THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1986. Questions of loyalty

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 16

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1986. Questions of loyalty

New Zealand’s defence services have been caught in a double bind since the General Election in mid-1984. They are being required to follow policies that are, at the least, novel; at worst, those policies are abhorrent to some serving officers. As well, the Armed Services and the civilians of the Ministry of Defence have at their head a Minister whose heart is not in the job and whose relations with his senior advisers is no better than correct.

The Minister, Mr O’Flynn, has sometimes been uncertain of the loyalty of some of his staff. Events in the last week suggest that uncertainty has not always been without foundation. Many serving officers doubt that Mr O’Flynn has been suitably vigorous or sympathetic in representing the interests of the Ministry of Defence to the Government. That can only compound the sense of distrust between the Minister and some of those around him.

Mr O’Flynn has had the good sense to acknowledge that any disloyalty has come from only a handful of people. Most of the country’s 13,000 service people have been getting on with their jobs, regardless of what they might think privately about the Government’s defence policies. Such limited disloyalty is almost impossible to detect or stop, as other Government departments have also discovered.

The problems do not stop there. Perhaps because he has not felt at ease in a portfolio that would never have been of his choosing, Mr O’Flynn has been reluctant to talk to journalists and has insisted for some time that he will respond only to written questions. This is at odds with the Government’s policy of "open government” — although less has been heard of such things as “opening the books” as the months have passed.

When information becomes hard to obtain officially from a Ministry that is making news, journalists will seek it where they can. Disquiet about Mr O’Flynn’s performance and Government policies may have prompted leaks of information from the Ministry of Defence; Mr O’Flynn’s own behaviour has encouraged journalists to pay attention to such leaks when they seem well founded.

The disloyalty that Mr O’Flynn and Mr Lange have spoken of is a disloyalty to the ethics of the Public Service, rather than to

New Zealand. Some in the Armed Services might argue that they have been acting in the name of a higher loyalty to the well-being of New Zealand, by being less than sufficiently respectful to particular politicians in office. It is a measure of the muddle and disquiet in the Armed Services that otherwise loyal and able officers should feel this way.

This disquiet is more the product of Government policies than of the behaviour of the Minister of Defence; but Mr O’Flynn has done little to diminish it. His statement this week, casting aspersions on those in the Ministry whom convention forbids from answering back in public, is not conducive to loyalty.

The real point at issue surely remains the inappropriate, and even dangerous policies that the Government insists on pursuing in defence matters. This point continues to surface in unexpected ways. In Mr O’Flynn’s statement this week, for instance, he remarks that a decision of his was overturned by the Prime Minister because “foreign policy considerations” were overriding. Those considerations turn out to be a desire not to offend the Canadian Defence College on a rather minor matter. Like it or not, this suggests that New Zealand has so few defence friends left it must take special care not to give offence.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs is likely to continue as long as the Labour Government persists in its defence follies. The Armed Services are stuck with ill defined aims, inaequate equipment, few allies abroad, and a general sense of malaise. This is New Zealand, and an overwhelming tradition, as well as the law, prevents the services from acting in the manner of some other Commonwealth countries such as Ghana, or Uganda, or Lesotho where armed forces makes policies and even Governments. Something might still be achieved by replacing Mr O’Flynn with a Minister who is more sensitive to the unhappy condition of the armed forces and more vigorous? in promoting their point of view in the Cabinet. Otherwise, once the elected representatives have fixed on a defence policy, or even fixed on the absence of a policy, members of the Armed Services who wish to continue in their careers have no choice but to carry out that policy.