Caution Towards Defence Ministry

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30469, 17 June 1964, Page 13

Caution Towards Defence Ministry

The Government was feeling its way carefully in reorganising the three military service departments into one department, the Minister of Defence (Mr Eyre) said at the R.S.A. conference.

Legislation would be introduced this session of Parliament to set out the formal basis of the Ministry of Defence. The legislation would also establish the position of the Government’s various advisers in the defence field and the relationship between them, and create some new defence bodies at the policy level.

Substantial issues .of. principle and practice had been involved -in- preparing the legislation. With assistance, the Government had been able to thrash out most of the problems and agree on recommendations, but one or two major issues had needed to be resolved at Cabinet defence committee level. ’

An important move would be to put all sections of the ministry under one roof, and a -start- would be made on that this year. But the final stage of con-

structing a defence building to house the Wellington headquarters of the Ministry would take some years. In the meantime, steady progress would be made towards unification of defence planning and administration, as part of the steady progress which was being made on the five-year defence programme, also announced last year.

He said the re-equipment programme in the Army was progressing- at the rate of £1,500,00 a year, and each purchase made the- Army a more modern fighting force. For the Air Force, the three new Hercules transport planes would arrive towards the middle of next year, and the Government had approved the purchase of Orion maritime aircraft.

For the Navy, a start had been maiie on the construction of a third frigate, the Waikato, which was expected to join the fleet early in 1967.