Larry Williams Drive

Get ready New Zealand, a massive defence budget is going to drop in three months. Judith Collins told the show on Friday the Government wants to get to two percent of GDP. We're currently at 1.1 percent with our spending. We spend almost $5 billion a year on defence. So we're talking about double that - almost $10 billion. Now, Nicola Willis set her spending allowance for new money at $2.4 billion for the next three budgets, excluding savings.  So at that rate, it'd take more than nine years and ALL the extra money available to get to 2 percent.  That would also mean nothing extra for health and education or anything else. So that is quite unlikely. Here's what they should do - come out and say we're getting to two percent within 15 years. They're announcing a 15-year defence plan, so it'd signal plenty of time to scale up. Then there's the why - and on what? The why is easy. America is in retreat mode. China is waiting in the wings. We're in the middle, though down the bottom of this battle. China