of the Army’s official haka, Tū, before family members were invited to present the recruits with their dog tags, an emotional moment that left many in tears.
After retiring to the officers’ mess, Collins told the Herald the world feels more unstable now than it has at any other point in her lifetime. The recruits she’d spoken to were “action-focused people” prepared for the prospect of seeing combat.
“People don’t join the Army because they want to sit at home and fight over the remote control,” she said.
“They join to be deployed, whether it’s at home, in relation to some of the weather events we’re having at the moment or some conflict area. They want to get the skills and play their part.
“The world is a very different place than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Even in the days of the Cold War, there were certain rules. A lot of those rules seem to have been forgotten now.”
In April, Collins launched the Government’s $12 billion Defence Capability Plan and committed to doubling defence spending to more than 2% of GDP by 2033.
Asked if decades of underfunding have damaged New Zealand’s military reputation internationally, the minister said it was more a question of how our Defence Force could be so good with so little.
“If anybody should take the hit, it should be those of us in Government over the years who have foolishly thought that common sense would break out, peace would break out, everyone would behave and nobody would be a threat anymore.
“Certainly, large powers are arming up and we were not. We were starting to be seen very much as a country that didn’t support its defence personnel, and we needed to change that fast.”
After posting a record attrition rate of 17.7% at the end of 2022, the New Zealand Army has steadily clawed that back to 7.7%.
However, that period of poor retention has created a hollow across the defence force that has yet to be resolved, with thousands of positions vacant as of the end of March, according to figures released under the Official Information Act. About half of the unfilled roles were in the Army.
To boost numbers, a new recruitment campaign has been launched and four training courses at Waiōuru are planned for 2026, up from two in 2025.
This week, 700 New Zealanders from across the defence force joined 30,000 personnel from 19 countries for Exercise Talisman Sabre, a “multi-domain warfighting scenario” being held in Australia.
The war drills are being seen as a show of military co-ordination between allied nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.
New Zealand’s Defence Capability Plan refers specifically to China’s pursuit of its strategic objectives in ways that can challenge the security of other states.
As well as supporting closer alignment with US interests, Collins has overseen the deepening of interoperability with Australia and a stepping up of defence diplomacy with Nato and the UK.
During her term as minister, China has become more assertive around Taiwan and in the South China Sea; more active in the Pacific, including signing an agreement with the Cook Islands, a Realm Country of New Zealand, without consulting New Zealand; test-firing a ballistic missile into the Pacific; and sending a naval task group to the Tasman Sea in February, which included live-firing without notice.
This month, the Royal New Zealand Air Force established its first dedicated space unit – described by Collins, who is also the Minister for Space, as part of the work being done to maintain a “combat-capable, flexible” force.
In the same week, it was announced that the taxpayer-funded climate satellite MethaneSat had lost contact with the ground and was “likely not recoverable”.
Led by a US group, the Environmental Defence Fund, the project was given $29 million from the New Zealand Government with the aim of growing the space industry.
The mission’s goal was to name and shame oil and gas producers that were allowing planet-heating methane to escape into the atmosphere.
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior journalist who has been with the NZ Herald since 2020.