The Herald on Sunday's front page last weekend. Photo: Herald on Sunday
"Are you getting more money for this budget for defence? Are you?" ZB Drive host Ryan Bridge asked Defence Minister Judith Collins late last week after Chinese warships were spotted in the Tasman Sea.
It was part of the "challenging time we now live in", said Collins, who recently attended the international security conference in Munich at which US Vice President JD Vance told European leaders there was a "new sheriff in the White House".
A sheriff that seems to be cooling on commitments to Ukraine while warming to Putin's Russia, prompting governments around the world to review their defence plans.
"You just have to wait and see. I'm a happy little pixie, actually, being minister of defence at the moment," Collins told Bridge.
"But we're very clear. We will have to spend more on defence," she added.
The tension went up the next day with reports of live fire exercises involving the warships.
One week later, with the prime minister and his deputy both elsewhere in Asia, acting PM David Seymour told reporters: "Personally I think the Chinese have made a tactical error because they have alerted the New Zealand public that the world is changing."
A bold call for a fill-in PM to criticise China's tactics.
But long before the Chinese ships showed up Act had said New Zealand "must invest in defence or risk isolation with Trump 2.0."
"It's about $3.5b. It's a significant investment but... we're no longer in this benign state," ACT's Mark Cameron told ZB back in mid-January.
And when Christopher Luxon told RNZ this week he wanted to get New Zealand's defence spending up near 2 percent of GDP, the ACT party rushed out a statement hailing this as "an emerging triumph" for itself.
And it wasn't always easy to work out just how seriously our media were taking this issue.
The day after the Chinese ships appeared, the Weekend Herald ran a small story on page seven based on Judith Collins calling it "a wake-up call".
The next day the front page of the Herald on Sunday had 'WAR GAMES' on the front page with a rundown of recent military and diplomatic moves in the South Pacific on the inside pages.
On Monday, the naval incursion was deep in the paper again with just a cut-down version of an earlier-published RNZ story at the bottom of page 10.
However, a reader from Remuera pointed out on the letters page that New Zealand sent a warship to the contested waters of the Taiwan Strait back in 2017.
In fact, New Zealand did it again just last September along with an Australian ship. Collins called it "a routine activity" in a handful of news stories about that at that time. But it was probably not seen that way by China.
This week Canterbury University's Annemarie Brady also told RNZ New Zealand must "muscle up" its defence spending - citing Chinese media.
"The People's Daily said that what's going on is that the Southern Theatre Command has deployed naval and air forces for training exercises," said Brady.
"That's not business as usual for China. It's a signal to New Zealand and Australia that China is preparing for regular deployment in the South Pacific."
The People's Daily amplifies the voice of the PRC government, especially the People's Liberation Army.
The day after those ships appeared in the Tasman, daily podcast The Detail - featured former Defence Minister Ron Mark and Victoria University's David Capie who also urged an upping of the defence budget.
"Like it or not, we've needed to spend more money on defence for years, and today it's even more urgent," the episode began.
"Spend up large, Judith. Spend up large. Spend up big and drag our military into the 21st century," Canterbury Mornings host John McDonald urged on Newstalk ZB this week.
All this makes it sound like a budget boost for defence is a done deal - sealed by the Chinese incursion this past week.
But - as The Detail pointed out on Friday - the budget would probably have been boosted in May anyway, especially for the navy.
Parliament's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee was told by the heads of New Zealand's Defence Force and the Ministry of Defence last December that almost all of our ships are due to be replaced within the next decade.
Scoop.co.nz columnist Gordon Campbell warned this is going to be pricey - and even more so if a panic button is pressed in haste over this week's Tasman Sea drama.
"In all likelihood, the coalition government will simply want to settle on a number for future defence spending that will be big enough to satisfy our critics in Canberra and Washington," he said.
"Any critics at home will be painted as naive and unwilling to make the hard sacrifices."
Campbell's got a long perspective on this.
Forty years ago he covered the controversy surrounding New Zealand's big deals for frigates in The Listener - at a time when we were seriously estranged from Australia and the US.
Campbell pointed out that any big bucks spent now will take years to make a difference. Trump will no longer be the US President and the environment could have changed completely by the time procurement comes through the pipeline.
We've been here before. When a government white paper proposed a $20b defence boost in 2016, New Zealand First was pushing for spending to double, reaching two percent of GDP.
The Dominion Post said at the time our spending had been low for so long because voters knew at that point there was no serious threat to New Zealand. But it also said the defence white paper was vague about the purpose of a boosted defence force and where it might be expected to go.
And the same could be said of the recent response to the Chinese vessels here last week - and then gone again this week.
Phoning it in
On Newstalk ZB, the drama drew a range of armchair admirals and deckchair diplomats phoned in with advice on how to handle China.
Caller Jan thought it was no coincidence the Australian Foreign Minister was Penny Wong.
"She's born in Australia. She's not even Chinese. She's Malaysian," host Nick Mills responded, shutting that down as fast as he could.
Another caller then told him Rocket Lab could be the key to our defence policy.
In the caller's defence, former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was here at RNZ - and on TVNZ's Q+A show last Sunday - saying Rocket Lab could be a useful AUKUS asset.
Another ZB caller harked back to a proposal to lease the Ohakea RNZAF base to Singapore to train pilots.
Maybe we should be going back to Singapore and say: "Hey if you guys still want to set up um, uh, your fighters here we don't have a problem."
He reckoned that would mean a free-armed strike fighter wing at our beck and call.
"National was all for it. The Ardern government and the fairy Green Party decided we're not going to do that," he claimed.
Not quite.
When that was proposed by Singapore eight years ago, a National-led government was in power. But it was NZ First's Ron Mark - as Defence Minister in the following Labour-led government - who eventually Cabinet decided the idea wasn't worth it.
Newsroom's foreign editor Sam Sachdeva reported Cabinet papers showed that Singapore's American F15 planes were actually among the noisiest in the world and 75 percent of Sanson residents would have needed acoustic insulation, adding millions to the cost of the proposal.
Military planning then is clearly complicated stuff, but ZB caller Ted made it sound so simple last Monday.
"Why don't we just invoke SEATO - end of story. Meanwhile, bring in conscription. No problem. End of. Done," he said on air.
Conscription here won't keep foreign vessels out of the Tasman Sea. And firing up the South East Asian Treaty Organisation is easier said - by Ted - than done.
New Zealand was never actually a member of the anti-communist alliance formed 70 years ago. It was dissolved in mid-1977 after most of its members lost interest and withdrew.
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