New Zealand Navy idles ships as labour crisis hits

THREE of New Zealand’s nine naval ships were left sitting idle in port as higher civilian salaries have lured personnel out of the military, said the country’s Defence Force on Wednesday (Dec 7), even as tensions in the Pacific rose between China and the US and its allies. 

The HMNZS Wellington, an offshore patrol vessel, headed back to New Zealand early from what was meant to be a three-month deployment in the Pacific. The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) added that the ship was taken out of operation in November due to personnel shortages.

The Wellington was the third ship to be put into “care and custody”. The two other vessels – another offshore patrol vessel and a smaller patrol vessel for operating close to shore – were pulled off the line and had their crews reassigned last year. The vessels had crews that numbered between 24 and 42.

In August, the Chief of the Defence Force Air Marshal Kevin Short told the Minister of Defence that “workforce issues are impacting ship availability to deliver naval outputs”. He added that “risks remain … if attrition and hollowness cannot be addressed in a timely manner”.

The number of people leaving the NZDF is at its highest level in decades, as staff quit for jobs in the private sector, where salaries have risen due to a tight labour market. The Navy’s attrition rate stood at 16.5 per cent this year until November.

The NZDF is also dealing with ageing equipment, and having to assign a large number of its personnel to border quarantine facilities.

New Zealand is replacing its fleet of C-130 cargo planes and P-3 maritime patrol aircraft (MPA), and the first of four Boeing P-8A Poseidon MPA is due to arrive this month. Plans for a new military vessel built for Southern Ocean and Antarctic conditions were shelved this year. 

Minister of Defence Peeni Henare acknowledged that staff losses were hurting the Defence Force, but said the government was committed to rebuilding it.

“There is more still to do,” he said.

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NZDF has just over 15,000 personnel, including civilian staff, and about 2,800 are in the Navy. The Defence Force said in May that it would spend NZ$90 million (S$77.4 million) over four years to raise the salaries of its lowest-paid workers. Officials hoped that personnel figures would significantly improve by 2027.

A spokesperson for the NZDF said that having so few ships available made it harder for the navy to handle multiple challenges at once.

The problem was especially acute against the backdrop of the US, Japan, Australia and other countries in the region squaring off against China and striving for influence. New defence spending plans, driven by lessons learnt from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are also taking shape.

New Zealand, which spends roughly 1.5 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence, announced this year that it would review its own defence policy in light of regional geopolitics and climate change. The review will not be completed until 2024.

In July, after China signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that the Pacific region could manage security issues on its own. REUTERS