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Speaker 1: Get ready. In New Zealand, a massive defense budget is

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Speaker 1: going to drop in about three months time. Judith Collins

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Speaker 1: told me on this program on Friday. The government wants

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Speaker 1: to get to two percent of GDP. We're currently at

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Speaker 1: one point one percent of GDP with our spending. We

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Speaker 1: spend almost five billion dollars a year on defense, so

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Speaker 1: we're talking about doubling that almost ten billion dollars now.

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Speaker 1: Nikola Willis has set her spending allowance for new money

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Speaker 1: at two point four billion dollars for the next three

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Speaker 1: budgets excluding savings. So at that rate, it would take

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Speaker 1: you more than nine years and all the extra money

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Speaker 1: available to all of government to get to two percent.

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Speaker 1: That would also mean nothing extra for health, nothing extra

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Speaker 1: for education, so that is quite unlikely. Here's what they

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Speaker 1: could do, come out and say we're going to get

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Speaker 1: to two percent of GDP within fifteen years. They're announcing

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Speaker 1: a fifteen year defense plans, so it had signal plenty

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Speaker 1: of time to scale things up. Then there's the why

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Speaker 1: and on what the y is easy. America is in

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Speaker 1: retreat mode. China is waiting in the wings. We are

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Speaker 1: in the middle, though, down the bottom of this battle

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Speaker 1: China now has the world's largest navy two hundred and

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Speaker 1: thirty four warships. The US has two hundred and nineteen.

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Speaker 1: Trump More importantly, the American people who voted for him

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Speaker 1: don't want to play globocop anymore. Trump will only help

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Speaker 1: Ukraine if he gets a mineral deal out of it.

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Speaker 1: He's doing economic deals for security, so we are quite vulnerable.

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Speaker 1: As they say, the US spends three to four percent

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Speaker 1: of GDP on defense. Australia spends two percent already. Remember

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Speaker 1: we're at one point one, and there'll be plenty of people,

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Speaker 1: the Greens, the academics, the experts, who'll say that we

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Speaker 1: should spend ten billion on defense. If we spend ten

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Speaker 1: billion on defense, we should spend far more on school

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Speaker 1: lunches and pay the teachers more, etc. But what's good

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Speaker 1: as a school lunch if you've got no country to

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Speaker 1: go back to? Security surely is more important. However, you

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Speaker 1: then have the challenge for the government making sure they

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Speaker 1: spend that extra cash on the right stuff, not just

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Speaker 1: spending the money for the sake of heading an arbitrary target.

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Speaker 1: We should spend wisely so that we're actually useful enough

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Speaker 1: to a more powerful player in the region. That should

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Speaker 1: be the goal, and if the government is serious about this,

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Speaker 1: which they certainly sound to be, then perhaps it's time

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Speaker 1: they also let nuclear powered warships into our waters. For

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Speaker 1: more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to news

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Speaker 1: Talks it'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the

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Speaker 1: podcast on iHeartRadio.